Homo Erectus
Bed bug
House dust mite
Firefly
Coral reef
Silkworm
Earthworm
Venus Flytrap
Camel
House-fly
House-cat
House-dog
Chicken
Cow
Horse
Pig
Homo Erectus (400,000 BC)
I was born the first human to walk on two feet so that I could look up at the stars and wonder about them. When ever I got an erection, it was most noticeable and people wondered about me. They called me homo erectus as a joke. I wandered from Africa and spread out as far as England, India, China and Java. I had my two hands with flexible thumbs free to make and use tools that made my life easier giving me some time to do nothing but think and evolve.
I had very developed vocal chords and a mouth and tongue so flexible that I was able to talk and share my thoughts. I was able to sing. Singing brought us closer together and taught us to cooperate, if you wanted to sound good.
Here is some music while you read....
We worked together cooperating to shape stone and wood to make some very useful things. One of the most useful things we made was rafts that we used to travel over oceans.
We not only tamed and controlled fire but could create it. Fire allowed us to cook and obtain warmth and protection. We saw that fire made our meats and plants easier to eat by softening them and it gave them a taste that was more delicious to enjoy. Cooking allowed our food to be more efficiently absorbed and made our brain grow exponentially. Making fire also allowed us to be active in the dark and colder hours of the night, and provided protection from predators and insects. We put everything we had into fire - meat, plants and even rocks. It was as if the smoke from certain plants and mushrooms expanded our minds and made them more curious for exploring our world. Our brains became so large that it was very painful to be born, and even more painful to give birth.
We fished, hunted and gathered plants in small groups consisting of several families. We helped each other and cared for our sick and weak companions and protected them from invading enemies so that we had a long life.
I was killed by my wife as I was hiding under the bed while she was making love to her secret lover. They both claimed that they thought I was a thief and they got away with my murder.
Bed bug
In my life before being a bed bug, I was killed by my wife as I was hiding under the bed while she was making love to her secret lover. They both claimed that they thought I was a thief and they got away with my murder. I did not wait long to reincarnate into one of the bed bugs in their bed so that I could revenge my murder. The very first place I went to as soon as I could jump around was his penis. I bit it so many times and so hard that it didn't stop itching and made him suffer greatly. Next I did the same to my cheating wife's vagina and made her suffer just as much. Then I started farting as much as I could. They both accused each other of silent stinky farts and giving each other a sexually transmitted disease.
I was an insect, having 6 legs and an antenna. I fed exclusively on blood. I was mainly active at night, but was not exclusively nocturnal. A number of adverse health effects resulted from my bites, including skin rashes and allergic symptoms. I have been known as a human parasite for thousands of years.
As an adult, I grew to be 4mm long and 2mm wide. When crushed, I emitted a disagreeable odor, just like if I farted. How long I lived depended on how well I ate. Under certain cool conditions I was able to live for up to a year without feeding. Under typically warm conditions I tried to feed every week and was able to survive for about 5 months without food.
Females laid 3-4 eggs each day continually. Just after I hatched from my egg, I was able to survive only for a few weeks without taking a blood meal. I had small teeth and by alternately moving them back and forth, I could cut a path through tissue to reach an appropriately sized blood vessel. Pressure from the blood vessel itself filled me with blood in 3-5 minutes. I usually fed on my hosts without being noticed.
Being in bed all the time, I sometimes got so horney that I mounted any freshly fed bed bug I found, regardless if they were females or males. Males however released alarm pheromones to repel other males who attempt to mate with them.
I was a male. When I finally found a female to mate with, I pierced her abdomen with my penis and ejaculated into her body. My injected sperm traveled via her blood to a sperm storage structure. Fertilization eventually took place at her ovaries.
As an adult, I lived 9 months. I got very old. One day I fell out of my bed onto the floor. I managed to evade many ants and spiders but I could not evade a cockroach that suddenly appeared and ate me.
House dust mite
I chose my next life as a very much smaller creature. I was too small to be seen and heard, being only 0.4mm long and 0.2mm wide. I became a house dust mite in the very same room where I lived my previous life as a bed bug – my wife's bed room when I was a human and before she killed me. Like spiders, I had 8 legs and no antenna. In my new life as a dust mite, I no longer had to have blood. I fed on any organic material such as flakes of shredded human skin. Because my x-wife was very horny, there was plenty of that in my bed and I was able to flourish. I had no stomach but only sacs or pouches. My favorite foods were those that had been already partially decomposed by fungi. I gave my wife and her lover asthma and other allergic symptoms. My gut contained potent digestive enzymes that persisted in my shit that made both of them wheeze and made me laugh.
