Pure, uncut animal photos (and stories)

January 14, 2014 6:00 PM

The Dodo is a new website by Kerry Lauerman (former Salon editor-in-chief) and Izzie Lerer (of the Lerer family) about animals, and particularly about humanity's relationship with animals: We think of them less as objects at our disposal, as science increasingly reveals them to be intelligent, emotional, social beings that are not as different from us as we used to think they were. Its lead article today is an essay by Glenn Greenwald (previously) on the dogs he and his partner David Miranda have fostered at their home in Brazil. And, as you might expect, there are also heartwarming posts such as this one about elephants being reunited after 20 years apart.
posted by Cash4Lead (9 comments total)

Finally a website just for me! This is great! An immediate favourite.

Fuck yeah animals!
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:32 PM on January 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Also, I really like that this site covers the rough and important stuff, like the Tyson pig brutality and the Indonesian zoo lion murder, but without using graphic images of the thing under discussion. I think that is a great idea for a number of reasons, chiefly because it makes the site more "acceptable" and thus more likely to be perused, but also, counter-intuitively, because to my mind it renders the story more "real", like a piece of newspaper reportage of a ghastly murder doesn't show pictures of the victim all sprayed about. It gives the creatures a level of dignity that I think is missing from a lot of animal rights writing.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:36 PM on January 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

This seems to be about humanity's relationship with the <1% of mammals that it feels compassion for, because those mammals have expressive faces and soft fur. I see nothing here about our relationships with phytoplankton or gut flora--relationships much more important.

Also: linkbait.
posted by Halogenhat at 8:57 PM on January 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

This seems to be about humanity's relationship with the 1% of mammals that it feels compassion for, because those mammals have expressive faces and soft fur. I see nothing here about our relationships with phytoplankton or gut flora--relationships much more important.

Well, it's about animals, not mammals. And we have great compassion for far more than 1% of mammals because those are the animals with expressive faces and fur. And neither phytoplankton nor gut flora are animals... that said, this website is about a moralistic/humanistic view of animals (i.e., animal rights), which is but one of many potential attitudes that we take towards them.
posted by one_bean at 9:08 PM on January 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I really want to like the site. I like the ideas behind it, I like looking at awesome photos of animals, I firmly believe that animals are complicated and amazing creatures with intelligence and emotion and lots of other things. But it is such an odd mixture of things that it's really hard to like it.

Most of it is superficial and badly-researched or non-cited, making general statements that really get my goat (ha ha) like "scientists say" and "we now know that" with nothing to back them up. And the links that go to the contributor's main website, not just in the byline but peppered throughout the story in self-promotion. But just as I'm about to dismiss it as a fluffy fairy floss site with no real content, there's a reasonably well-researched article with links and references that is a bit more encouraging. It's not investigative journalism or anything, but at least it cites its sources. And then there's an article by Frans De Waal who has done heaps of research into animal behaviour, intelligence etc talking in part about a study he did with Zanna Clay and no link to the study. Frustrating for those of us who are interested in more than 11 seconds of video footage and 3 brief paragraphs.

It will be interesting to see what they do and whether they can raise the bar. There are plenty of fluffy animal sites out there, it would be nice to have something serious that actually backs it up with some serious journalism or at least something a bit more in-depth than the soundbites and puff pieces that are currently there.
posted by Athanassiel at 9:30 PM on January 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I see nothing here about our relationships with phytoplankton or gut flora--relationships much more important.

Well, there's always Tapeworm Fancy.
posted by dhartung at 9:49 PM on January 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Someone needs to do a Louis Vs. Rick parody involving Glenn Greenwald and his dogs.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:14 AM on January 15, 2014

Its lead article today is an essay by Glenn Greenwald (previously) on the dogs he and his partner David Miranda have fostered at their home in Brazil.

I remember reading about this at the time.
posted by homunculus at 9:42 PM on January 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

An Angel Captured in The Cove
posted by homunculus at 10:00 PM on January 20, 2014