An article in the June 2024 Sierra magazine talked about how dragonflies "hunt the insects humans hate—mosquitoes and gnats, deerflies and wasps—and their 95 percent success rate makes them nature’s most lethal predators….They can fly backward and sideways, dip up and down with ease, hover in place, and reach speeds up to 30 miles per hour. With their compound eyes, odonates process 200 images per second—over three times more than humans do—which produces a slow-motion effect that allows them to hyperfocus on prey.”
I marveled at this description of dragonfly abilities. It intrigued me enough that I decided to find out more from the masters themselves. Read More…
Whenever high-profile animals are featured in the media as stranded or injured, I get requests to communicate with and help them. A two-year-old orca, which locals named “Little Brave Hunter” translated from the Ehattesaht First Nation language, became stranded in a lagoon along the northwest reaches of Vancouver Island when traveling with her mother. Read More…
I met Dawn Baumann Brunke just before the turn of the century. (Whoa, that makes it sound like a very long time ago!) She was editor of Alaska Wellness magazine and interviewed me for her book, Animal Voices, https://www.animalvoices.net/ published in 2002. Here’s an excerpt from our interview for the chapter “When All the World is Wise.” Read More…
The feline members of our families bring a professional craftsmanship to the art of premeditated slumber. Even a catnap can make a hard windowsill look like the coziest spot in the house. A cat’s truest, deepest sleep is ardent, purposeful, intense.
Just exactly where are these sleep aficionados going when they close their eyes? What is it they’re doing in their dreams?
This message sent to me by Laura Pyke about a zoo lion rescued during war is a beautiful example of the wisdom that animals gracefully share with humankind.
Would you share with us how America's Wild Horses are faring with the massive roundups by the Bureau of Land Management over the last year(s)? In 2021, I read over 18,000 have been unceremoniously and somewhat carelessly rounded up and shipped to government holding pens. Over 100 horses have been killed in the process. Given our partnership with these creatures over millennia, it seems a great tragedy. Are they willing to share what, if anything, we can do to support them, outside of advocating for their protection or adoption?
Many people in the Western world consider themselves as separate from the rest of Nature, human spectators alienated from the whole web of life. They often do not recognize our interdependence with all beings on Earth and that animals, plants, minerals, and all the natural elements have much to teach us about balance and integration of spirit with form.
The enormous physical size of whales echoes the enormity of their consciousness and why they are here on Earth.
Researchers have written about whales’ important physical role in maintaining the balance of life and fertility of oceanic animals and plants. They also found that whales are responsible for extracting hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon from the atmosphere to provide cleaner and healthier air for life on the whole planet.
Being in the presence of whales and communicating with them reveals not only their physical role in the web of life but their vast spiritual awareness and benevolence.
When I post an article or video on Facebook about an animal helping to rescue or heal others of its own kind or other species, including human, I have seen comments like these:
Oh, animals are such angels! If only humans could be like them, the world would be a better place.
I wish I could live in the world surrounded by animals. It would be so much more peaceful.
Even the wildest non-human animal does not premeditate harm or hate or act cruelly towards its own or other species as many human animals do.
Animals are full of unconditional love, unlike humans. Only humans destroy each other and everything in the natural world around them.
Animals' consciousness is clear of obstructive, conflicting dynamics. Animals live in their authenticity almost all the time.
These comments seem to propose that humans are malign creatures and animals are saints.
We just came home to find our cat had captured a chipmunk and was torturing her until I got hold of her and returned her outside. Can you please tell us why cats appear to want the pain of capturing and eating a fellow animal to linger? Why do they "play" with the creature? It looks so cruel to us. How does the cat consciousness explain this?
I just read your blog on viruses. It sounds good but I ask why so many deaths? Why so much pain and panic in health systems and patients and their families? The suffering ones, for example the doctors and nurses, are not personally responsible, that they should be purged. I got that viruses need to do what they are doing now to balance the planet and life. All countries seem to be seeing this as a war against the viruses, who are life as we are life. Is there any way we can work with them? I am blessed to be living on a 20 hectare reforestation project so can be outside immersed in nature every day. Can I do more to help? How can we use our vision and our attitudes to help work together and learn from the experience with the viruses for the good of life?
I have been asked if animals are aware of world events that concern humans. People often assume that animals are only concerned with what’s around them related to their interests.
Animals are unique individuals with their own life journeys and purposes to fulfill. They range widely in spiritual awareness and orientation to helping others, just as humans do.
Domestic animals often have purposes to assist the people they live with or meet. Wild or domestic animals can have purposes that benefit not only themselves and their own species, but also humans and all life on Earth. The benefits of animals’ work can be amplified for humans who are conscious of their own energetic connection with animals.
Horses enter the spotlight in our animal communication focus as a reader sent me this thoughtful question:
I am 17-year-old girl from Poland and I have recently been fascinated by Animal Communication. I also love horses and have ridden for 10 years. But now it is time in my life when I am wondering if maybe I should end riding, as it might be too cruel (even "natural horsemanship").
I wonder, what do horses think about being ridden and generally about humans? Do at least some of them like their work? And what would they like us to do to make them happier? Has any horse told you anything on this matter? I would be very grateful if you could write about it. It is really important for me...
Throughout my long history as an animal communicator, I found that many humans have had low expectations about animal intelligence and awareness. They often have no idea of the depth of animals’ thoughts and feelings that we find when we truly communicate with other species.
Almost five decades of animal communication education, highlighting who animals really are and what they can understand and communicate has influenced the depth of an array of media presentations and the evolution of scientific research about animals over the years. However, I still find that many people hold preconceptions that undervalue what animals reveal about themselves with direct telepathic communication.
I was catapulted to review this subject when I got this feedback from my recent blog in which a bull came forward to give his wise views on the subject of human cruelty.
A reader asks: I wonder how animals see suffering and that cruelty and lack of empathy typical to a large part of humankind. It is often unbearable to think of so many animals suffering all around the world. When I began to connect with animals to answer this question, a large black bull standing in a grassy field came into my awareness and offered himself as a representative for animalkind.
I was asked by a reader, “Do animals believe in God from birth and do they communicate with Him?”
The One in All When I first started to contemplate getting fresh answers to this question from animals, Ziggy, my black cat, was nearby. Asking him about his awareness of God, he answered with this spacious concept,
“The One in All. All That Is. All That We Are. I Am That. We Are That.”
I could feel his awareness of an open space of living essence in everything. To him, God is that which unites us all and is in us all that makes us alive and conscious. His awareness of God was not restricted to a personality or gender or an individual. He was aware of a nurturing force, an open-ended or infinite consciousness that permeated us and IS us all.
