Transcripts For CSPAN2 Ingrid Newkirk Animalkind 20240713 :

I appreciate it. If you have not been to our Author Program before, i would encourage you to go on to the Jimmy Carter Library website, we have 2 3 authors, sometimes for every week and they are just fascinating, later this week we have a book called wilmingtons fly, the rise of White Nationalist in wilmington North Carolina back in the 1880s. We have judge Douglas Ginsburg talking about his book, voices of the republic into tiein with the pbs series on thursday, we have a whole bunch of wonderful authors so i would encourage you to take a look and come back and see us again. I am delighted for tonights program, Ingrid Newkirk was born in england, youll be able to tell that with the accent. She lived in europe until she was seven years old and then her parents moved to new delhi where her father worked as a engineer and her mother volunteered for Mother Teresa and various charities. Her early volunteer experiences packing pills, rolling bandages for people who suffer from leprosy, stuffing toys for orphans, feeding straight animals, that created her view that anyone in need including animals is worthy of concern. She founded peta and since that time its grown into the Worlds Largest Animal Rights organization, her passion and dedication to making the world a better place for all living beings has inspired countless of others and the subject of tonights book animalkind, the things of how we should treat animals, please join me in welcoming Ingrid Newkirk. [applause] thank you very much everybody for coming out, as i said you are the Atlanta Braves getting through all out there. It is a privilege to be here at the jimmy carter president ial library and i have several antidotes about president carter because i was a humane officer in washington, d. C. When he was president and there was a time for example when the Bourbon Company decided to toss a real wild turkey over the white house reels and human landed in a tree and my job was to go out and persuade the secret service that he was no threat to the president. [laughter] the president didnt need to worry about this bird and they should leave him in peace and not shave him. Two days later the bird flew off and went to live happily ever after on roosevelt island. [laughter] with the more relevant story concerns president carters middle east peace initiative. So one christmas along time ago i traveled to bethlehem and in palestine were jimmy carter and i were giving talk and talk on nonviolence, it was a very first night with the banquet and a representative from all over the world who is there to talk about respect for others, understanding peace and nonviolence. , on the way to the dinner we passed to the market square, then there was the butcher who is slaughtering these goats and sheep in the market square, we saw it all. And we arrived at the banquet hall and sat down and it was christmas and there was a very large picture of Jesus Holding one of these gentle lamps and then dinner was served in each of us was given a lamb shank and i thought back them, no one was connecting the dots. In somebody needed to Say Something and of course several of us made the case that this was not the time to serve a violent mill at a nonviolent conference. The very next day i was sitting in the hall listening to the speakers and one by one they would come up and talk about how they had been imprisoned unjustly, they had had their home bulldozed, they had their all of groves seized in each speaker ended by saying these words, please respect us, we are human beings. And i sat there and i thought about it and i was the only speaker at the time to address the animal nation in the animal individual and so i made the case that the identity of victims of violence is not important what is important is there is needless violence. So i found myself at the end of my speech saying, one day i hope to come here and i hope we will be able to say please respect this because we are living beings. It doesnt matter if or human or not. And then that night we were all staying in the monastery and it was a monastery hotel, it even had a bar. I went back to the hotel and i heard the woman talking about how excited she was that there was a Christmas Market and she was going to be buying these sweaters at the Christmas Market and then she spotted me and she said i heard you talk today. And i would just like to know how you can talk about during our being shot and i did not say to her, i dont know how you can talk to them about sweaters and the Christmas Market when little children are being shot but instead i just said surely our hearts are big enough to care about little children and animals because theyre all victims of violence, so last night millions of people were watching the oscars and they were reminded of this disconnection, this disconnect, they were asked to connect the dots, they were asked to consider that we are linked not ranked. In Joaquin Phoenix said this, whether were talking about gender inequality or racism or indigenous rights or Animal Rights, were talking about injustice. Were talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species has the right to dominate control, abuse and exploit another with impunity. He said, i think we become very disconnected from the Natural World and many of us what were guilty of is an egocentric, i would say that humana centric, we feel entitled to artificially inseminate account when she gives birth and then we still her baby. Even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable, and they are and then we take the milk intended for her calf and put it in her coffee and our cereal. So i love Joaquin Phoenix for pushing the on the loop and making people think and for sticking up for the animals who are often forgotten. Recently he also made the golden globe begin and after that another one and after that a third