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Japanese dog stays by injured canine comrade after disaster

Edited by GreenReaper as of Fri 18 Mar 2011 - 08:39
Your rating: None Average: 4.4 (7 votes)

We've been hearing of the horrible tragedy in Japan over the past week caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Plant, but there is one story of hope from the striken oriental nation: rescue workers discovered a dog guarding a fellow dog that was injured in the earthquake.

At first, the dog would not let rescue workers near its friend, but they were able to gradually bring the injured dog to an animal hospital in the city of Mito. The guardian dog was taken to a different shelter in the city; both are recieving medical treatment for their ordeals.

Comments

Your rating: None Average: 5 (5 votes)

I cried a little bit; you should really make this an embedded feature that takes more than 5 lines of text on the main page. Human or not, it's a loss. I don't believe we're the only ones capable of feeling such loss.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

dogs have emotions, just like us, as do most animals, only science dissagrees on this, because its not proven.
i see this everywhere, dogs care for other dogs aswell as other animals / humans which they consider as a friend

i think science needs to check up itself and stops acting like its allknowing.

indeed these stories are wonderfull, i wish we could all just learn from it.

Your rating: None Average: 4 (2 votes)

Or maybe you need to stop acting like you are all-knowing about science. There are massive amounts of work and writing about emotions in animals, especially canines where scientists have looked specifically at dogs to learn about humans because of some similarities in how their minds work and develop. Although there are warnings about referring to animal emotions in research, the warnings are because the emotions could be quite different from human emotions and anthropocentric interpretations could easily be quite biased or outright wrong. This isn't saying they don't have emotions, only that it is difficult to say objective things with any certainty about them, considering it is hard enough to say things objectively about human emotions.

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Ringtailed Foxread storiescontact (login required)

a freelance editor & writer and Fox-raccoon hybrid from Windsor, Ontario, Canada, interested in bicycle riding, reading and video games