Do you know about the hidden power of animals?

Do you know that elephants can paint? It is true. Many other animals can do it, too. Of course, they lack the sophistication of a human painter, but the fact is that animals can do much more than we humans believe they are capable of.

adobe.stock/Kiril Zdorov

If we go back in time together, humans were believed to be the only species that could use tools. Later on, a gorilla was documented breaking a stick and using it to extract ants from a hole in the ground in order to eat them. In fact, if an animal lives long enough in a human environment, with time, it will start at least partially to understand human communication. We all have witnessed how cats and dogs learn pretty fast how to manipulate their human owner and extract whatever they want from them, like a human child would do. The Internet is full of images of animals doing unbelievable things: a gorilla taking a cloth, dipping it in water, squeezing the water out of the cloth and putting it on its face, like we humans do in the mornings; monkeys waking on their hind legs hand-in-hand on the paths of a park; a bear using an inviting gesture to make humans throw some food in its direction; a wild lion opening the door handle on a car and coming inside; a piglet matching colored shapes to the corresponding color of the same shape on a wooden board (a skill equal to a 1.5 year-old human child); a dog surfing alone on a surfboard in the ocean; animals communicating danger to their owners and saving them; and the list can go on forever.

After watching image after image of what animals can do, I decided to do an experiment with the wild life in the vicinity of my house.

I picked two potential groups of animal partners to establish and test communication:

Deer and squirrels.

I started with the deer, because they have been visiting me on a daily basis already in groups of 5 to 12. They would come and graze on the grass and drink from the nearby pond.

adobe.stock/KQ Ferris

As a first step in the process of establishing contact, I granted myself some time to simply observe their small community. Soon, it became apparent to me that the herd had a well established social structure. There was always one deer on the watch for the safety of the rest of the herd. The guardian deer never grazed while performing its duty. I was amazed that a wild animal was capable of suppressing its natural urges in the name of the greater good. Then there was the leader – an intelligent, strong and fast female deer of striking beauty and grace (see the actual picture below). She was fearless, so I chose her as my first contact subject.

The Leader

Initially, the herd ran away as soon as I emerged on my deck, even if I did this very slowly and as quietly as possible. However, with time, the herd became capable of handling my presence, if I obliged them with the safe distance they required to stay calm.

This is the moment I initiated the communication.

I decided that I had to use a hand gesture that they had never or perhaps only rarely seen humans use.

I named my first gesture “hello – it is safe.”

It consisted of me raising up my right hand and then bending rapidly all my fingers forward twice. I intensely focused on the meaning I attached to the gesture while I was doing it.

Initially, the deer only observed my gesture, puzzled with its meaning. I continued with the experiment. Day after day they observed, until they got it, just like that. I would get out on the porch and immediately make the gesture. The herd would stop grazing, alerted by the porch door opening noise, lift their heads and intensely stare at me. Then, if I did the “hello – it is safe” gesture the herd would relax and continue grazing, but if I didn’t, they moved away. After a while I decided to test to see if the same communication would work with other humans that the deer had never seen. It did! In fact, any time a different set of friends visited me, I tested the theory. Seeing unfamiliar faces will make the deer disappear, unless that new humans made the “hello - it is safe” gesture. Then they will stay and graze. However, there were two differences between the reaction to me and to the newcomers. With the newcomers, the deer chose to graze further away than they did with me and they hesitated for a longer period of time after the gesture before resuming their grazing.

So, what happened next?

After a while, the communication became so fluent and fast that I decided to develop a second gesture which I named “stop – do not run away”. The gesture consisted of me raising my hand with my palm forward and saying with a firm voice “stop”.

The cycle repeated itself. After a period of observation, the herd accepted the second gesture, but I was unsure, since I did not have many natural occasions when I needed to use it. However, one day a situation arose, which became the ultimate proof that the gesture was real and that the deer knew what that communication meant.

It was a cold, gloomy and rainy day, not one that gave me the desire to leave the house. Since I stayed inside the whole day, towards the end of the day, I decided to go out on my deck for few gulps of oxygen-rich air. As I was opening the door, I didn’t notice that the herd was outside grazing only a few feet away from the house wall. In addition, when exiting, one of the metallic tools I use for the grass, slid and fell on the ground with a loud thump. Needless to say, this startled the deer in a flash and I heard the sound of multiple hooves hitting the ground. I rushed to the deck and stared at the disappearing, white-waving tails. The sound of my feet stumping on the wooden surface of the porch alerted the leader and she glanced back at me. In a flash, I raised my hand palm forward and shouted with all my will power - “stop”. To my absolute shock, the entire herd froze in midair and looked back at me. At that moment I gained my composure and made the second gesture “hello- it is safe”. The entire herd immediately relaxed. After a short hesitation, the leader led the herd to graze, but this time further away from my house.

It was one of those moments that make life worth living. An immense gratitude toward this gracious deer and her herd pored into me. In my mind, I thanked them for agreeing to play along with me when developing our unique language.

The squirrels

After a while, I decided to test the “hello – it is safe” gesture with the squirrels. It worked, but it was different, due to the specific nature that squirrels have.

adobestock/freshidea

I repeated the cycle. My initial observation taught me that the squirrels were quite an unruly bunch. They were very intelligent, extremely curious and did not want me to be too cozy with them. The squirrels communicated with their tails. One, two or three wags of the tail meant different things. So, I used two wags of my hand to say “hello — you are safe” and three wags to communicate “go away — danger”. Soon, and much faster than the deer (may be an effect of the morphic field), the squirrels started reacting. They would stop and look me in the eye intentionally when I did two wags and disappeared quickly if I waged my hand three times. Once I established communication with them, I tested the gesture with people unfamiliar to the squirrels and it still worked! Again, the only difference between the communication with me and with the newcomers was that the squirrels stayed further away from the new people or rarely showed up for them at all.

What is a morphic field?

A morphic field is a term developed by a scientist named Rupert Sheldrake. It consists of an energy field providing a “…mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and… (contains) the collective memories (of)…the species….”

So, today, it is a scientific fact that animals can develop skills, learn to communicate with humans and to a certain extent be creative (remember the painting elephants). I am sure there is much more to the story, but I will let you further explore this vast and interesting area by yourself. Enjoy.

From my heart to yours,

Dr. Ani

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