Time to Grind

Practice makes perfect...right? If so, I am getting close to becoming a "perfect" activist on Twitter. Well, at least that is what I like to think due to my constant engagement with this social media platform. Once again, I had to follow new accounts, tweet interesting facts about animal science, and retweet information that could possibly be useful for my future in this course. Despite this consistency, I continue to learn a lot on Twitter. I even spiced it up this week by creating a thread for the first time. Attempting to do this ended up being more difficult than I thought, but I hope I got the hang of it.

Furthermore, the majority of accounts I followed this week had some sort of correlation to dog communication. This is because right now, I am planning to conduct research on that topic and would like to have a stronger knowledge about it. Two accounts I found most useful were @DogCognitionSE and @DrEmilyBray. Both of these accounts discuss aspects about dog science and dog cognition that I can reference later on in my essay. In addition, I tweeted and retweeted information specifically about dog science so I can easily look back on it if I need some inspiration. For instance, one tweet I made was about the ten different ways dogs can communicate, whether that is through barking, body posture, or tail wagging. I even made a thread about this to associate all my tweets about dog communication. This should be easier to find and connect the dots when it is time to write about this subject. On top of this, I responded to a classmate, Andrea, about a dog who was able to understand sign language after being unable to hear. I just love hearing stories about dogs proving their intelligence and how they are able to understand human communication. Now that I am able to look back on my experience this week, the most interesting aspect I learned was that dogs are able to solve puzzles. I knew other animals, like birds, were able to solve puzzles after watching the documentary "Bird Brain," but for some reason, I did not immediately connect this intelligent behavior to dogs. I do not know why I failed to realize that dogs could also do this since they are very intelligent. I guess it is true that you learn something new everyday, especially if you take this class.

I even had the opportunity to respond to three classmates' blog posts. The first was Britney who noted that she did not originally think birds were smart. She assumed all birds were like "dumb" pigeons. Now, she realizes that every bird is intelligent in their own, unique way. Secondly, I commented on Haotian's post who mentioned that birds have chemicals released in their brains that are connected to feelings such as anxiety and fear. He believes that this can prove that birds truly do have emotions, which I found very interesting. Finally, I responded to Shelly who proved that all wildlife is affected by Covid-19, not just humans. This is because humans fail to dispose of used masks and gloves correctly. As a result, some animals are consuming these poisonous materials and becoming trapped in waste. I used to think I knew so much about animals, but boy was I wrong. Now, I can not wait to keep learning and specifically dive into dog communication.