Humans spend a ridiculous amount of time on their laptops, tablets, smartphones, web-enabled televisions and go-go gadget internets in their endless quest for status. Who just got married? Where did Jane have lunch? What did she eat? How long did Jon spend scrubbing up the manure my stomach rejected but that I had found oh so sweet to the taste before he realized it was being ground further into the depths of the carpet fibers and ultimately deciding a better course of action was a vacuum with enough suction to lift a bowling ball for only 4 payments of $999.99? All with the underlying question, "How does this affect my status and what will I now be tweeting the world that "I'm thinking about?"
For this, I guess I'm lucky. A quick glance at my "sister" (as my humans like to call her although that moniker is quite inadequate for describing our relationship) or a sniff of her ass reaffirms our current status relative to one another. And this isn't due simply to our exemplary olfactory system but may be in part due to our heightened ability of gesture perception. Really it's because we are secure with our status, whatever it may be, to not have to constantly reaffirm or improve upon it.
I feel like I've matured quite a bit since yesterday and today I thought I'd give a quick status update to my sister by taking her bone away from her. I slowly ambled over to her rug and stopped within a foot of where she was laying with her bone inches from her nose. I noticed she didn't even open her eyes so I thought, "maybe she too has noticed how mature I've become and she is ready to relinquish some of her status to me." So I slowly dipped my head down, inching closer to the bone while keeping my eyes locked on her face. As I closed my mouth around the bone, she made the slightest curl of her nose. Not enough to expose her teeth, just enough to let me know I still need a few more days before I've reached that level. So I walked away and took a nap.
Sounds simple. And it is. Even on a larger scale. If I want to know what's up with my neighbors I go outside, give a short "whoof" and wait for Dog 1 to reply "arf, arf, arf, arf, arf," Dog 2 to reply "whoof whoof" and Dog 3 to reply "yipyipyipyipyipyip." In less than 10 seconds I know that Dog 1 is still nervous and lonely, Dog 2 is loving life and is just out for a breath of fresh air, and Dog 3 is still at the bottom of the hierarchy and talking bigger than he is because he doesn't have the size that we all have to back up his words.
In all our interactions we don't question why our status is what it is. It just is. And I didn't wonder if my sister really meant that I have not matured at all. I didn't pull up her Facebook or try to see what she tweeted about me. I didn't Google "what does slight curl of the nose mean." I took a deep whiff of her ass about an hour later, but that was only to find out if she was as hungry as I was.
So in an attempt to find out why unlimited bandwidth is such a highly prized commodity to your species, I will join the fray and see what happens.
