Scientists are now asking very interesting questions about animal emotions, animal minds and cognition, animal communication, even animal virtue.

Do animals have similar feelings of love, happiness and sadness as humans? Are there animals who possess superior memories than humans? How do some animals seem able to predict natural phenomena before they occur? Halo, kind viewers.

Let’s discover the answers to these questions and more on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants as we explore the intriguing inner world of animals. International #1 bestselling author of the books, “The Birds in My Life,” “The Dogs in My Life” and “The Noble Wilds,” Supreme Master Ching Hai has often spoken about the highly sentient and noble beings we call animals.

Animals are extremely intelligent. Intelligent. There is no doubt, and we know that, too. Even pigs, house pets, they are known for their quality of faithfulness, loyalties, friendliness, and helpfulness in time of trouble. In your newspapers, printed everyday some miracles done by animals.

Like dogs rescue children from burning house, pig runs many miles to rescue his owner. Horses stay with the tomb of his master until his death. He never eats anything. Or some dog never leaves the tomb of his master, etc., etc. So many, many things. So it is not funny that the humans sometimes think animals are better than us, yes?

It could be, in some aspects, it could be true. After all, all beings are created by God anyhow, so why not they have the God spark inside them like we do? It’s just because they are in a different form and they use different languages doesn't mean they are in any way less worthy than us.

Through further studies and observations, humans are gaining a greater understanding of the sophisticated social systems, depth of cognition and dignified principles of the furry, finned and feathered residents of this planet. Our 3-part series features Dr. Jonathan Balcombe, a leading behavioral research scientist and author of “The Use of Animals in Higher Education: Problems, Alternatives and Recommendations,” “Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good” and “Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals.”

A new book by Dr. Balcombe will be released in May titled, “The Exultant Ark – A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure.” As a respected speaker, Dr. Balcombe has travelled around the globe, giving presentations and raising awareness about the values, psychology, intelligence and emotions of our animal friends.

He has written numerous scientific papers and articles published in prestigious academic journals and magazines such as the “Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science,” “British Medical Journal,” “Journal of Consciousness Studies,” “Animal Behavior,” “Canadian Field-Naturalist” and many others.

Dr. Balcombe has said, “As science continues to make new discoveries about animal minds and feelings, I hope it strikes a chord for more considerate, ethical treatment of animals.”

In my opinion, the only difference between a human and an animal is same as the difference between a pig and a cow, or chicken and starling. They’re different species. So I think we need to recognize and celebrate the diversity of life and recognize that all species have their own values.

While growing up, Dr. Balcombe had always found himself being fascinated by animals. But it was during a biology class at York University in Toronto, Canada, that he determined his life's purpose.

We had crossbred fruit flies, drosophila melanogaster, bearing different phenotypes. And it was time to record the distribution of characteristics in the next generation. Counting the number of flies with white versus red eyes required exposing them to ether to immobilize them.

The flies were then sprinkled onto a sheet of white paper to be examined and counted. When the data collection was complete, the flies had no further use to genetics. And our instructions were to tip them into a small glass dish of oil placed at the center of each desk. The "morgue" as it was called was to be diminutive drosophila's final resting place. Well, rocking the boat never came easily to me, but I was having none of this.

Once my little pile of dipterans had been counted, I pushed them off the edge of the paper where they were camouflaged against the black desktop. As we recorded our data, I kept one eye on them. The ember of life soon rekindled and within minutes the pile was twitching and humming as tiny legs and wings beat their way out of the ether fog. They staggered onto their spindly legs before regaining their senses and launching forth.

I was thrilled as they took flight. The flies were my first step in refusing to conduct scientific research that treated non-human life as dispensable. They also charted a path for the values I want to bring to the study of animals. As I became more aware of institutionalized abuses of animals, I identified a niche for my future: animal protection.

During his many years of research, Dr. Balcombe came across numerous scientific studies indicating that animals have a high level of intelligence, sometimes even exceeding that of a human being.

Chimpanzees have been shown to have far better spatial memory, certainly short term, and perhaps long term. You can watch these on these videos on YouTube these days. Chimpanzees, young chimpanzees shown a monitor, these have learned to interact with computer monitors.

And if the numbers 1 to 9 are scattered randomly and they appear on that screen for 1 second or less, the chimpanzee casually points to each rectangle in the correct sequence, 1 through 9, and gets a little treat. That’s the motivation, has a little treat. Humans, with about 1 second to see the array of numbers, we might get to 3 or 4 if we are having a good day.

