Above the entrance of a high school in Renningen, Germany, a promise is written in large letters: School without Racism – School with Courage. Inside, that promise is tested. On a cold day in January, 10th- and 11th-grade students spend hours moving through workshops on racism, bystander intervention and sexualized violence. The event, known as a “Day of Courage,” is not a one-off awareness campaign. It is part of a broader effort to embed anti-discrimination into everyday school life. The program is structured into three modules. In one, students teach each other about concepts like “microaggressions” and “othering,” using real-life examples to show how racism operates in subtle ways. In another, actors from a theater group stage tense, realistic scenarios — a racist remark on a bus, a confrontation in public — and ask students to step in and respond. After each scene, the group pauses to analyze what happened: What was effective? What was risky? What would they do differently? Schule ohne Rassismus – Schule mit Courage is Germany’s largest school network. Credit: Wolfgang Borrs The lesson is clear: Intervening is difficult, but it can be practiced. A third workshop, led by a local counseling center in cooperation with the police, focuses on recognizing boundaries and understanding sexualized violence. Through interactive exercises, students compare the ways individuals perceive personal limits and learn why respecting the differences matters. By the end of the day, the message on the sign above the entrance feels less abstract. As organizers at the school describe it, the goal is to move from a label to lived behavior, helping students recognize discrimination and respond to it responsibly in everyday situations. The school in Renningen is part of Schule ohne Rassismus – Schule mit Courage, Germany’s largest school network. Founded in 1995, the network now includes more than 5,000 schools and 2.5 million students across the country. Similar initiatives exist in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, France and Spain.  Its premise is simple: Any school can join if at least 70 percent of its students, teachers and staff formally commit to opposing discrimination and addressing incidents when they occur. Membership is not a certification of success, but a pledge to keep working. “There is no school without racism,” outgoing director Sanem Kleff acknowledges. “The plaque is not a vaccine against racism.” “If discrimination, violence, or bullying happen at our school, then we do not look away. We talk about it and solve it,” says outgoing director Sanem Kleff. Credit: Wolfgang Borrs The network’s origins were shaped by violence. Its predecessor, Aktion Courage, was founded in 1992 in response to racist attacks on Turkish immigrants in Germany. The school program followed in 1995 because the network assumes the attacks reflect broader social dynamics and tries to equip students with tools to navigate them. As Kleff puts it, “Good political education can make students more resilient against extremist ideologies.” That history helps explain why the model has lasted. The network insists on sustained participation rather than performative gestures. The goal is not to claim racism has been solved, but to make schools more capable of naming it, confronting it and organizing against it. According to Kleff, participation means entering a commitment: “If discrimination, violence, or bullying happen at our school,” Kleff says, “then we do not look away. We talk about it and solve it.” In 25 years as director of Schule ohne Rassismus, Kleff, a teacher and a Turkish immigrant herself, expanded the initiative’s initial focus on racism to discrimination of any kind, including based on nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation or physical attributes. “I’ve included all ideologies of inequality consistently,” Kleff sums up her decades of work, because she is convinced all discrimination is based on some people’s belief that others are worth less. The network’s mission is to stand for “human rights for all, not a world in which it matters where one is from, how one looks and what one has or doesn’t have.”  At a high school in Heidelberg, that commitment is visible under students’ feet. Each day, students walk up a staircase marked “step against racism,” a small but constant reminder of the school’s values. The gesture is symbolic, but it is reinforced by more intensive work throughout the year. The school’s annual “Week Against Racism,” held each March in connection with Germany’s International Weeks Against Racism, brings the entire community into focus. Students organize flash mobs and collective art projects, including handprint campaigns that turn hallways into visual statements against discrimination. At the same time, teachers integrate the topic in the classroom, linking literature and social studies to contemporary issues of racism and exclusion. The result is a combination of ritual and reflection: visible expressions of solidarity paired with sustained classroom engagement. Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] At other schools in the network, students cook meals from different cultures, produce films about bias, host public discussions or organize peer-led workshops. For many, the shift from passive recipient to active participant is transformative. Schools are not expected to follow a fixed curriculum. Instead, the initiative’s strength lies in the enthusiasm of the students who design their own projects, often with support from a nationwide infrastructure of over a hundred regional coordinators and partner organizations, including museums, research institutes, the police, self-defense trainers and theater groups.  “It is a great privilege to be part of the network,” Noah, a 16-year-old student at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin, wrote in the initiative’s 2022 annual report. “I’ve learned that the most important thing is to talk to people — whether they agree with you or not.” That emphasis on dialogue, even with disagreement, reflects a core principle of the program: Anti-racism is not only about positions, but about practice. Omar, an 18-year-old student from Leipzig, described that shift more directly: “Through my engagement, I’ve learned how important it is to stand up for a just and inclusive society,” he wrote. “We have to actively ensure that discrimination has no place.” Just as important, he added, is encouraging others to act as well. That ripple effect — students influencing peers — is central to the model’s theory of change. At one participating school, student Malika El Abdouni wrote a poem that captures the emotional core of the initiative: They see black and white… but we are all colorful…. We are all the same (human). The process of finding the language and the confidence to articulate their experience with discrimination often leads students to confront difficult realities. For instance, during a recent project, Heidelberg students visited the local cultural center of German Sinti and Roma, where they studied the persecution of minorities under the Nazi regime. “The exhibition made it strikingly clear how brutally minorities were persecuted,” said one 10th-grade student, Leo Scheller. “And that something like that must never happen again.” By connecting historical memory to present-day issues, such projects aim to show that discrimination is not just a topic for the past, but an ongoing challenge. However, the network’s expansion coincides with the rise of extremism and discrimination in German schools, and critics question the effectiveness of voluntary engagement. In several states that track such incidents, reported cases of right-wing extremism in schools have increased sharply in recent years. Media investigations have documented the normalization of racist language and symbols in some classrooms. Teachers complain about racist slurs and in some cases, threats of racist or homophobic violence. Youth researchers have also warned that a significant share of young people express openness to far-right positions. Any school can join the network if at least 70 percent of its students, teachers and staff formally commit to opposing discrimination and addressing incidents when they occur. Credit: Wolfgang Borrs For Kleff, this context reinforces the urgency of the network’s work. “What exists in society also exists in schools,” she says. “We ask: How are you dealing with this? And what can we do to support you?” Over 25 years, Kleff has seen the field of anti-discrimination work transform. “When we started, none of this existed,” she points out — no national anti-discrimination law, no federal funding structures, no institutional support. Now School Without Racism is largely supported by the German states. “Today, younger colleagues think these structures are normal. But they are not. They had to be built.” Even small changes can matter. At a high school in Berlin, where Kleff taught for 20 years, staff shortened regular class periods by five minutes and used the reclaimed time for student-led activities — boxing groups, music jam sessions or art projects. As a result, Kleff observed that communication improved, conflicts surfaced earlier and the school climate shifted. One of the network’s most distinctive features is how it handles bullying and discriminatory incidents. “An offhand comment between eight-year-olds requires a different response than an ideological statement from teenagers, or discrimination exercised by an adult in a position of authority,” Kleff acknowledges. But the principle is non-negotiable: Ignoring it is not an option. “There is no such thing as ‘a little bit racist,’” Kleff says. “Racist is racist. Full stop.” Rather than isolating individuals as “problem students,” Kleff argues for treating discrimination as a collective issue. “It is a mistake to individualize and ban that student. Today it’s one student, tomorrow another. It concerns everyone.” Evaluations show that the program enables students to actively shape a school environment with less discrimination. While large-scale studies are lacking, the program aligns with broader research suggesting that school climate, with its norms, relationships and expectations, plays a critical role in student behavior and well-being. By embedding anti-racism into daily routines and student-led activities, the German model attempts to influence that climate directly. The model is not without challenges. It relies on sustained engagement, which can vary from school to school. And it does not eliminate prejudice, something its own leaders readily acknowledge. Some parents protest, for instance, against the use of the rainbow flag. As a non-governmental organization, the network cannot reform teacher training systems or eliminate structural inequalities. “There are things we cannot change,” Kleff admits. “For example, teacher education could better prepare educators for a diverse society.” Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Cancel anytime Still, Kleff resists pessimism. Schools, she emphasizes, are not static. “They are micro-societies; they change.” In the United States, many schools already have elements of such an approach, from student councils to peer mediation programs and community partnerships. What the German example suggests is the value of connecting those elements into a coherent structure, one that combines student leadership, institutional support and clear expectations for action. Kleff’s advice to anyone working in education is direct: “Don’t wait for perfect conditions. Do something — even something small. It can grow.” Because in the end, she insists, the choice is stark: “Doing nothing is the worst option.” The post Inside Germany’s ‘Schools Without Racism’ appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

