(Source: 16-bars)

Elephants have been known to die of broken hearts if a mate dies. They refuse to eat and will lay down, shedding tears until they starve to death. They refuse all human help.

Scientists are beginning to believe that animals do have emotions and that their feelings may be more intense and unfiltered than our own. Emotion rises from the old brain, the limbic system, which birds and reptiles as well as dogs, humans, and other mammals share. Humans have additional brain structures and symbolic language to process our feelings and a complex array of psychological defense mechanisms that allay or soften the impact of our emotions. We repress, deny, subjugate, dissociate, and use all kinds of conscious and unconscious machinations to separate ourselves from our feelings, but animals have no such recourse, so their emotions are likely to be raw and strong. In fact, this may be one of the reasons we find them so attractive: they wear their hearts on their sleeves, so to speak. People seem to deny the existence of animal emotions so that they can continue to justify inhumane treatment and exploitation and avoid the fact that our actions have a deep emotional impact on our fellow beings.

puzzl3peace:

the s is on a mission 

(Source: kimberlykristenb)

wespeakfortheearth:

archiemcphee:

Meet Motala, a 50 year old elephant from Thailand who lost her front left leg in 1999 after stepping on a land mine left over from ongoing conflicts along the Thai-Myanmar border. When the accident occurred Motala was a working elephant who moved trees for a living. She was simply foraging for food in the forest when she stepped on the mine.

Although her owners tried to save poor Motala’s leg, the limb was so badly damaged that it eventually had to be amputated below the knee. It wasn’t until 2006 that she was able to receive her first artificial leg. It was only a temporary solution, but she successfully learned to walk on it. In 2009 Motala received her first permanent prosthesis, made for her at the Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE) elephant hospital in the Mae Yao National Reserve in Thailand. Because prosthetic legs must be changed according to weight, Motala has been given other legs accordingly and received a new one last year, her third.

A documentary entitled The Eyes of Thailand shows the amazing moment when Motala took her first few steps on her first prosthetic leg. Check out incredibly moving video of that awesome moment here.

For more information on this topic check out the documentary The Eyes of Thailand. (watch a trailer here)

[via The Huffington Post and enpundit]

“She was simply foraging for food in the forest when she stepped on the mine.” okay just break my heart while we’re at it.

(Source: underthew4ves)