The Animal Doctor

DEAR DR. FOX: You have written about animal sentience and feelings, and I want to ask you about plants. They, too, are sentient in some ways; I have been told they respond to human touch and are more sensitive than we give them credit for. What is your opinion? -- R.E., Washington, D.C.

DEAR R.E.: My recent columns have addressed the issue of animals having feelings: emotional reactions similar to our own. It would be an omission not to mention plants.

Contemporary "forest bathers" and Indigenous peoples alike know there is wisdom and healing in plants, and that we can derive benefits from our feelings and communications with plant life. Some cultures believe that their crops are healthier and more productive when sung to.

Nobel Prize winner and plant geneticist Dr. Barbara McClintock observed, "If you pinch a leaf of a plant, you set off electrical impulses. ... There is no question that plants have all kinds of sensitivities. They do a lot of responding to an environment. They can do almost anything you can think of."

"The Secret Life of Plants," a 1973 book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, documented controversial experiments that claim to reveal phenomena such as plant sentience. This set the stage for more research into the sensitivities and intelligence of plants, which are attuned to each other and to insects and other animals in their environments. For instance, some flowers open to make nectar more accessible in response to the sounds that bees make while hovering over them.

"Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest" by Suzanne Simard, just published, is a landmark treatise opening up the reality of the symbiotic communication between trees and fungi, and the evident sentience of interdependent plant life. Plants use chemical and electrical signals to communicate with each other (wired.com/2013/12/secret-language-of-plants). Plants can communicate with insects as well, sending airborne messages that act as distress signals to predatory bugs.

I am very concerned about the impact of various herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, as well as nonionizing radiation from cellphone towers and power lines, on these highly evolved interspecies communication systems and symbiotic relationships.

DEAR DR. FOX: I am a musicologist, and was enthralled when you described playing your flute and having a socialized wolf howl/sing in harmony in your book "The Soul of the Wolf." Some dog owners tell me their dogs like to sing along when they are playing a musical instrument. Others say their dogs howl when they hear a siren because it hurts their ears. What is your opinion on this? And do you agree with me that many animals like music? -- L.V., Palm Beach, Florida

DEAR L.V.: Music can certainly help calm animals. Dairy farmers are well aware that soothing music makes their cows more productive! As for dogs, I have always felt that they howl when they hear a siren because the sound triggers an innate communication response.

Wolves will howl to communicate with pack members when separated. Group howling may have a territorial function, informing neighboring wolf packs of their presence. The lone-wolf howl is like the lonely howl of dogs left alone all day that touches our hearts.

According to an opera singer who heard the ululating howls of my socialized wolf (whom I had raised during my studies of canid behavior and communication), she was "chording" -- singing two notes at the same time -- while I played my flute. My interpretation is that such singing is a soulful expression of communion or joy.

In the book I wrote with my wife, Deanna Krantz, "India's Animals: Helping the Sacred and the Suffering," I describe how the top dog at her animal sanctuary would respond when I played my flute: "On hearing my first note, he would utter a cascade of high-pitched whines and whistles that ignited the entire (resident) pack in a cacophony of yips, yaps, howls and birdlike whistles and trills of happiness that spread to the nearby village, where community dogs began to sing." I imagined this wave of song spreading across the subcontinent.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR READERS: I am sure many readers who love cats and wildlife will appreciate the article "The Outdoor Cat: Neighborhood Mascot or Menace?" by New York Times reporter Maria Cramer. She makes it very clear that one of the best solutions is an outdoor cat enclosure, or a "catio," to help protect wildlife and cats from injuries and cat-to-cat diseases.

But I was surprised at one serious omission in her article: No mention was made of the number of diseases cats can pick up outdoors and bring back into the home if they are allowed to roam free. These are called zoonotic diseases, and cats are more of a public health risk in this way than rats! According to the Merck Veterinary Manual (2010), there are at least 27 known cat-to-human zoonotic diseases. In addition, cats have infected people with influenza virus and COVID-19, and vice-versa. In contrast, a report from Washington State University lists only 12 rodent-to-human zoonotic diseases (see iacuc.wsu.edu/zoonoses-associated-with-rodents-wild).

As for cats controlling rats, adult rats are a challenge for most cats. Even if they do catch or kill one, cats (and their families) could be at additional risk from diseases the cat could catch from the rodent.

People are potentially at risk, children in particular, from petting any stray cat or from living with an indoor-outdoor cat. It is especially worrisome for children to play in sandboxes and other playground and garden areas where cats may have evacuated.

There is no need to get rid of your outdoor-indoor cats! Just visit the excellent American Bird Conservancy guide (abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors) on how to make indoor life a safe and stimulating place. Ideally, you should have two cats, plus an outdoor enclosure or catio.

CATS OUTDOORS AT RISK FROM FUNGAL DISEASES

Often underdiagnosed when cats go blind, develop a fever, become lethargic or anorexic, or develop skin nodules and respiratory distress, histoplasmosis is a fungal disease in the soil. It is the second most commonly reported fungal infection in cats, following cryptococcosis.