I was able to survive in all climates, but I thrived in the indoor environment provided by homes, specifically in bedrooms and kitchens. My favorite places to live were in mattresses, bedding and pillows. We lived anywhere where there was moisture from body contact. Polyester fiber pillows that dried out slowly contained 3 times more of us than feather pillows that dried out faster. There were 100–500 of us in every gram of dust. Each week I produced about 200 fecal particles and even more partially digested enzyme-covered dust particles. The accumulated non-living particulate organic material from shredded human skin, dead dust mites, or the shit that they left behind added significantly to the weight of covers and pillows.
Being in bed all the time, I was a very good lover. Whenever I found a female dust mite, I attached to her anus with my anal suckers so that we faced in opposite directions. I inserted my penis into her vagina and ejaculated my sperm. Sometime I made love for up to 48 hours not letting go despite being dragged by the ladies as if the were trying to get away from me. I just assumed that they just wanted more sex. After mating, the adult females laid their eggs one by one at a rate of 1-3 per day.
I lived only 2-3 weeks, but my sisters could live 2-3 months.
Firefly
We were winged beetles who attracted mates by lighting up and glowing. We produced cold light by a chemical reaction. The enzyme luciferase acted on the compound luciferin in the presence of magnesium ions, ATP, and oxygen to produce light. This was the opposite reaction to photosynthesis where light produced ATP in the presence of phosphor ions and oxygen. We were not the only ones who were able to light up. Many marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as some fungi, also had this extraordinary talent. We lived in temperate and tropical environments, and liked marshes and wet wooded areas where our larvae had abundant sources of food. These larvae emitted light and were often called "glowworms".
We had a variety of ways to communicate with mates in courtships: from steady glows to flashing and many patterns in between. While the males flashed their lights in search of females, the females flashed their light to answer the males.
A few days after mating, the females laid their fertilized eggs on or just below the surface of the ground. The eggs hatched one month later and the larvae fed until the end of the summer. In winter we hibernated; some of us for several years. We burrowed underground or found places on or under the bark of trees and slept.
The larvae usually lived for approximately one year, from mating season to mating season, before becoming adults and giving birth to the next generation. Adults lived only long enough to mate and lay eggs.
Some of us mimicked the mating flashes of other "lightning bugs" for the sole purpose of hunting them to eat them. Target males were attracted to what they thought was a suitable mate just to be captured and eaten. Some tropical fireflies were like a choir and synchronized their flashes among large groups.
Coral reef (10,000 BC)
I was born as a polyp and formed part of an underwater structure thousands of km long called a coral reef. We were colonies of tiny cylindrical shaped animals called "polyps" clustered together in sunny shallow, tropical, nutrient poor waters. The water we lived in was unusually clear because it was deficient in nutrients and drifting plankton. We secreted hard calcium carbonate exoskeletons which supported and protected our bodies.
Our large colony was like a rain-forest in the sea, or like an oases in the desert. Coral reefs formed some of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. They occupied less than 0.1% of the world's ocean surface, yet they provided a home for 25% of all marine species, including fish, mollusks, worms, crustaceans, and sponges. What a paradox we were. We were among the richest and most diverse ecosystems on earth, yet we flourish in waters that provide hardly any nutrients.
Most coral reefs were formed after the last glacial period when melting ice caused the sea level to rise and flood the continental shelves 10,000 years ago. As communities established themselves on the shelves, the reefs grew at the same rate, pacing rising sea levels. Reefs that rose too slowly became drowned reefs, covered by so much water that there was insufficient light. Healthy tropical coral reefs grew horizontally as fast as 1-3cm per year, and spread vertically anywhere from 1-25cm per year. We couldn't grow above water or below 150m where it was too dark. We were very sensitive to any changes to our environment. For 3000 years, our colony prospered. Then the oceans became too polluted and too warm for us polyps to live and coral reefs all over the world died. So did the 25% of the marine lives we supported. The algae celebrated, moved in, prospered and replace all of the dead sea creatures.
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Silkworm (2400 BC)
I was born a caterpillar that spun a silk cocoon and changed into a moth while inside. It took me about 14 days to hatch from an egg into a larva. After hatching from my egg, I took 1 month to grow large enough to spin my silk. I spent 3 weeks in my cocoon, then emerged as a moth to mate and lay eggs. I went through 4 stages of development, as do most insects: egg, larva, pupa and adult. As a larva I was the silkworm caterpillar. Since I grew so much from continuously eating mulberry leaves, the only thing I ate, I shed my skin 4 times while I was growing. As an adult, I was a silkworm moth.
As a caterpillar, my salivary glands produced raw silk which had extraordinary properties of strength and resilience. I used that to enclose myself in a cocoon and inside my cocoon I changed into a moth. In 3 days, I produced up to 900m of silk thread that was thinner than the width of the finest strand of human hair.
We lived in places from northern India to northern China, and in Korea and Japan. 600 years before I was born, men accidentally discovered that a cocoon dropped in boiling water unraveled very easily. They domesticated me and wove my thin long strands of silk thread into the finest of fabrics fit for kings to wear.