after. And when he asked them could you please not serve animals the way i will did in bethlehem, could you please not serve them at a nonviolent place because please dont serve them out of celebration, he said we could all be vegan but we need to serve the little fish. And i dont know if you know his story, he became vegan when he saw a fish darted on the deck of a ship he said no you cannot do that and they said all right, will make the whole thing began. So he is the person of the year and we are very proud of him. [applause] so we should get to the book. Many of us read books and we were children with mythical animals, one just powers, pegasus the flying horse, dragons, unicorns, you name it. And what james stone and i set up to do, and animalkind and show the animals from all around us, every single day, not mythical at all do have what you might call superpowers. But people down badly underestimate the other animals, even those who care deeply about them sometimes. You may be showing love for an animal by calling them your for baby but also they are not babies at all. You are absolutely whole and complete and thinking and they are feeling individuals and they have interest that need to be taken into account. Experimenters often call other animals nonhuman. If its not fair i would find that amusing because its like a nonhamster. It makes so little sense. Theyre not nonanything. They are whole beings with an norm is an often fairly unrecognized intelligence. They have emotions, love, fear, pain, joy, they like to be free but theyre often totally ignored. Thats what Joaquin Phoenix was talking about, a mothers love for her calf. Its not even considered a factor if somebody wants a cheese topping on their pizza. Not a thought for that cow. So im going to give you ten examples with animal real life superpowers. I shouldnt give you more than that or you wont buy the book. We cant survive ten minutes under the ice but the turtle can hold his breath under the ice for over 100 days. If you go to the airport these days which i promise you i do almost every day, its not an airport anymore, its a maze of restaurants, fast food, its a place where you eat. And then you get on the plane and they give you a snack and then they try to sell you food, apparently they think that human beings cannot go 400 miles or so unless they are eating. But the time he go tiny bird frw zealand fly 7000 miles without stopping for food or water, no human being could possibly come close to that. A squirrel varies their nets by the position of the stars, just imagine and if they know that another squirrel is watching or another human being is watching they pretend to bury it but actually they dont liberate someone else. We use gps but pigeons use lowfrequency radio waves among other things to navigate, there was a time when human beings did not know the word radio waves, pigeons knew it all along. And perhaps you have seen the footage that peter has taken of pigeon racing which sounds very benign and sounds absolutely harmless, what could be more harmless than pigeon racing. A lot of these races take place over open water, boats upload the birds in the middle of the sea or they fly the birds back to spain or from germany back to scotland and to do that to get home the birds have to cross these immense spaces, the immense body of water and birds and pigeons are petrified of crossing those bodies of water especially when they cannot see land on the other side. But you know how it is done, pigeons know about cross currents and all other reasons to be afraid that the reason they fly, very few make it the statistics are absolutely shocking. Is because the pigeon races no pigeons mate for life, wonderful mothers and fathers both the father and the mother pigeon make note in their crop. So if you see a pigeon with their beak down another pigeon, they could be kissing because they do that to but they may be feeding their baby. And pigeons keep the mate or the egg or the baby back in the attic and then asked when they take the other one away and thats why they risk their very lives and many of them lose their lives to get home. This is taiwan, Something Like 95 of thousands upon thousands of birds, beautiful gentle little birds perished. Mountaineers use oxygen masks around 23000 feet and they have to use special suits but the goose can fly without any of that at 26000 feet. Tiny garden snails taken a few miles from the home, im not wrecking mending anybody do this but they will find their way back because it is their home, they were spend two years if they need to and they will get there at the speed of 0. 029 miles an hour and snakes do the same thing. So elephants, i learned a lot about elephants and writing this book, things i did not know how they use their trunks to snorkel when they go swimming and how they can pick up a paperclip the way you would use your thumb. Years ago we used to think the rumbling sound that they made was indigestion. It was not any such thing. It was subsonic communication. It is now called silent thunder. They send messages to herds of elephants that are far far away, maybe a drought and they found a waterhole and they tell those elephants who are a long way away, you can get here and get something to drink or today the chinese are capturing baby elephants from places and taken them to National Parks at amusement and the babies are being captured places in africa that you could find another herd all the way at the end of the park against the fence trembling because they have heard from these elephants are babies are being taken. There little miles are just ultrasound vibrations, but the mechanisms only previously seen in engines. Its a sound we cannot hear but all their friends can. Chimpanzees, you may know can outsmart College Students in memory test, yes you put a smartypants College Student there and a young chimpanzee next to them and put symbols or