Below is a photo of Sooie the cat. Her being from the family felis useless could imply that this type of animal is of little use to humanity, but in the photo, Sooie is demonstrating some instinctive survival tactics that humanity might be able to learn from. She may be lazily sleeping in the middle of the day, but at the same time she is busy teaching us humans an important lesson in good health; she is conditioning the air that she breathes by burrowing her nose in her fur.

A Useful Health Tip From an Otherwise Useless Cat

Humanity seems to have forgotten a lot of the basic survival techniques that are required for living upon this planet. While humans proudly use their heads to invent gismos that are supposed to help themselves and other humans to survive here, the animals tend to use their instincts and 'genetic memory' to ensure that they are able to live another night in the wild. Sooie the cat-- famously useless-- naturally knows more about staying alive on Earth than any human, and even the most skilled experts in the fields of medicine can learn a thing or two by observing the habits of the animals like her.

D. C. Jarvis, M. D.

In a 1958 book by D. C. Jarvis, M. D. called 'Folk Medicine' we can learn from another human how to observe and mimic the instinctive patterns of nature and animals as a form of medicine.

During a study, Dr. Jarvis noted that subjects who slept with their windows open at night tended to get more head colds than those who slept with the bedroom windows shut. Further, he was informed by some children who lived on a farm that their hens would sleep with their beaks under the feathers of a wing, which led him to conclude that the windows should be shut at night for optimal health in a human.

We can learn from the animals, but it turns out we can learn things from children as well.

In the book, Dr. Jarvis describes how mammals tend to wrap their tail around their own nose before they go to sleep, horses who sleep with their heads together to share a warmed space of breathing air, and hens that tuck their beaks under some of their own feathers at night, and he suggests that the animals are instinctively altering the air that they breath during their rest. In his hypothesis, the doctor wonders if the natural habit is designed to simply warm the cold air before it hits the warmer throat and lungs.

Learning From Sooie the Cat

Sooie the cat is a good teacher, and like all animals, she knows a few tricks about how to live on Earth. For her, the best way to sleep is by breathing through the fur on her tail or arm, while we humans may have to improvise by using a bit of sheet or pillowcase to condition our breathing air, or simply by closing the windows at night. Animals know when to sleep, when to eat and when not to, and by observing their behavior, we humans might prolong our own lives naturally. While we use our heads to figure out new ways to stay healthy, the animals use their whole bodies to correspond with their environment, and they incorporate the ancient lessons that their species has never forgotten. Now, we can use our big brains to understand that those animals may be smarter than we thought.

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photos above are mine, 2019

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