One of the most popular pieces of 20th-century American art is a painting of an old devout man praying over a bowl of gruel and a loaf of bread in front of a Bible. The piece is called “Grace,” and it can be found in homes, churches, and even restaurants. The piece is called “Grace,” and it can be found in homes, churches, and even restaurants. It was designated the official state photograph of Minnesota in 2002. I clearly remember a copy hanging on the wall at my corner burger joint, Mack’s Burgers, in Torrance, California, in the ’80s. Sadly, it’s been torn down and is now a Jack in the Box. However ubiquitous the photo may be, a new video by pop culture YouTube user Austin McConnell shows that “Grace” isn’t really what it seems. “Grace” was originally a photograph taken around 1918, during World War I, though some historians date it closer to 1920, by Eric Enstrom, a Swedish American from Bovey, Minnesota. Enstrom was preparing some photographs to take with him to a convention when Charles Wilden, a salesman selling boot scrapers, came to his door, and he know he had to take his photo. “There was something about the old gentleman’s face that immediately impressed me. I saw that he had a kind face… there weren’t any harsh lines in it,” Enstrom said. “I wanted to take a picture that would show people that even though they had to do without many things because of the war they still had much to be thankful for,” he added.   But what’s actually in the photo may surprise you Enstrom posed Wilden in front of a loaf of bread, a bowl, which may have been empty, and a large book that many assume to be the Bible. But, as McConnell notes, the book is far too large to be the good book, as most people assume. The Grand Forks Herald and some historians suggest the book is a dictionary, though the waiver document Wilden himself signed reportedly identifies it as a Bible. The photograph went on to be a huge hit at the convention, and Enstrom began selling copies about town. After many requested copies of the photo in color, Enstrom’s daughter, Rhoda Nyberg, began hand-painting them in oils and added a streak of light on the left side of the painting. This is the version that people have come to love. The artist who hand- colored “Grace,” a photo showing a white-bearded man bowed in prayer before a simple meal, was Rhoda Nyberg, the daughter of Eric Enstrom. Rhoda's father took the photo in his studio in Bovey, Minnesota in 1918.Rhoda Nyberg died at the age of 95. in 2015. pic.twitter.com/zujdAnNB4e— Sam (@suddensam55) December 24, 2021 “The intent of the photo is fairly obvious,” McConnell says in the video. “Enstrom wanted an image that conveyed to people that even though they had to do without many provisions because of the ongoing war, there was still much to be thankful for. A picture that seemed to say ‘this man doesn’t have much of earthly goods, but he has more than most people because he has a thankful heart.'” In 1926, Enstrom convinced Wilden to sign over his rights for $5, which gave him the sole copyright. He then licensed the image to the Lutheran-affiliated Augsburg publishing house, which distributed the image across the country. According to McConnell “thousands and thousands” of copies of the photo were sold. The image entered the public domain in 1995. https://twitter.com/SaintRPh/statuses/1641145561037275136 And the man in the photo was not who you think Although not much is known about Wilden, it is believed that he lived a hard life. “He was living in a very primitive sod hut near Grand Rapids, eking out a very precarious living,” retired history professor Don Boese told the Grand Forks Herald. It’s also likely that he wasn’t the devout man we imagine in the photo. “The stories about him centered more around drinking and not accomplishing very much,” Boese said. So the painting was actually a photo. The Bible, a dictionary, and the subject was more likely to be the town drunk than a saint. But, in the end, does it matter? McConnell believes that its meaning rests in the eye of the beholder. Does any of this actually change anything? “If you found out today that everything you thought you knew about this iconic image was actually wrong, would you take it off your wall?” McConnell asks at the end of the video. “Or would you accept that the value in a piece of art isn’t merely derived from the knowledge of how it was made? Or who made it?” Come to think of it, the fact that the man in the painting is an alcoholic may make the painting even more profound. For a person who is down on their luck and may have turned their back on religion, having a moment to be grateful for the small things in life is a wonderful sentiment. It goes to show that anyone can turn their life around. When someone down on their luck is given a second chance, it’s one of the most powerful examples of grace. This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated. The post Guy reveals why the ‘old man praying’ painting you see may not be what it seems appeared first on Upworthy.