numbers on the board and take them away very quickly, the chimpanzee will be able to say put them back in the right place far quicker than the College Student. They have almost photographic memories. Which means you must never ever show them a atm pin number. [laughter] years ago at the university of washington in american sign leg which class, she taught her own son. They would invent words like water bird and water fruit if they saw something they did not know the name. He had one of his Research Students walking a chimpanzee through the ground, both getting exercise in the juvenile chimpanzee decided to be naughty and went up the tree in the College Student was thinking ive got to get back to class. So they pulled the leash around the chimpanzees neck and the chimpanzee just pulled the College Student right up into the tree. [laughter] the taser that carries electrical charge throughout their body that could stunt a human being in a split Second Period our military has tried to replicate that is ten times tougher and forget spiderman, the gecko has these electron infused suction cups on his feet and he can go up the side of the wall and absolutely be upside down above you without any problem. And as for dogs, i learned so much about dogs, i renew that there is a vastly superior to ours, their sense of smell but what i did not know is this, they are now being used by Law Enforcement officers to catch child pornographers. And that is because child pornographers will put their film on a thumb drive and a dog can smell the thumb drive inside a metal box inside a metal cabinet. No Law Enforcement officer can do that. Thats fantastic. It also means because their nose are so cute that you can never hurry them along their walk because they are reading the news, that is their internet out there. Theyre not out there just to do their business so you can go on and do whatever you want to do, that is their excursion, their big moment, they dont want to be sitting in the house with her legs crossed looking up the wall, you have to let them have their time, its their walk, its also the reason their noses that you can never eat in front of them because they smell it that they want it more than you do. And there is much, much more, do you know somebody has figured out how to give an mri to dogs without stressing or traumatizing them. What they have discovered is a very same part of their brain lights up when you give them a treat as a businessman lights up if you give him a raise. [laughter] im just telling you. [laughter] such for intelligent life in the paper in the news every week people going out looking for signs of intelligent life on other planets but intelligent life is all around us. A row of just a few months of age without being taught has figured out how to drop rocks into the water so the food floats to the top so he could take it out. Show me a human baby who can do that. Cows and horses can open complicated multiple problem gate locks and cows have taught themselves to operate water pumps when they are thirsty. , its absolutely extraordinary. They all watch and have to Pay Attention to what humans are doing and then learn from that. , there is a pig in the philippines that has made fun of toby because he looks like that. He is the filipino naughty pig. And people might like him but hes a smart fellow like most animals. What the filipino pig has been doing is where there are electrified fences but they are not always on, the pig will take rocks and push them with her snout up against the fence and if the fence goes ping ping paying they know its electrified and they dont go near it. And if there is no sound they go right through. They dont care. We have all seen on youtube the videos of dogs who wait until there humans have gone out and then everything is quiet and they do this. [laughter] they take out what they need and i see the videos where they put the chair back. I did a lot of research into my intelligent stories but one of my favorite stories is a man who taught money enter monkey how to pick flowers for him. Im not in favor of having servant monkeys, and how a lot of coconut products come into the United States like highland were there picked by monkeys who are kept on chains to a small hut their entire life is being trained brutally to go up the tree, come down and then they go mad in their little huts for the rest of their lives. This guy who trained the monkey to pick flowers, they were in asia, walking along the top of a sheer drop of thousands of feet and he saw there was something he never seen before and he wanted it. So he told the monkey, go down and get the orchid. In the monkey just looked at him, looked back and did not budge. And then he eventually lost his temper with the monkey and ordered him go down and get the orchid. In the monkey look to him, look back and went over to the side, found a blin vine, hand over had picked the orchid and gave it to him for he who is the clever of the two. And then there are the undervalued little animal fish and im going to mention one fish, this is also called the teeth cleaning fish. Ill tie you what this is, there is called a Gold Standard of animal intelligence its a test and if you show tribal people from america for the first time they think theyre being attacked when they something outofprint the chimpanzee passed and there attacked prebut recently looking at herself in the mirror as she figured out that is me in what she does is not only look at herself but she starts preening like kim kardashian. [laughter] then there are dolphins, Everybody Loves dolphins, dolphins have unique whistle names for each other and each dolphin is given a name, whistle name when theyre born and they keep it for the rest of their lives. This is amazing because if they have not seen or heard from a particular dolphin in 20 years and they hear the whistle, they know who it is. Which is in shock to my High S