4400 years later, silkworms no longer appeared naturally in the wild, being totally dependent on humans for their reproduction. When man discovered electric fields to play with and they exposed silkworms to those fields, the silkworms were suddenly able to spin a silk thread so strong as to be bullet-proof. By breeding silkworms to spin more and more silk, cocoon sizes and growth rates greatly increased. Silkworms eventually lost the ability to fly and to fear potential predators. They became entirely dependent upon humans for survival. Silkworms became one of the world's most genetically modified animals and their silk production capacity increased by nearly tenfold.
Just after emerging from my cocoon, before I had the pleasure of mating, a pesky little bird saw me and ate me.
Earthworm
I was born a worm and lived in soil for 4-8 years. I fed on live and dead organic matter. My digestive system ran straight through my body. I breathed through my skin. My nervous system consisted of a central system of 2 brains above my mouth, one on either side, connected to a nerve chord running back to motor neurons and sensory cells in each segment. I had a concentration of chemo-receptors near my mouth. Circumferential and longitudinal muscles on the periphery of each segment enabled me to move. Similar sets of muscles lined my gut and moved the digesting food toward my anus. I lacked a skeleton but had fluid-filled chambers that functioned like a hydro-static skeleton. Some of us were as small as 10mm long and 1mm wide. Others were as big as 3m long and over 25mm wide. I could either shrivel or extend myself with fluid pressure till I was almost erect.
We moved underground by the means of waves of muscular contractions which alternately shortened and lengthened the body. The shortened part was anchored to the surrounding soil by tiny claw-like bristles. The whole burrowing process was aided by the secretion of lubricating mucus. We worked as biological "pistons" forcing air and water through the tunnels and helped transport nutrients so that plants could absorb them. We improved soil fertility by grazing on organic matter on the surface and mixing it with the mineral soil to help convert organic matter into rich humus.
We mated on the surface, most often at night. We were neither males nor females. We were both. All of us were blessed with both male and female sexual organs. As adults we developed a belt-like glandular swelling toward the front part. This was our reproductive system and it harbored the egg capsule. We had sacs that received and stored sperm from our mates during copulation. Belly to belly face to face, we exchange sperm with each other. After copulation, long after we separated, we secreted a cocoon which formed a ring around us. We backed out of the ring, and injected our own eggs and our mate's sperm into it. As we slipped out, the ends of the cocoon sealed and the embryo started to develop until it emerged as a small but fully formed earthworm. We lacked sex structures as newborns, developing them in about 60 to 90 days. We attained full size in about one year.
Once people evolved and started to garden and farm domesticated animals, we became the farmer's best friend. There were so many of us working under his fields that our combined weight beneath his field was greater than that the weight of the livestock grazing on it.
I lived to a ripe old age of 8 years.
Venus Flytrap
I was born a carnivorous plant. My common name referred to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, because I looked just like a vagina. We took around 4-5 years to reach maturity and lived for 20-30 years.
I caught my prey which were chiefly insects and spiders. I had hairs which could sense when an insect or spider crawled along the inner surface of my leaves. The trap closed if a different hair was touched within 20 seconds of the first strike or if one hair was touched twice in rapid succession. The requirement of redundant triggering in this mechanism served as a safeguard against a waste of energy in trapping objects with no nutritional value such as falling raindrops. When triggered, the lobes of the trap snapped shut in about one-tenth of a second. The edges of the lobes were fringed by stiff hair-like protrusions, which meshed together and prevented large prey from escaping. Holes in the mesh allowed small prey to escape, because the benefit that would be obtained from them would be less than the cost of digesting them. If the prey was too small and escaped, the trap was reopened within 12 hours. If the prey moved around in the trap, the trap tightened and digestion began more quickly.
I was very hardy. I lived in nitrogen and phosphorus poor environments such as bogs and wet savannas. I tolerated fire well, and depended on periodic burning to suppress my competitors. The nutritional poverty of the soil was the reason that I evolved such an elaborate trap: insects as prey provided me the nitrogen for protein formation that the soil did not. I tolerated mild winters. In fact, cold weather made me strong. If I did not go through a period of winter dormancy, I eventually weakened and died. And that is exactly what happened to me after a very mild winter.
Camel
I was born a domesticated camel with 1 hump. I provided milk, meat, and hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and I was a hard working animal. My ancestors started evolving 45 million years ago. They lived in the open woodlands of North America and were the size of a rabbit. 10 million years later, they were the size of a goat and were like llamas. 30 million years after that, camels like me had evolved. We were about 2m tall and were able to run at speeds up to 40km/h. We lived up to 50 years.
Males when in heat tried to attract females by letting hang a large inflatable sac from the side of their mouth. It looked like a swollen pink tongue. We mated by sitting on the ground, with the males mounting the females from behind.