Laughter really is the best medicine, and there are a lot of ways to get your daily dose. You can rewatch an old funny movie that’s been proven to get the job done, listen to a hilarious podcast, or goof around with friends. Maybe the most efficient way to really get yourself rolling, though, is to take in some stand-up comedy. And while it feels like the true heyday of stand-up is over (the days of George Carlin and Richard Pryor) the truth is that stand-up is more popular than ever. That’s thanks, in part, to Netflix, which drives millions of viewers to featured comedy acts, who then go on to sell out huge theaters for their shows. Comedy is powerful, necessary, and relevant. In fact, the saying often attributed to Oscar Wilde goes, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” A Reddit user recently posed a great question on the AskReddit subforum: “What is a quote from a comedian you’ll never forget?” One comedian stood out above the rest The post quickly went viral, receiving over 10,000 responses in the first day. Of the countless comedians mentioned in the thread, Norm Macdonald appears to be the most quotable. Sadly, Macdonald died of cancer in 2021, but he was famous for his outlandish musings, delivered in a dry, deliberate tone. Macdonald is best known as a stand-up comedian, but he was also memorable on television as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live” from 1993 to 1997 and on his sitcom, “The Norm Show.” Two other deceased funnymen were often quoted in the discussion, Mitch Hedberg and George Carlin. Hedberg’s comedy was based on short, memorable one-liners filled with absurdity. He passed away in 2005 from a drug overdose. George Carlin is often listed among the greatest stand-up comedians of all time and was a voice of the counterculture in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Later in life, his comedy evolved into a nihilistic criticism of American life that, for many, is still relevant today. “It’s called ‘the American Dream’ ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it,” Carlin said. The 23 quotes people will never forget Here are 23 of the funniest and most poignant quotes from a comedian shared by users on the AskReddit forum. 1. “Every time you clog a toilet, you exceeded someone’s expectations.” – Unknown 2. “Everybody thinks they’re a comedian. Especially in my line of work.” – Norm Macdonald This came from Macdonald’s memoir, “Based on a True Story,” a must-read for Norm fans. My favorite thing about this line is that it was a sort of random throwaway, almost an afterthought, as he was expressing disdain for a doctor who told a joke and got a big laugh from everyone else in the room. And that doctor’s joke? It was Macdonald’s own moth story. 3. “I’m not an adventurous person. I’ve only ever used one side of a cheese grater.” – James Acaster 4. “I’ve started cooking with wine. That sounds so fancy, cooking with wine. What I do is I get drunk and I make rice. I tell my friends ‘come over, I’m cooking with wine.’ They come over, I’m drunk, and there’s rice everywhere.” – Kevin Nealon 5. “What is it like to have four kids? Imagine you are drowning, and then someone hands you a baby.” – Jim Gaffigan 6. “I find a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced by whether or not I have bread.” – Mitch Hedberg   7. “Cocaine is God’s way of saying you make too much money.” – Robin Williams 8. “I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down’.” – Bob Newhart 9. “People say someone lost their battle with cancer. But if someone dies from cancer, the cancer dies too. I’d call that a draw.” – Norm Macdonald 10. “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, which is just long enough to be president of the United States.” – Spike Milligan 11. “When you are on fire, and running down the street, people will get out of your way.” – Richard Pryor 12. “I was walking down the street the other day and these construction workers were working on the roof hammering away. One of them told me I was a paranoid lunatic…in morse code.” – Emo Phillips 13. