Day: May 1, 1996

Seeking the psychological well-being of primates

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

NEW YORK, N.Y.––Even before Congress in 1985 amended the Animal Welfare
Act to mandate that laboratories are responsible for the “psychological well-being” of nonhuman
primates used in research, Henry Spira may have known that resolving the long impasse
in the 200-year-old debate over the ethics of using animals in biomedical research would
come down to accommodating primate behavior.
No primatologist himself, Spira brought to animal advocacy a background including
a multinational childhood, waterfront union organizing, and 22 years of teaching English
in inner city schools. Throughout, Spira noticed that what most people want most in any
conflict is not the goal itself, but rather, not to lose.
Losing means losing stature in the troop. Loss of stature means loss of security.
Goal-oriented negotiating, Spira realized, means finding a way for both parties to gain
stature: to achieve important objectives without sacrificing principle.
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Heroic dogs, and sometimes cats––WHAT MAKES THEM BRAVE?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.––”A cat’s a better mother
than you are!” Rhett Butler exploded at Scarlet O’Hara in one of
the most memorable scenes of Gone With The Wind.
Cats are actually devoted mothers. On March 29 a
Brooklyn cat named Scarlet proved it, dashing five times into a
burning building despite severe burns to rescue each of her fourweek-old
kittens. Firefighter David Giannelli, a 17-year-veteran of
Ladder Company 175, saw Scarlet moving the kittens across the
street after getting them out of the fire and called the North Shore
Animal League. Now recovering at North Shore, they drew 700
adoption offers within hours of their plight becoming known.
The script-writers of the Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin serials
would have had a hard time topping the heroic animal headlines
during the first quarter-plus of 1996. Sixteen times in 15 weeks,
mass media reported dogs and cats performing daring or unusual
altruistic deeds, on behalf of either humans or other animals.
The streak began on New Year’s Day, when a nameless
cat in Minneapolis alerted a sleeping child to smoke in time to save
her family from a house fire.

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