We did not directly store water in our humps. Our humps were actually reservoirs of fatty tissue. By concentrating body fat in our humps, we minimized the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of our bodies. This helped us to survive in hot climates. When this tissue was metabolized, it yielded more than one gram of water for every gram of fat. We were able to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. We were able to withstand changes in body temperature and lack of water consumption that would have killed most other animals. Our temperature ranged from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increased to 40 °C by sunset, before we cooled off at night again. We rarely sweated, even when ambient temperatures reached 49 °C. When we exhaled, water vapor became trapped in our nostrils and was reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Our thick coats insulated us from the intense heat radiated from desert sand. During the summer our coat became lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. Our long legs kept us high above the hot ground, which could get as hot as 70 °C.
Our mouths had a thick leathery lining, allowing us to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that could close formed a barrier against sand. If sand got lodged in our eyes, we could dislodge it using our transparent third eyelid. Our gait and widened feet helped us move without sinking into the sand. Our kidneys and intestines were very efficient at reabsorbing water. Urine came out as thick syrup, and our feces were so dry, it was used as fuel by the Bedouins.
Most of us were domesticated.
House-fly
In my life before I was born a housefly, I was a beautiful lady who was a waitress in a restaurant near a horse stable. There were a lot of houseflies there. I died giving birth to my daughter Mary. The very first thing I did after I died was to reincarnate into one of the many flies in my daughter's bedroom. Most of my relatives, who were not away on other lives, decided to do the very same thing as we all wanted to visit Mary. Some souls reincarnated into houseflies as a form of competitive sport entertainment to see who could be the most annoying and live the longest.
Female flies only mate once and lay approximately 500 eggs in several batches of about 75 to 150 which hatch into larvae called maggots within a few days and live and feed on decaying organic material such as garbage or feces. They live one week as legless maggots developing to a point that they can crawl to a dry, cool place to transform into pupae and then eventually to emerge as fully grown adult flies. The adults live 2-4 weeks.
Small flies were not necessarily young flies, but were instead small because they didn't get sufficient food during the larval stage. Female adults were receptive for mating 36 hours after they emerged. Males mounted them from behind to inject their sperm. Copulation took a few seconds to a couple of minutes.
Like spiders and butterflies, we digested only liquid food. We had to liquefy solid morsels by regurgitating digestive juices onto them, just like the spiders had to do. We were able to walk on anything, even upside down. Our legs, like the legs of most insects, were tipped with a pair of very small claws that were able to hang on to nearly any protuberance on a landing surface. For walking on smooth surfaces like glass where there was nothing to claw and grab onto, we had a retractable floppy little sack like a deflated balloon between our claws. This sack was coated with hundreds of teeny oily hairs that were adhesive enough so that we could stick to anything no matter how smooth.
We exhibited 3 different mechanisms to determine the sex of our offspring. Either males determined the sex by donating or not donating their male chromosome, like with most insects and mammals; or our females determined the sex by donating or not donating their female chromosome, like with birds; or the sex was determined by the incubation temperature of the eggs, like with turtles and alligators.
We were active only in daytime, and rested at night in the corners of rooms and on ceilings. We survived the coldest winters by hibernation. Some of us were actually much cleverer than people gave us credit for.
Many souls reincarnated as houseflies, not to see their relatives and friends they left behind, but rather to witness first hand famous and infamous people. Others reincarnated into houseflies in teams as a sport. Points were given for being the most daring, surviving the longest and being the most frustrating to the people trying to swat you. Special merit was given whenever you made the people swat themselves.
Those of us who had reincarnated as flies in Mary's house and who were thus souls could not help ourselves but to continually buzz around Mary's cute little face and getting as close to her as we could, as long as there wasn't someone with a flyswatter nearby.
I was so concentrated at looking at Mary that I failed to notice the fly swatter coming and died a very quick death.
House-cat
We were descended from African wildcats at about 10,000 BC in the Middle East. We were the most popular house-pet in the world, and we lived everywhere people lived.
I was born in a family that valued my companionship and my ability to hunt mice. I had a very strong, flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp retractable claws, and teeth adapted to killing small prey. I could hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears; such as those made by mice and other small game. I could see in near darkness. Like most other mammals, I had poorer color vision and a better sense of smell than humans.
We had excellent night vision. We had excellent hearing and could detect an extremely broad range of frequencies; better than even dogs. This was important for hunting, since many species of rodents made ultrasonic calls. Our large movable ears both amplified sounds and helped us sense the direction from which a noise was coming. We had an acute sense of smell. We responded strongly to plants; especially catnip. We could detect that substance at less than one part per billion. We had relatively few taste buds compared to humans. We couldn't taste sweetness, but could taste bitter and acid quite well. We had dozens of movable whiskers over our body, especially our face to aid with navigation and sensation. These provided information on the width of gaps and on the location of objects in the dark, both by touching objects directly and by sensing air currents. We were known for our cleanliness, spending many hours licking our coats. We had an acute sense of balance and flexibility. During a fall from a high place, we twisted our body to right itself so that we always landed on our feet.
