What NOT to teach Pets

     Konrad Lorenz, the great animal behaviorist, was scrupulous about cultivating fruitful confusion. Lorenz lived among his research subjects: Dozens of species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes. He did not quantify, control, or consciously experiment. He got to know each creature individually, then threw them together, watching for the unexpected, the unusual, or the bizarre in the chaos that followed.
     For example, his interest in one of ethology's most important concepts, that of intention movements (motions with meaning, such as the head bobbing in birds that serves as an alarm signal before flight), derived from an inadvertent experiment. He had trained a free-flying raven to eat raw meat from his hand and had been feeding the bird for several hours one day. He would reach into his pants pocket and take out a piece of meat, and the raven would swoop down to grab it in its bill.
     By an by, Lorenz went to relieve himself near a hedge. When the raven saw him put his hand into his pants and pull out another morsel of meat, it swooped down, hungrily grasping the new mouthful in its bill. Lorenz howled in pain. But the event left a deep impression on him -- about how faithfully animals respond to intention movements, that is.