I had a family
of trees, and another of plants,
and I talked and talked
with the animals I found

A magic bowl was rumoured to have been found across the ocean in another desert. The maker is unknown, the providence is hazy.

Unlike other bowls of its kind, this bowl depicts the figures of the zodiac and planets in the form of domestic animals. These are distinct and well engraved. Both the interior and exterior of the bowls are completely covered with inscriptions and the usual interlocking ornamentations. There are no magic letters or signs, nor does the Most High Name of the Seven Symbols occur on it.

The Planets, al-kawakib al-Sayara, are the figurative representations of the seven planets, arranged in the Ptolemaic order, the Sun being in the middle. The figures are separated from one another by short inscriptions.

The broad face of a Rabbit represents the Moon, al-Qamar. It is covered with a headdress that encloses both sides of the face and forms a knob on the top of the head,

To its left is a Serpent with a stylus in his hand. This is Mercury, 'utarid, in astrology al-Munafiq "the deceitful one."

Then follows a Goat playing on a harp. Her hair is done up in two thick braids. This is Venus, al-Zuhra, in astrology al-sa-ad al-saghir, "the star of little good fortune."

Her neighbour is the Rising Sun, al-Shams, in its house, Manzil. In front of it stands a Rooster.

The Sun is followed by the figure of a Dog holding a staff or lance over his right shoulder. His left hand rests on what appears to be a large jar, but in view of the fact that this is the image of Mars, al-Mirreekh, it is more probably a shield of which the lower part is not visible. This planet exercises a sinister influence and is called in astrology al-nahs al-'asjar, the star of “lesser misfortune " in relation to Saturn, the star of pre-eminently sinister influence, al-nahs al-'akbar.

Upon Mars follows Jupiter, al-Mushtari, an enthroned horse, holding in his left hand what appear to be two sticks laid across one another, perhaps thunderbolts. Jupiter is known in astrology as al-sa’ad al-'akbar wa yadullu 'ala al-salam, the star "of greatest happiness that leads unto peace."

And finally there is Saturn, al-zuhal, having the figure of a camel or a llama with six arms, resembling the many-armed Shiva. He is seated in the manner of a Buddha.

In his upper right hand he holds an object resembling a spearhead or a pointed bud of a flower.

In the corresponding left hand he holds an object of a triangular form with a rounded top.

From his second arm there seems to flow a stream of water, while the hand of the corresponding left arm holds an object of a triangular form on a long stem.

The remaining two arms hold nothing in their hands. The two sets of lower arms are attached to the middle of the body.

The Bowl was decorated with various pictures of herbs, buildings and leaves, also of reptiles, and with figures of birds, wild beasts and forms of old men, young men, women and children and painted inscriptions and rarities of distant countries and joyous instruments of music and rare animals exactly portrayed with different hues, of perfect beauty with limbs firmly jointed: with their mobile faces they seemed to hold secret converse with you and the fruits seemed to approach as though bending to be plucked.

Animals are not humans and are not inanimate objects. Presently, the law has only two clearly separated categories: property or juristic persons.

Our purpose is to shift the nature of the relationship between the owner and the animal from that which is like the ownership of a rock to that which is more like, but not identical to, the custodial relationship of the human parent and the human child.

3 percent of mammals are monogamous.  Play teaches animals to handle surprises

Five different brain areas evaluate melody, rhythm, meter, tonality and timbre.  Music was the first human language and still is the language of animals and birds.  Music predates humanity by 160 million years.  The introduction of birdsong brain nodules to the appropriate human brain sites has resulted in aphasia, also, temporal lobe phenomena like omnipresent sublimity, hyper-musicality leading to hyperventilation (whistling or singing)

Human cords were already capable of purring, and it needed only the insertion of feline amygdalan and hippocampal and hypothalamic cells…

The space project accelerated as it was becoming clear the earth was in for a terrible time because of the climate change and the general despoliation of the biosphere.  Defenders of the space project always emphasised its humanitarian and environmental value, the ways in which the resources available in the solar system might help Earth limp through its stupendous overshoot.  Inhabiting the other bodies of the solar system could be said to conform to a Leopoldian land ethic: “What’s good is what’s good for the land,”  because it was going to take stuff from space to save Earth.

The first settlements were on Luna, Mars and the asteroids

The beautiful terraria in their thousands, jewel-filled geodes, spinning like tops, hopped out of pandora’s box, never to be recollected

Most of them accepted namelessness with the perfect indifference with which they had so long accepted and ignored their names

Among the domestic animals, few horses had cared what anybody called them since the failure of Dean Swift’s attempt to name them from their own vocabulary.   Cattle, sheep, swine, asses, mules, and goats along with chickens, geese and turkeys all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people to whom - as they put it- they belonged.

A couple of problems did come up with pets.  The cats of course, steadfastly denied ever having had any name other than those self-given, unspoken, ineffably personal names.  It was with the dogs, and some parrots, lovebirds, ravens, and mynahs, that the trouble arose.  These verbally talented individuals insisted that their names were important to them, and flatly refused to part with them.  But as soon as they understood that the issue was precisely one of individual choice, and that anybody who wanted to be called Rover, or Froufrou, or Polly, or even Birdie in the personal sense was perfectly free to do so, and not one of then had the least objection to parting with the lowercase generic appellations “poodle,” “parrot,” “dog,” or “bird,” and all the Linnaean qualifiers that had trailed along behind them for two hundred years like tin cans tied to a tail.