In fact, one chimpanzee named Ayumu, if he has one fifth of a second, so it’s about that long, to see the nine numbers, he remembers them all, 90% of the time. So these animals have an incredible spatial intelligence that is far beyond our own. So we can’t even claim to be at the pinnacle of all forms of intelligence as we often do.

An article printed in The Washington Post titled, “It’s Music to These Monkeys’ Ears – And Also Their Hearts” written by Rob Stein, showed the enlightening results of a study in which scientists created “animal” music for tamarin monkeys to observe their reactions rather than testing how they are affected by human music, which in previous studies did not provide conclusive results.

True enough, soothing music was observed to have a calming effect while harsh music seemed to make the monkeys more restless, similarly to how humans are stimulated by different types of songs. This opens the door to re-examining other misconceptions humans have of the innate intelligence of animals.

For a long time, we thought chimpanzees had very poor face recognition skills, until someone had the bright idea to actually test them on chimpanzee faces instead of human faces. Once chimps were tested on chimpanzee faces, they did very, very well, about as well as we do. And what’s more, they do better than us on upside-down faces. And if you think about chimpanzees hanging around in trees, you might guess why they are better at that than we are. Sheep are also very good at face recognition.

A sheep who has been removed from her own flock and put in another flock for two years. Two years later, being shown a series of 80, 90, 100 still photos of sheep, some of whom were from her original flock, and some from alien sheep she doesn’t know. She can recognize up to 50 or so of her original flock mates, 2 years later from a single face on photograph or a profile photograph.

Also, sheep will almost routinely, will almost never go through a door with a photograph of a very hungry sheep, if there is the other option of going through a door with a photograph of a just fed sheep. They look similar to us, but they can see the sheep is more relaxed and more happy, and they would rather go through that door. And sheep much prefer a smiling human face to a frowning, angry looking one.

In his book, “Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals,” Dr. Balcombe writes: “Recent research has detected elephants using a special acoustic technique to track others. Their feet are beautifully adapted for communication and listening infrasonically, that is, at frequencies below human hearing.

Preliminary studies reveal a high density of pressure-sensitive nerve endings at the front of the footpad and around the edges. This enables them to remain in contact with each other for weeks at a time, even though they may be separated by miles of savannah.

It may act as an early warning system for earthquakes, explaining why elephants and virtually all large animals had already moved to higher ground when rising water from the giant tsunami pounded Asian coastlines on Dec. 26, 2004.” Dr. Balcombe explains how this acoustic skill gives elephants a unique spatial awareness of where others in the herd are located.

They live in matriarchal groups and they often move from point A to B several miles away. They’re going to go to a tree that’s fruiting and they have good memories for that too. So, if the scientists dig up fresh urine from some elephants who are walking further ahead, a quarter of a mile ahead and then quickly dump it down again, the elephants walking behind, on encountering that urine, will sniff it and check it out and then move on.

But if they take urine from elephants who are walking somewhere behind and quickly start and bring it up in front of these walking elephants and deposit it, the elephants react differently. They show much more surprise. They twist their trunks more, they described it in the scientific paper. It doesn’t fit expectations to find fresh urine, fresh pee from someone who you know is behind you. So, it’s a way of illustrating these animals have a mental map. They’re aware of who is who, and who is where.

And it is actually estimated based on this and other studies, that an elephant is keeping mental tabs on around 30 other individual elephants at any one time. So, there’s a lot of awareness in these animals’ minds. And should we be surprised? This is a big animal, huge brain, very long lived, emotional, very good memory.

With mounting scientific evidence indicating that animals are highly intelligent, deeply emotional, and complex sentient beings, Dr. Balcombe believes that we must look at and treat our fellow beings with respect and dignity.

The animal has life worth living, and that stems from sentience, from the capacity to feel things, pleasures and pains. We understand those feeling for our own lives. Well, they have those feelings as well and it is because of sentience that they have lives that are worth living.

For more information on Dr. Jonathan Balcombe, please visit:

It was a pleasure having your company today for Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Join us again Friday and Saturday for part 2 and part 3 of our program, “Exploring the Intriguing Inner Lives of Animals with Dr. Jonathan Balcombe.” Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Enlightening Entertainment, coming up next right after Noteworthy News. May you live in Heaven’s grace with compassion and wisdom.