We presented our captured prey to our human owners to tell them that we not only adopted them into our social group but placed them at or near the top of our pecking order. We select food based on its temperature, smell and texture, strongly disliking chilled foods and responding most strongly to moist foods rich in protein. Despite being solitary hunters, we were social and we communicated using a variety of vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling and grunting as well as cat pheromones and types of cat-specific body language.
Meows were one of my favorite sounds that I used to signal a request. I growled or hissed when angered or felt threatened, as a warning. When the warning was not heeded, I used my paws to claw. Whenever I saw prey, I made chirping and chattering noises. When in heat, I let it be known by giving a loud cry. I purred when I was happy. But I also purred when I was sick and during tense, traumatic, or painful moments because it soothed me and made me feel better.
I communicated a variety of messages using body language. I arched my back when afraid. To show trust, and to say I wanted to play, I lay with my stomach and chest exposed. When I flattened my ears, I conveyed that I felt threatened, and was ready to attack. When I had my ears forward and kept still as a mouse and was very focused, I was showing that I was being defensive and in a very alert state. When I held my tail high, I showed that I was happy and confident and this is how I greeted my friends, whether humans, cats or dogs. When I was unhappy, I held my tail low. When I felt relaxed, I slowly swung my tail from side to side. When hunting or when irritated, I twitched the tips of my tail. Larger twitching indicated my displeasure. When I held my tail very low to the ground while in a crouch and moved it very quickly from side to side, watch out! That meant that I was nearing the point of biting or scratching. When I was scared or surprised, I puffed up my tail, and made the hair along my back stand straight up and turned my body sideways to increase my apparent size. To express affection to a person, I bumped them with the front part of my head. I licked not only for grooming and cleaning. I licked to bond and show that I liked whoever I licked and to show them care and affection.
When I kneaded something with my paw, I showed my contentment. When I kneaded someone with my paw, I showed my affection. I did this when in pain as a method of comforting myself. It reminded me of the time I did this to stimulate my mother's breasts to release milk during nursing. My pawing and kneading was also an expression of my needing something or someone. Perhaps my water bowl was empty, or I was hungry or I had an unappealing litter box, or I needed attention from my caregiver. I rubbed up against furniture or doorways to mark the items as "mine". When I rubbed people, I was marking them with my scent, claiming them as "my friends", just like when people hugged and shook hands.
I felt misunderstood and was frustrated by the foolish family I lived with, especially their cruel children who continually taunted me with bizarre little dangling objects. Whenever I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet hoping to strike fear into their hearts, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I was. Whenever I weaved around their feet hoping to trip them as they were walking or going down the stairs, they thought I was just being cute.
I died at an old age of 20 years. I was walking around checking out my neighborhood minding my own business when all of a sudden the neighbor's huge dog started chasing me. As I was running across the street to get away from the beast, a pickup truck ran over me.
House-dog
I was born in a family that valued my loyalty and my ability to keep strangers away from their house. We were the first animals to be domesticated and we were kept for working and hunting. We performed many roles for people, such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, and guarding. We were kept for companionship and, more recently, for guiding blind people. Most of us were artificially selected for our particular shape, size, fur and talents. Through this selective breeding, we developed into hundreds of different breeds, and we had more variation than any other land mammal. As fully grown adults we were as small as 15cm high and as big as 75cm high. Our color varied from white through grays to black, and browns from light tan to dark red in a wide variation of patterns. Our coats could be short or long, coarse-haired or wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth.
Human interaction played a significant role in shaping us. 12,000 years ago, emigrants from Siberia crossed the Bering Strait with us and we pulled their sleighs. We were an important part of life for the native people in North America, and we were their only domesticated animal. They used us as pack animals even after horses were tamed to do this work. Our cohabitation with humans greatly improved their chances of survival, and our domestication was a key factor that led to their success. Many of us felt lucky to have been accepted and integrated into the family of our care givers and to have moved in from our dog houses in their back yard into their beds. We were assigned many tasks as family members, from helping with the washing-up by licking the plates, to taking our people out to walk. As professionals, we herded their livestock, hunted their game, guarded their homes, and guided their blind.
Our visual system evolved for proficient hunting. While we did not see stationary objects very clearly, our visual discrimination for moving objects was very high. We could detect sounds far beyond the upper limit of the human auditory spectrum and rapidly pinpoint the exact location of a sound. We could tilt, rotate, rise, or lower our ears and heard sounds from distances 4 times further away than humans could. Our sense of smell was a 100 million times more sensitive than that of humans. We used certain movements of our bodies and body parts and different vocalizations to express our emotions. We used movements of the ears, eyes, mouth, nose, head, tail and entire body, as well as barks, growls, whines and whimpers, and howls.
