TV Goes to the Dogs (and to the Elephants, Cattle, Bees) and to Monica

We cage them, we dissect them. We slaughter them, we stuff them, we wear them. We butcher, fillet, mince, sautee, fry, boil, broil and eat them. Sharp-shooting Ernest Hemingway eagerly granted one after another his “sweet death.” And other hunters, while expressing “respect” for them, coolly blow them away on ESPN2’s Sunday morning bloc of outdoors series.

If animals have intelligence, emotions and feel pain as humans do, “we have some serious ethical problems to face,” viewers are told during “Inside the Animal Mind,” a three-part “Nature” series airing consecutive Thursdays on KCET.

Pondered here, with help from scientists and others, are the cognitive capabilities of animals we live with, animals we employ and often abuse on our behalf, and those existing in the wild.

What is learned behavior, for example, and what is actual intelligence? And isn’t learned behavior a form of intelligence?

You could go on and on following these mental maps. And this documentary does, dryly at first. That is temporary, though, for all in all this is a fascinating journey into the animal mind en route to unexpected destinations. The first hour, “Are Animals Intelligent?,” introduces not only chimps and parrots with smarts but also pigeons that appear capable of forming concepts when tested about art.

“If we judge worth by intelligence, this could be significant,” says narrator Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes.” That may be the understatement of 2000, despite Genesis’ contending that humans have “dominion over animals.”

Hardly everything here is conclusive. Although famed researcher Jane Goodall insists in Part 2, “Do Animals Have Emotions?,” that “you can tell an awful lot” by gazing into their eyes, Oxford scientist Marian Dawkins believes that their facial expressions can be misleading. “We could be dead wrong . . . in our interpretation” of them, she adds.

Take the African elephant family on the screen, for example. Are we, indeed, misinterpreting--or over-stressing--the affection these family members appear to have for one another? Shakespeare defined love as caring for another more than for yourself. Is that what’s going on here?

Or from our perspective, are we engaging in anthropomorphism--attaching human traits to animals--in the extreme?

Inevitably, some of this leads to humor, as in a romantic triangle involving Paul, Christine and Nelson. Paul is Christine’s husband, Nelson their macaw. Uh oh.

We watch Christine climb the stairs to turn in for the evening and see Nelson follow, then join her in bed. When Paul follows them to bed, Kroft notes, “Nelson’s feathers get really ruffled.”

Is this jealousy?

And how much awareness of themselves and their environments do animals have, and which of them are sentient? The extent of that consciousness is the focus of Part 3, in which Temple Grandin of Colorado State University, who appears to accept so-called food animals going to slaughter while designing more humane chutes for them, maintains that doomed cattle, for example, “just don’t have any concept of what happens at a slaughterhouse.”

Yet that’s in conflict with the obvious apprehension, and even terror, of animals just prior to being butchered in a documentary on slaughterhouses that Frederick Wiseman made some years ago.

We also hear in the “Nature” documentary from a British biologist who believes that even bees, whose brains contain 860,000 cells, can be cognizant of their surroundings. “I’m quite sure,” he says, “that when a honey bee is sitting on a comb at the end of a long day, she is running through pictures in her mind of the flowers that she has visited, of the places she has seen and of the weather conditions she has flown through.”

This is easy to scoff at. As is everything that challenges the common wisdom.

In other words, the moral questions raised by this documentary are profound. When humans are automatically anointed as a higher order, moreover, it’s worth noting that we are that rare animal species that kills just for the thrill of it.

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MONKEY BUSINESS: In some cases, animal bonding gets twisted into obsession. Witness scenes in “Animal Cops,” Tuesday’s excellent but painful-to-watch Cinemax documentary from Paul Berriff and Chris Wilson about the heroic work of New York City’s understaffed Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, whose 10 agents are ever on the move investigating reports of abuse.

Some of it is almost too tragic and horrific to bear. And some parts concern animals in the care of humans with mental problems, including a well-intentioned but daft elderly woman whose house is overflowing with cats that keep reproducing.

Even more disturbing is a woman who has a terrible fit when the officers confiscate a rhesus monkey that she has retained in her house in violation of the city’s law against keeping exotic animals.

Your heart aches for the confused and terrified monkey, whose name is Ruby, as she is loaded into an ASPCA van for eventual relocation to a sanctuary in Texas. “She’s my daughter!” the batty woman shrieks. A “daughter” that she had kept confined in a cabinet for years.

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MORE MONICA: Not that hearing Monica Lewinsky generously share her “food issues” wasn’t spellbinding. . . .

But here are 10 Questions Larry King Did Not Ask Monday Night:

1. You say you feel remorse. About what?

2. If you met Bill Clinton today, what would you say to him?

3. If you met Hillary Clinton today, what would you say to her?

4. If you met Chelsea Clinton today, what would you say to her?

5. Was it immoral of you to have sexual contact with a married man?

6. Would you do it with a married man again?

7. If you are not a publicity seeker and you are remorseful, why did you go on “Saturday Night Live” last year and participate in comedy sketches making light of the scandal and your role in it?

8. If not for your notoriety, would you have been hired as a spokeswoman by Jenny Craig? If the answer is no, are you not, then, benefiting from the scandal you helped create?

9. Do you bear any responsibility for the impeachment agony that the nation endured?

10. Do you mind my sitting on your lap and cooing as I conduct this interview?

* Part 1 of PBS’ “Nature” documentary, “Inside the Animal Mind,” can be seen Thursday night at 8 on KCET.

* “Animal Cops” can be seen Tuesday at 7 p.m. and various times through the month on Cinemax.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached via e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com