It is the 1st of January, and as people are still singing and sharing their hopes and resolutions for the new year, Pakistan has registered its first polio case of the year (the number last year was 296).

Was it a coincidence? I'm not sure. I was sitting in my lounge watching 'Animal Planet' on TV when I read this news on my phone. I couldn't help my mind from drifting to all the bizarre things I used to identify with animals; things too irrational for the superior intelligence of humans; but which now didn't seem all too alien from our society at all.

Take, for instance, a guard dog that a friend of mine used to have in our early teens. The dog was, like most of its kind, the loyalest of creatures, but possessed one quirk: every time someone tried to feed it, it would bark at the feeder. Apprehension set in, and resigning to the dog's nature, my friend gradually got into the habit of throwing the dog food from a distance.