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx 14. “I didn’t want to be Drunk in Public. I wanted to be drunk in a bar. They THREW me into public.” – Ron White 15. “I know I’m getting older, my last birthday cake looked like a prairie fire!” – Rodney Dangerfield 16. “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” – George Carlin 17. “When you got a career there ain’t enough time in the world…when you got a job there’s too much time.” – Chris Rock 18. “She had enough plastic surgery so that when she crossed her legs, her mouth snapped open.” – Joan Rivers 19. “Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.” – Doug Stanhope 20. “I’m impulsive, but I’m also quite indecisive. I don’t know what I want, but I know that I want it now.” – Dylan Moran 21. “So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that’s funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn’t funny.” – Mitch Hedberg 22. “When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It’s only painful & difficult for others. The same applies when you are stupid.” – Ricky Gervais 23. “The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, ‘Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?’ And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, ‘Hey, don’t worry; don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.’ And we … kill those people. ‘Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.’ It’s just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.” – Bill Hicks What makes a comedy quote unforgettable? As is evident from this list, the best comedy has a way of making you laugh and think at the same time. Not a bad superpower for a room full of people and a microphone. This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated. The post People are sharing quotes from their favorite comedians. These 23 are pure gold. appeared first on Upworthy.

PET is in water bottles, food packaging, and flexible electronics. It’s made from fossil fuels, breaks down into microplastics, and carries chemicals linked to inflammation and cell damage. Researchers have been trying to replace it for years. Most bio-based alternatives couldn’t handle heat or stretching at industrial scale. A team from the University of Connecticut and Purdue University has now built one that can. Their material is a polycarbonate derived from cannabidiol (CBD), the main compound in hemp flowers. It stretches to 1,600 percent of its original size. It stays hard and dry when submerged in boiling water. It can be melted and reshaped using existing manufacturing equipment. What makes this different The glass transition temperature is the point at which a plastic becomes workable. Most bio-based plastics can’t reach it without losing structural integrity. This one does. “Very few, if any, plastics made from natural resources have this quality,” says Gregory Sotzing of the University of Connecticut, one of the authors of the study. The hemp material also replaces bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical in current polycarbonate plastics classified as an endocrine disruptor. CBD fills the same structural role without the health risk. “The hope here is that cannabidiol can take the place of bisphenol-A found in today’s processed plastics,” Sotzing says. Earlier attempts at bio-based alternatives ran into a wall at the production stage: the catalysts required high temperatures and were difficult to remove, making large-scale manufacturing impractical. The team resolved that by developing a processing framework that maps how the material’s molecular structure connects to its physical properties, establishing guidelines for industrial use. Results were published in Chem Circularity. Where it can go The immediate applications: transparent films, food packaging, flexible electronics. The material’s unusually high water contact angle, a surface property that allows effective water repulsion, also opens a path toward drug delivery nanoparticles and catheter coatings. “We were not expecting our polyCBD-carbonate to have a higher contact angle than most polyolefins,” Sotzing noted. The path to scale Hemp cultivation doesn’t yet generate enough CBD to replace PET globally. That’s a supply gap, not a technical one. Hemp grows across a wide range of climates with minimal water and little to no pesticides. It rotates well with corn, soybeans, and other food crops, which makes it a practical choice for farmers already working those fields. As hemp cultivation expands for use in clothing, construction materials, and food products, CBD supply will rise and costs will fall. “Costs of CBD would drop upon the planting of more hemp,” Sotzing says. The research team cleared the technical hurdle that had stopped every previous bio-based PET alternative. The supply side is already moving to meet it. Source url: Chem Circularity— High-molecular-weight hemp-derived polycannabidiol carbonate thermoplastic with PET-like heat resistance, strength, and processabilityThe post Researchers build a hemp plastic that rivals PET first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

