Re: A little blackbird
Thank you for posting these two links Antibrown - I found them interesting. However, I do have problems accepting them being facts.
I think the link about the wolf is from a paranormal interest site, and the article refers to parapsychology, and how this may relate to animals, in this instance the wolf. Therefore, I do not think it can be taken as factual. The person struggling in the snow says he was, at times, unconscious for a while and drifting in and out of of sleep/conscious - brought on by exhaustion and extreme cold. The article says that he said the wolf "from his gaze conveyed the
fact that he was here to help - I would argue that this is a
fact it is what the man thought or felt. People have strange experiences when they are in extreme situations, particularly so when periods of unconsciousness are involved. A wolf may have been following him and when he fell been curious, and came close for a while, before moving on. I can accept that. Wolves throughout history have been much maligned, persecuted and exterminated by men. They are not the monsters that many believe them to be. There are shelves full of books on man and his relationship with the wolf. (A particularly good - non fiction - book is "Of Wolves and Men" by Barry Holstun Lopez. I can highly recommend it.
The link on the beluga whale is also very ineresting, but the comment I would make is that this animal was in an aquarium (a twenty foot pool) in a place called "Polar Land" in Hakin, NE China. I would think it something like the SeaWorld in California, where marine animals are exhibited and perform to an audience. The girl in the pool may have got into difficulty, and I accept that the whale helped her by getting her to the surface. Have you considered that the beluga may have been reacting to what it is trained to do (dolphins and Orca do perform and interact with humans in this way). The beluga may well have been conditioned by training to do something similar as part of a performance and reacted voluntarily when the girl was in difficulty as it would if it had been asked to do so by a trainer. The video depicts the fact that the beluga helped the girl, but we must remember to take account of the oher fact that it was in an aquarium and the animal was captive and an exhibit, more than likely trained as part of a spectacle and part of a human free-diving ineractive contest.
Like wolves and many animals there is a fine intelligence and sensitivity there (of that I am sure). Animals can and do interact with humans, particularly domesticated animals, but it is very easy to project our own emotions into an animal, thinking that they are feeling the same. We are then guilty of anthropomorphism and trying to make them into something they are not.
This has come a long way from the original post, and coming back to the blackbird, I am sorry it has not survived - but from Old Git's post, I would not have expected it to (with or without human help). Human intervention very often only prolongs the suffering and adds more stress to a bird's situation. Vets do say this about wild birds - there was a little raptor on the Wild Vet TV programme only this week (the Flamingo Land Vet). He said that with injured birds it is so difficult to help and very often intervention is so wrong. Death is the better option, rather than to be kept captive in a cage with an injury that will not repair enough to allow them to survive in the wild. Infections quickly set into bones, amputation is impractical and no wild bird should have to spend its life in captivity in a cage. They are not born for that. That is why I said that it is the Law of the Jungle - it is for wildlife.