Our tail communicated our emotional state. To signal dominance, we stood stiff legged and tall with our ears erect and forward and held our tail vertically and we slightly raised the hairs on the back of our neck. To show fear, we drew back our lips and ears and lowered our body with our tail low or completely tucked between our legs. To display submission, our back was partially arched down and we rolled on our back, vulnerably exposing our underside and throat. When our tail was held high, it showed that we were alert and aware. If the fur on our tail was also bristled, we were saying that were ready to defend ourselves or our pups. Small, slow wags of our tail said we were questioning things around our environment and we were not sure what to do or how to react. Large, fast wags of our tail were a sign that we were very excited and energetic. When we moved our tail side to side, it showed that we were nervous. When it spun like a propeller, it showed we were very happy. We exhibit a left-right asymmetry of our tail; one side for interacting with strangers and the other side for interacting with those we knew.
When we curled our lips back, this showed that we had a strong urge to bite. This was an unconscious reflex, designed to get the soft flesh of the lips away from the teeth before biting. We also bared our teeth as a smile when we wagged our tail to show that we wanted to be friends. Erect ears facing forward meant we were very attentive. Expressions with our mouth provided information about our mood. When we wanted to be left alone, we yawned. When we were happy or wanted to play, we panted with lips relaxed and gave a look that looked like we were smiling. To indicate aggression we snarled and exposed our teeth. We liked to lick to indicate friendliness. We licked for social bonding and intimacy and not only for salt from sweat.
While we didn't have actual eyebrows, we did have a distinctive ridge above our eyes that we moved in the same way that people did. Raised eyebrows suggested interest, lowered brows suggested uncertainty or mild anger, and one eyebrow up suggested bewilderment. Eyes narrowed to slits indicated affection for the person or animal we were looking at. Leaning our head to the right or to the left indicated either curiosity or a sign of recognition to a familiar word we knew. When we held our head high with our neck craning forward, we were showing our interest and concentration. When we bowed our head, we were asking for physical affection.
We barked for many reasons and we barked a lot. We barked when we perceived someone we didn't know approach our living space. We barked when we heard unfamiliar or unidentified noises. We barked when we saw something we didn't expect. We barked when we were lonely, afraid, suspicious, stressed, or pleased. When we wanted to play, our barks were less annoying than normal. They were short and sharp. When our bark was high pitched and repetitive, we were either distressed or stressed. It tended to get higher in pitch as we became more and more upset. When we were left home alone, we let the neighbors know. Growls expressed aggression. When growls started off with a very low tone and progressively got higher, it meant frustration. Howling provided long-range communication with other dogs or owners. We whined when we wanted something such as food, or to go outside, or to go to the bathroom, or to be let off the leash, or to be allowed to greet another dog or a person, or just for attention. We add a bark at the end of a whine, in a whine-bark-whine-bark pattern when we were insistent on getting what we wanted; just like the children of our owners did.
We whimpered or yelped often lowering our tail between our legs when we were in pain or distress or physically abused or neglected by people. Whimpers, accompanied by licking, jumping, and barking, also indicated excitement when we were lonely and we were suddenly met with affection. Like when we were left alone all day and our owner returned late at night. We were just saying "how could you do such a thing to us, leaving us alone for so long!"
I died at an old age of 20 years when I saw a chicken cross the road. I got hit by a truck as I was running after her to ask her why she was crossing the road. Unfortunately I was never able to find out.
Chicken
I was born an egg laying chicken on a farm. There were 10 of us ladies with one big cock to keep us happy and to make sure we kept laying eggs. People called us ladies "hens" and preferred to call our cock "rooster" to avoid any misunderstanding and embarrassment. We were generally known as "fowl". There were more than 24 billion of us chickens in the world, more than any other species of bird. That was because people liked eggs and they also liked Kentucky Fried Chicken.
We were domesticated from fowl of Indian origin around 2500 BC for the purpose of cockfighting in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Very little attention was given to egg or meat production. Fowl had been known in Egypt since 1500 BC and referred to as "birds that give birth every day". We were imported to Greece by 600 BC.
We were social birds. We had a communal approach to the incubation of our eggs and the raising up of our chicks. Individuals in a flock dominated others, establishing a "pecking order", with the dominant individuals having priority for food access and nesting locations. Having individuals removed from our flock caused a temporary disruption to our social order until a new pecking order was established. When individuals, especially younger ones, were added to our flock, fighting resulted.