There’s a short list of animals who, when placed in front of a mirror, eventually figure out they’re looking at themselves. Chimpanzees. Bottlenose dolphins. Asian elephants. A magpie or two. A small reef fish called the cleaner wrasse, which upended some assumptions about brain size when it passed the test in 2023. And now, belugas. New findings in PLOS One document two beluga whales at the New York Aquarium doing exactly what animals on that list tend to do: testing whether the reflection responds to them, then using the mirror to examine themselves. One of the whales, Natasha, went on to pass what researchers call the mark test, where a mark is drawn somewhere on the animal’s body that it can’t see without a mirror. The footage was shot in 2001 yet by some twist of fate, it took until now to be published. The footage that almost wasn’t Diana Reiss, a marine mammal scientist at Hunter College, had already documented mirror self-recognition in bottlenose dolphins and Asian elephants. In 2001, she set up the same test for four captive belugas: three adult females and a seven-year-old named Maris. A mirror was affixed to a window in the whales’ shared pool for two-hour sessions. The team filmed the results and also filmed the whales’ responses to clear plexiglass placed in the same spot, as a control. Then life moved on. “We kind of let it go,” Reiss says. The footage sat for nearly two decades. In 2020, Alexander Mildener enrolled in Reiss’s program. He had grown up visiting the New York Aquarium and described being “completely transfixed” by those exact belugas as a child. With the pandemic limiting field research, he needed a thesis project. Reiss pulled out the tapes. Mildener spent lockdown carefully watching videos of his old friends, “the very whales that inspired me to be in this field in the first place,” he says. What Natasha and Maris did Animals that go on to recognize themselves in mirrors tend to follow a recognizable sequence. First, a reaction to the mirror as a new object or a potential peer. Then contingency testing: repetitive movements designed to check whether the image is responding to them. Reiss compares this to how people behave near security monitors in a store. When you think you see yourself on the screen, “you might move your head or raise your hand: ‘Is that me?’” For animals who pass, “that seems to be where the light bulb goes on.” Natasha and Maris went through the full sequence. In their first session, both clapped their jaws at their own reflections, a behavior belugas use for intimidation with each other. Then they started testing: Natasha nodded at the mirror, while Maris waggled her head in multiple directions. By their second session, both were using the mirror to watch themselves barrel-roll and look inside their own mouths. Maris reared up and flapped her pectoral fins at the glass in a move researchers named a “pec shimmy.” Both whales blew bubbles and then bit them, behaviors that don’t appear when the mirror isn’t present. “It was just really beautiful to watch,” Mildener says. Natasha passed the mark test. Maris did not, which is consistent with patterns seen across many mirror-recognition studies, where some individuals within the same species pass while others don’t. Why the list keeps growing Each addition to the mirror self-recognition list chips away at a prior assumption. “We have this list of the things that only humans do,” Reiss says, “and over time we’ve been checking them off.” The cleaner wrasse finding in 2023 was particularly disruptive: it suggested that large, sophisticated brains aren’t necessarily the threshold researchers assumed they were. What does seem consistent is that species who pass tend to be highly social and capable of recognising individuals of their own kind. The stakes aren’t only scientific. When humpback whale behavioral research expanded in the 1970s, it helped build public support for the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Reiss sees the same potential in this kind of work. “Finding these shared capabilities and shared levels of consciousness and self-awareness in other species seem to engender more empathy for them,” she says. Mildener and Reiss hope to run similar tests with other beluga populations. For Mildener, who spent lockdown watching the animals that had first drawn him to marine science, the project carried a particular weight. The whales that set him on his path were also the ones who gave him his first major finding. Source study: PLOS One- Evidence for mirror self-recognition in beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas)The post Belugas join the short list of animals who know they’re looking at themselves first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.