When Stingrays Jump for Joy

I get all philosophical...

Leaving the harbour, I was so excited. We’d waited all day for the weather to clear and had six days of nice sailing ahead of us (or so I thought).

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Just then, I saw a stingray leap from the water, flap its wing-like fins twice, and then belly-flop. I shouted for everyone to look but it was over in a flash and there was no repeat showing. It was close enough that my husband and Dad heard the sound of the splash.

While we only sailed for an hour before turning back that day, the stingray stayed on my mind. I’m happy to be here, exploring the amazing ecosystems and unique wildlife of these islands. While we’re fixing and prepping the boat, my eagerness for warmer weather and snorkelling adventures has my nose in the books.

It turns out that scientists have several hypotheses as to why stingrays (and other rays and mantas) like to jump. This includes,

• Courtship

• Escaping predators

• Cleaning off Parasites

• Curiosity (what’s up there/how far can they see ahead?)

• Giving birth (does it help get the wee ones out?)

But my favourite hypothesis is… for fun. For the sheer joy of it. Many of these hypotheses, including fun, also apply to other marine species that breach the surface, like many whales and dolphins. It’s often easier for people to consider that other mammals have similar emotional lives to us because they are a lot like us; not only do we all fall into the category of nursing our young and having warm blood, but we’ve observed family bonds, rituals, and clear preferences for food and play. However, science is expanding its understanding of the emotional and intellectual lives of more and more animals. It’s now well documented that crows can use tools, solve complex puzzles, and gather around to observe the death of one of their own—perhaps to try to understand what killed the crow so that the others can avoid it. Further, the internet is becoming flooded with what can only be interpreted as animals helping each other, even different species, out of empathy (recently on my feed: a polar bear saving a drowning bird (no, not to eat) and a mama elephant carrying a dehydrated lion cub to a watering hole, the lion mama walking calmly alongside).

I’ve been inspired by naturalist journals and scientific illustrations to play with my mixed media style and start including some labels or information about species here in the Canary Islands; Using my Spanish species identification book is also a great way to enjoy expanding my language skills!

Animals have long been understood to have emotional lives, wisdom, and even inter-species communication in cultures around the world. Science catching up reminds me a bit of when children are growing up and they learn empathy, and at some point, many have the epiphany that everyone around us is living a life just as vividly as we are; their internal life is like its own world, everything from a slightly different perspective. It’s as if a billion worlds exist on this planet, each in our own heads, and each overlapping and interacting to create the collective human experience.

Given the explosion of accepted knowledge about animal emotional intelligence, it just makes sense to me that stingrays jump for joy. Or that Orca whales have fads (like wearing salmon skin hats). Or that elephants mourn a death in the herd, or that sharks have distinct personalities and remember divers. It makes sense to me because it’s hard to imagine being alive and not feeling all the feels—joy, fear, curiosity, sadness, hope. And this is not the anthropomorphisation of animals; projecting our emotions and motivations onto them can lead to misunderstandings of animal behaviour. Rather, this is an attempt at understanding them more holistically.

The goal is not to evaluate how much like us they are, but rather to recognise that animals are complex, feeling beings. Their lives are meaningful to them and therefore, deserving of our empathy, respect, and curiosity.

It’s challenging to see things as they are instead of as we are. It requires a great deal of listening, watching, and being present. Sometimes we can’t even do it with people, people who speak our language, who can literally tell us how they feel, yet we still manage to dismiss or misunderstand them. So yeah—maybe it’s asking a lot. But I believe we can do better. Maybe we can practice listening, not just to each other, but to the buzzing, chirping, splashing, and rustling around us. Maybe we can trust that other lives—however different—are real, valid, and worth caring about.

And if we can manage to give the dogs on our couches and the cats on our keyboards the benefit of emotional complexity, maybe it’s time to extend that same kindness to their wild cousins. Maybe it will help us come from a place of kindness and respect for the relationships between ourselves and the other beings we encounter—the pollinators in our gardens, the squirrel crossing our paths, even the raccoons raiding our garbage cans like some midnight buffet. We all live in relation, and relationships can be healthy or unhealthy; in this case, the choice is largely ours.

Given the vital role of biodiversity for a healthy planet, at minimum, we should respect that while we may not know how it feels to be a stingray, they still have a role in the ecosystem. And we have a role in the ecosystem. It’s our responsibility to ensure flora and fauna and other natural entities are able to fulfil their role. We are like a keystone species, which means it’s up to us whether an ecosystem flourishes or perishes. Unlike a keystone species though, ecosystems typically do fine without us—but if we want to be part of an ecosystem as a positive force, we need to behave accordingly. It’s a lot easier to do that, to come from a place of kindness and responsibility, when there’s the realisation that we’re all tangled up in the same giant, messy, beautiful ecosystem and that the creatures we share this planet with aren’t just scenery. They’re fellow travellers on this little blue ball hurtling through space, and sometimes they’re so full of life they can’t help but jump for joy.

Do you think recognising the emotional lives of animals will help us live in better harmony with our planet? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Tell me about your pet’s intelligence and/or unique personality! My cat pulls my hair if I don’t wake up early enough to feed him. Pretty clear communication technique, haha!

My cat, Odin, falling asleep on my keyboard. Thankfully, I didn’t really need the visuals for this webinar, listening was enough.