Whenever our rooster found food, he called us to eat first. He did this by clucking in a high pitch as well as picking up and dropping the food. Mother hens called their chicks and encouraged them to eat. Hens clucked loudly after laying an egg, and also clucked to call their chicks. We also gave a low "warning call" whenever we saw a predator approaching. We were not capable of long distance flight, although lighter ladies could fly for short distances, such as over fences or on trees to flee perceived danger. Our rooster liked to brag to other roosters in other territories about his many ladies. He did this right after waking up by repeatedly crowing a loud and sometimes shrill call that woke up everyone else in the neighborhood.
To initiate courting, some roosters danced in a circle around or near one of the ladies, often lowering his wing which was closest to the hen. The dance turned the hens on and when they responded to his "call", the rooster mounted them and proceeded with his job of mating. Hens tried to lay their eggs in nests already containing eggs and sometimes moved eggs from neighboring nests into their own. The result of this behavior was that a flock eventually used only a few preferred locations, rather than having different nests for every hen. Individual hens preferred to be either solitary or gregarious nesters. Our farmer, farmer Brown, used fake eggs made from plastic, stone, or golf balls to encourage us to lay our eggs in a particular location.
Being a chicken at farmer Brown was great, especial with our rooster. But not all chickens had it as good as us. You wouldn't ever want to be born in a factory farm. Personally I would be too chicken to ever try that. Some egg laying hens bred at factory farms produced over 300 eggs per year. After 1 year of laying, their ability to lay eggs declined to the point of being nonviable. They were then slaughtered and used in processed foods for fast food outlets such as KFC, or sold as "soup hens". Hens from factory farms were often sick, lost a significant amount of their feathers, and their life expectancy was reduced from 6 years to a mere 2 years. Chickens farmed for meat were called "broiler chickens" and had a very short life, reaching their slaughter size in 6 weeks.
Many people, mostly philosophers, struggled with the age old question of what came first, "the chicken or the egg?" One day millions of years before there were any chickens, a dinosaur laid an egg with so many mutations that when it hatched and grew and matured and mated and lay an egg, the egg had even more mutations. When that egg hatched and grew and matured and mated and lay an egg, the egg had even much more mutations that hatched and grew and matured and mated and lay an egg with even much much more mutation that hatched and grew into a hen. The hen mated and matured and mated and laid an egg with even more mutations that hatched and grew into a rooster. The rooster mated with the hen that lay eggs that didn't have any mutations. From then on hens and roosters were able to mate and produce mutation free eggs that always hatched to produce hens and roosters.
Cow
It was so nice living at farmer Brown, that in my next life I returned right away. This time I chose to be born as a cow. I even had a name this time. I was called "Daisy". We were collectively called cattle. We were raised as livestock for meat called "beef" or "veal" when it came from our calves who were dying to go to McDonalds. When we were bred and raised to produce a lot of milk, we were called "dairy cows".
We were very useful for man, providing him with leather hide for his shoes. When we were bred and raised to be used or abused as work animals to pull carts and to plow fields, we were called "oxen". In India where they didn't have so many trees, they burned our shit for their fires to cook their food and warm their homes. They also used our urine as medicine. We were sacred in India. Cows were members of the sub-family 'Bovinae' of the family 'Bovidae'. This family also included gazelles, buffalo, bison, antelopes, sheep and goats. We evolved from as few as 80 wild ancestors domesticated in southeast Turkey about 10,500 years ago. Now we are as many as 1.3 billion cattle.
We spent up to 6 hours a day eating and over 8 hours a day chewing. We each drank nearly 200 liters of water a day and could produce up to 50 liters of milk a day. We were considered one of the oldest forms of wealth. We were sexually mature when we were 2 years old. We had one bull for every 30 of us cows. We never forgot our calves and continued to lick them when they were fully grown, just like we did when they were young.
The best place to be a cow was in Switzerland because cowherds were sent to high alpine meadows to graze during the summer months. The only downside was that we had to wear very big, heavy and loud bells so that we wouldn't stray too far from the herd and so that we could be found if we did. The other bad part was going back home and having to be decorated with floral wreaths. On our way back home in the fall, we had to wear flower bouquet on our heads and the other cows back home made fun of us.
We could live to be 25 when people let us.
Horse
I was born a stud. I was in my mom's womb with my twin for almost a year. It was rare to give birth to twins. My twin and I were able to stand and run shortly after we were born. We drank our mom's milk for a half a year. One year later I was sexually mature but still growing. 4 years after that I was considered a fully grown adult.
We evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today. We were domesticated to be used in warfare at around 4000 BC in central Asia and a thousand year later we lived everywhere where man lived. We were very strong and very fast. We used 5 basic gaits for moving. With our 4-beat walk, we averaged over 6km/h. With our 2-beat trot or jog we did 20km/h. The canter or lope, a 3-beat gait, increased our speed to 25km/h and with our gallop we averaged 50km/h. We could sprint for very short distances nearly 90km/h. We crossbred with other members of our genus forming hybrids, but the hybrids were sterile and not able to reproduce. The most common hybrid was the mule, a cross between a male donkey and a mare.
