Isabella Rossellini Quotes

Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.

You know, if you have a zoo you don't want the other creatures to see you. You want them to hang out and act properly and, you know, when the monkeys will come and ask for the bananas, they won't act like monkeys. If you want them to act on what their true nature is, you've got to leave them alone.

I have come to know Bugs so well that I no longer have to think about what he is doing in any situation.

Cats and dogs are a very good window into the natural world: a chance to see how another species lives and deals with its problems, what they like and what they don't like.

Early experiences convinced me that animals can and do have quite distinct personalities.

I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science.

I never thought I could learn much from a dog or cat. They sleep when we sleep. They eat when we eat. I'm into observing animals being as wild as they can be in a captive environment.

I'd been interested in animal behaviour as a teenager and had thought of studying it at one point.

With land-roaming animals, I've just read so much about the sophistication of their emotional lives and their intelligence and the way they process information that betrays a greater intelligence.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.

Hunters and trackers learn not only to understand intellectually a bunch of facts about the animal they follow, but to feel their way into the very being of the animal.

Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

Animals interest me more than anything else.

When we see animals doing remarkable things, how do we know if we're simply seeing tricks or signs of real intelligence? Are talented animals just obeying commands, or do they have some kind of deeper understanding? One of the biggest challenges for animal researchers is to come up with tests that can distinguish between the two.

You look at a herd of cattle and well, they all look the same... but they know. They all have an individual personality, and those personalities change from day to day. They can have their grumpy days and their happy days and their serene days. But it's unpredictable. You can't be off in outer space when you're dealing with animals.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction.

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them.

I miss the early days; I do. I was so lucky. I basically had it to myself, learning about these chimpanzees. Nobody knew anything about them. Discovering their different personalities, different life histories. I was lucky.

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

Scientists have shown that pigs are capable of playing simple video games, learning from each other, and even learning names.

When a herd of cattle see a strange object, they are not satisfied till each one has sniffed it; and the horse is cured of his fright at the robe, or the meal-bag, or other object, as soon as he can be induced to smell it. There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.