Animals enjoy their food, they enjoy their social company. They have leisure time, they can relax. Their lives are rich and their lives are worth living. And that needs to affect the way we interact with them.

Halo, caring viewers and welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today we continue with the concluding episode of our 3-part series, “Exploring the Intriguing Inner Lives of Animals with Dr. Jonathan Balcombe.”

Dr. Jonathan Balcombe is 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.”

There’s a lot of really important things that humans need to understand and respect about animals, but the key one is this word, “sentience.” And sentience is the ability to feel things, to feel good things, to feel bad things, to feel pain, to feel pleasure. And so, my message about animals is that they have lives that matter to them. And so therefore we need to respect their lives. And the closer we look at animals, the more we study them, the more we realize just how complex they are.

During his research while in graduate school, Dr. Balcombe studied a large group of bats who lived together inside a small, dark cave. Through his observations, he noted how these animals have an amazingly intricate communication system.

I studied these flying mammals and how they communicate with each other, how they listen to other bats, and get information about where to find some food, and also how they recognize each other’s voices, as we can, to link up when they need to. A mother needs to find her baby, for instance, or the baby’s hungry, so the baby calls and the mother hears the baby, and they find each other that way.

In his book, “Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals,” Dr. Balcombe refers to many other studies on animal communication. Dr. Con Slobodchikoff, an ethologist and biology professor from Northern Arizona University in the United States, has studied prairie dogs for over 30 years and believes they may have the most sophisticated communication system than any other mammal.

Prairie dogs have over a 100 calls, with modifiers. And poignantly, they have a call for a man carrying a gun. So animals respond to our presence, and they respond in complex, flexible ways. We need to respect them more. We need to treat them better. We need to be aware that they want to live their lives too, like we do ours.

In addition to learning about communication skills, many researchers are discovering other aspects of animal intelligence. Dr. Balcombe describes a scientific study on scrub jays which revealed their remarkable long term memories.

Scrub jays are a relative of crows, a North American bird. And they have been shown to have what’s called episodic memory. That is, they can remember the what, the when, and the where of a past event. In this study, a scrub jay was given a pile of peanuts and they were allowed to bury them. By the way, this is a caching species. This is a species that buries food and comes back to it later.

The scrub jays were then given a much more perishable food, which they also buried. The birds were then kept away from the area for over a week. Upon their return, the scrub jays did not even bother trying to recover the perishable food, apparently realizing that it would already have spoiled. Instead they headed directly to the side where they had hidden the peanuts, which do not spoil as quickly.

So they remember what they buried, where they buried it, and how long ago it was, and how much time has elapsed. So it’s a pretty impressive cognitive feat.

Animals possess considerable innate wisdom and are able to pass along their knowledge and culture from one generation to the next.

There’s actually a term called zoopharmacognosy. And zoopharmacognosy is the specialized study of self-medication in animals. You know, animals live in their habitats, they know different plants, they know where to find certain fruiting trees at certain times of year. And they also learn through trial and error over the course of evolution and cultural evolution, they learn which plants can make them feel better. Chimpanzees use many different kinds of plants to self-medicate, and many other animals do this.

It was once thought that animals live only in the present and their actions were all based on an instinct to survive. However, scientific evidence shows that animals are capable of experiencing happiness and sorrow just as humans do.

Baboon mothers who lose an infant have been found to show a physiological and a behavioral response that mirrors those of humans, in particular, women who have lost an infant. We know that is a terrible loss. We grieve for long periods. That’s reflected in increased glucocorticoid hormones in our bloodstream. And we can measure that. It goes up for about a month, and it gradually subsides.

Time is our friend, when we are recovering from grief and bereavement. Well, a baboon mother who loses an infant shows the same sort of hormonal changes. It goes up for about a month and gradually subsides. And they also respond behaviorally by expanding their social networks. They engage in a lot more grooming with each other, receiving and giving grooming. It’s thought to be a form of therapy. And these are the terms the scientists used to describe it.

And it is, I think, analogous to the way we rally around socially when a loved one is ill or lost. We send flowers, we send cards, we bring soup over, we rally round morally. And by the way, the baboon mother is not the only one to show this response. These hormones also go up to a lesser degree, in their closest friends and associates in the baboon community.

These studies show that they can have moods and dispositions, emotional tenors that last for days or weeks or months, possibly years.

In his next book, “The Exultant Ark – A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure,” Dr. Balcombe seeks to show that animals not only have emotions, but they experience pleasure and happiness. At times, birds fly for the pure pleasure of soaring through the skies; monkeys help groom each other because it feels good and elephants engage in play for the simple joy of it.

Animals also are pleasure seekers. They are not just pain avoiders. There are many ways that animals experience pleasure, through food, through touch, through their everyday communications.

If you live with dogs or cats, you know they feel pleasure. You rub their belly, they come running for it. Maybe not a scientific study, but it’s pretty clear that these animals like the touch, and they probably enjoy their food and other pleasures in their lives. Well, rats have been shown to love touch as well. In one study, two groups of rats. Rats who are expecting to be petted on the back will come to be petted by the hand.

But rats who are expecting to be flipped on their back and tickled on the belly, which rats do to each other when they’re young, and when they play fight, they will come running, scientists love to measure things, they will come running to the hand four times as quickly and they will utter about on average 7 times more ultrasonic chirps which are associated with positive effect in rats. So rats love a belly rub as much as cats do apparently.

As a vegan himself, Dr. Balcombe works for the dignified treatment of animals and strives to raise awareness about the sentient and intelligent nature of animals.

The way we treat animals right now when we raise them for food and it's not very ethical, given the capacities that animals have. The slave trade, civil rights, suffragist movement, those are largely now relegated to the history books. We've made huge strides in conquering those past wrongs based on “might makes right”.

Unfortunately, we're still in the dark ages with animals largely. We still legally define them as property, and we still, kill huge numbers. If you want to help animals, the best way one can do it as an individual is to stop eating them. I'm hopeful that we, humans, humankind, will look back on the 21st century as the century for the animals.

From his books, articles and seminars, Dr. Balcombe presents the scientific evidence that animals are living, emotional, cognizant beings, with the hopes that they will be treated compassionately as beings with equal rights to happiness and freedom.

So, part of my message, and part of Supreme Master Ching Hai’s message about animals, is that animals celebrate life, animals enjoy life, animals have positive experiences. They enjoy their days. They seek out good things.

Supreme Master Ching Hai, who has also spoken extensively about the intelligence and dignity of our animal co-inhabitants, is hopeful for a gentler world of kindness and compassion, wherein the divinity in all beings is recognized and respected.

They are living beings just like us. When you look into the eyes of animals, sometimes you will realize, “My God! We are equal. We are the same.” And that feeling will send shivers all over your body, and give you an enlightenment that you would never dream of having.

I told you that animals can also teach you, flowers and trees and everything. In the Bible, you remember? God said that, "I made animals to help you, as your helper, as your friend.” Remember? That's why we should never eat them, not mistreat them.

So, everything on this planet, including us, is inter-related and helping each other to make our lives here comfortable and livable.

Our heartfelt thanks, Dr. Jonathan Balcombe, for sharing your expertise on the profound, inner lives of our animal co-inhabitants. We wish you every success in all your noble endeavors as we unite towards a peaceful and vegan planet where all live in safety and happiness.

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

We enjoyed your company today for Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Enlightening Entertainment, right after Noteworthy News. Blessed be your loving heart as you walk the honorable way of saints.