Our senses were superior to those of a human. Our sense of smell, while much better than that of humans, was not our strongest asset. We relied to a greater extent on vision. We had the largest eyes of any land mammal and had excellent day and night vision, but we were color blind and we saw colors like dogs did where reds and related colors appeared as shades of green. Our hearing was good and our ears could rotate up to 180°, allowing us to listen to sounds behind us without having to move our head. We had a great sense of balance, due partly to our ability to feel our footing. Our hoof was like the human fingernail and we were in effect always walking on our tiptoes. Our sense of touch was well developed. The most sensitive areas were around our eyes, ears, and nose. We were so sensitive to touch that we could sense contact as subtle as an insect landing anywhere on our body. We had an advanced sense of taste, which made us picky eaters picking out only what we liked most to eat. Our lips were able to grasp and easily sort even the smallest grains.
We were herd animals, with a clear hierarchy of rank, led by a dominant individual, usually a female. We were also social creatures able to form companionship attachments to our own species and to other animals, including humans. We communicated in various ways, including vocalizations such as nickering or whinnying, mutual grooming, and body language. Many of us became difficult to manage when isolated, but with training, we learned to accept a human as a companion, and to be comfortable away from other horses. We were able to sleep both standing up and lying down but in order to dream, we had to sleep lying down. We spent 5-15 hours a day in standing rest, and from a few minutes to several hours lying down. Our total sleep time in a day ranged from several minutes to a couple of hours, mostly in short intervals of about 15 minutes each.
By the time I was born, we were no longer used for warfare, but rather for leisure activities, sports, and working purposes. The hair on our tails made excellent violin bows and our hoofs made excellent glues. Many of us were selectively bred for riding and for our speed, agility, alertness and endurance; natural qualities that extend from our wild ancestors. People of all ages with physical and mental disabilities obtained beneficial results from association with us. Therapeutic riding was used to mentally and physically stimulate disabled persons and help them improve their lives through improved balance and coordination, increased self-confidence, and a greater feeling of freedom and independence. We provided psychological benefits to people whether they actually rode us or not. We assisted people with mental illnesses, including anxiety, mood, and psychotic disorders and behavioral difficulties.
I died at the ripe old age of 30.
Pig
I was born a highly social and intelligent domesticated pig, commonly called a swine. We were ancestors of the common Eurasian wild boar, native to the Eurasian and African continents which were domesticated by various cultures 15,000 years ago. As omnivores, we consumed both plants and animals. In fact we could even consume garbage. All that eating made us "as lazy and fat as a pig". Because of that, we were raised commercially for meats called pork, hams, and bacon. We could harbor a range of parasites, worms and diseases that were transmitted to humans. For luck Jews and Muslims had dietary laws making us an "unclean" meat and declared us taboo for eating. Unfortunately our hides made excellent leather and our bristly hairs made high quality brushes.
Our behavior was more like that of dogs or humans, than like that of cattle or sheep. We grouped only for maintaining physical contact for warmth. We liked to feed continuously for many hours and then sleep for many hours. We were able to survive well by scavenging on the same types of foods that humans and dogs lived on. We had a well-developed sense of smell and could be trained to locate underground truffles, the hard to find and very expensive mushrooms. Our sense of hearing was also well developed and we used auditory stimuli extensively to communicate.
Females built nests in which to give birth. They dug a depression about the size of their body and collected twigs, grasses and leaves, which they carried in their mouth building them into a mound. They then lay down in it and gave birth to up to 8 piglets. We nursed our piglets every 50–60 minutes. Dominance hierarchies were formed at a very early age. The piglets competed for position at the udder, establishing a tit order. The tits towards the front produced a greater quantity of milk than the tits at the back. It was advantageous to the entire litter to have the front tits occupied by healthy piglets as a strong flow of milk from the front ensured a good flow of milk to the back. Then each piglet massaged around its respective tit with its snout, during which time the mom grunted grunts of encouragement at slow, regular intervals. Each series of grunts varied in frequency, tone and magnitude, indicating the stages of nursing to the piglets. When mom was out of milk, her grunting stopped and the piglets darted from tit to tit to suck out the very last drops. Our piglets, before they were fattened, were so cute and intelligent that some people adopted them as house pets. They were trained to perform numerous tasks and tricks and some of us ended up famous working in circuses.
Domesticated pigs that become wild grow tusks and a different coat of hair just like grasshoppers when they turn into locus. Genes can be turned on by the changes in the environment that causes animals to adapt and change their bodies and behavior.
I was allowed to die a natural death of old age. As I was a domesticated pig, I lived to a ripe old age of 20 years, more than twice as long as a wild pig.
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