Cryptococcosis is a type of fungal infection that occurs when a cat inhales spores from a type of fungus that grows in organic material such as soil, decaying wood or bird guano (especially droppings from pigeons). Spores also can enter the skin through an open wound.

Since these fungi are everywhere in the soil, cats are likely to get the soil on their paws and ingest it when grooming, along with fungal spores. The spores could be inhaled or get into the fur in dry and dusty weather and when cats dig into the soil chasing small rodents or making a pit in which to defecate. These fungal diseases are a major reason to keep cats indoors and never use soil in the cat's litter box.

TEARFUL DOGS

The results of an experiment in Japan, published in Current Biology, reported that some dogs got watery eyes when reunited with their owners after more than five hours apart. The "tears of joy" response appeared to be driven by production of oxytocin, or the "feel-good hormone." People looking at photographs of dogs were more likely to want to nurture ones with watery eyes, suggesting that dogs might have evolved to tear up to get affection. (Full story: The New York Times and The Guardian, both Aug. 22)

Readers have informed me that their dogs shed tears when distressed. Such weeping from the eyes is also seen in other species when distressed, notably elephants and water buffalo.

Dogs who seem to cry a lot, especially small, fluffy breeds, should see a veterinarian because they could have chronic and potentially serious eye disease.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR DR. FOX: I really enjoyed what you wrote about the love of dogs in a recent column. Have you read author Stephen Budiansky's book "The Truth About Dogs"? He says dogs are clever, manipulative opportunists. What is your response? -- B.K., Washington, D.C.

DEAR B.K.: I read that book, but decided not to read his other one about cats ("The Truth About Cats"). Your reference to this author opens a window to the concerted efforts, some years ago, to discredit the science and philosophy behind the animal and environmental protection movements -- much like the climate change deniers of today.

In "The Truth about Dogs: An Inquiry Into the Ancestry, Social Conventions, Mental Habits and Moral Fiber of Canis Familiaris," published in 2000, Budiansky asserts, "If biologists weren't victim to the same blindness that afflicts us all, they probably wouldn't hesitate to classify dogs as social parasites."

Some of his other books were lauded by the "establishment," which felt under threat from environmentalists and animal rights advocates.

An earlier Budiansky book, "If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness," received this write-up from Publisher's Weekly: "Although Budiansky concedes that animals most likely experience emotions, he denies them consciousness, which, in his view, is inseparably linked to language, an exclusively human invention. Furthermore, Budiansky contends, animals don't really suffer, at least not the way we do, because their sensation of pain lacks a social context. Budiansky, a science writer ('The Nature of Horses') and U.S. News & World Report deputy editor, uses this debatable thesis to bash the animal rights and deep-ecology movements. Whatever one thinks of the correctness of his argument, it has value as a levelheaded critique of our tendency to anthropomorphize animal behavior."

Yet another book in this distancing-from-animals vein is "The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication," in which Budiansky argues that some species actually chose to be domesticated. The book came with the publisher's description: "Animal rights extremists argue that eating meat is murder and that pets are slaves. This compelling reappraisal of the human-animal bond, however, shows that domestication of animals is not an act of exploitation but a brilliantly successful evolutionary strategy that has benefitted humans and animals alike." Manuela Hoelterhoff's review in The Wall Street Journal put it this way: "Budiansky's slim, elegant discourse is a persuasive counterweight to the pastoral delusions of sentimentalists intent on seeing humans as malevolently at odds with the noble animal kingdom."

Budiansky was not alone in politicizing and twisting science to discredit animal welfare and rights advocacy and environmental protection. But for me, the icing on the cake was his article "Academic roots of paranoia: The Unabomber may not be such an intellectual loner" from the U.S. News & World Report of May 13, 1996. In it, he wrote: "A surprising number of leading academic writers on animal rights and the environment share the Unabomber's paranoid hostility to science -- the first is the Unabomber [the FBI's most-wanted fugitive, Theodore Kaczynski] and the second is Michael W. Fox, a widely published writer on animal rights and the environment."

This was all part of a concerted effort to dismiss animals as sentient, conscious beings. Instead, it was argued, animals are unfeeling automatons governed by instinctual reflexes. This "mechanomorphizing" of other animals helped create the "great void," as I call it. The exploiters of animals needed this to continue their activities in good conscience, and for protection from public accountability and censure. Distancing us from the environment and from other animals and severing empathy and compassion served the ultimate aim: maintaining the status quo of animal and environmental exploitation.

This great divide was eventually bridged by ethologists and other biological and animal welfare scientists, marked by the 2012 "Cambridge Declaration on Animal Consciousness" (drfoxonehealth.com/post/the-cambridge-declaration-on-animal-consciousness). Well before this declaration, and in spite of the paranoid pontifications of Budiansky et al, veterinarians had been diagnosing and treating emotional conditions in animals also seen in humans, and with similar medications as for depression and separation anxiety, a field of veterinary care I helped establish in the early 1970s.

For evidence of homologous and analogous human emotional responses in other animals, including insects, crabs and lobsters, read the article "The question of animal emotions" by Frans B.M.de Wall and Kristin Andrews, published in Science on March 24.

When we liberate animals from all forms of cruel exploitation and incarceration, we may yet recover our humanity.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)