Blog Post Two - It's Time to Re-Evaluate Our Relationship with Animals

Humans and animals have always had a relationship of some sort with one another. It began as hunting each other, evolved with the start of domestication, and has evolved even further with animals being used and even manufactured for human purposes like factory farming or lab animals. Our relationship with animals has evolved greatly since we first began to interact with them, and laws regarding the protection of animals were eventually put into place. However, some people feel that animals should be given more rights than they are currently allotted by law. Our relationship with animals is very complex due to the fact that we do not view them all equally to one another or ourselves, and therefore we can not necessarily give the same rights to every species of animal or the same rights to animals that we give to humans, although animals could be better protected in some situations.



One of the first topics covered in Bisgould’s TED talk is the idea of animal suffering. She states that laws that condemn unnecessary animal suffering sound impressive, but they really do nothing to protect animals. They create the idea that some suffering is necessary and if we deem it to be so, it is. I only partially agree with the statement that these laws don’t actually help. One thing that Bisgould seems to condemn is the idea of factory farming, and she implies that animals raised in that kind of environment are not protected by laws that prevent unnecessary animal suffering because they live their whole lives in confinement, and that  injuries and illness are the norm. However, I have learned in previous classes that most factory farm environments provide adequate vet care to their animals when needed, provide them with well-balanced diets and water, and keep them in the safest possible environment for that number of animals. Free range farming, which Bisgould seems to be more in favor of, exposes animals to more chances to become ill, injure one another, and be attacked by predators. Factory farming is closely regulated by the aforementioned laws, and makes sure that the vast majority of farms are the best possible environment for the animals living there. However, when it

comes to topics like the testing of cosmetics on animals, I don’t necessarily believe that these same laws do anything to protect the animals involved. We have made enough advances in science that testing cosmetics on animals is no longer required and many companies no longer do it. Those that still do test on animals use the guise of “necessary suffering” when it truly is unnecessary. Human consumption of meat and other animal products is and will most likely continue to be the widely accepted norm, but testing of cosmetics on animals doesn’t have to continue at all. We can’t necessarily apply the same guidelines and to every situation because we interact with animals in many different ways.

The overarching topic that Lesli Bisgould covers in her TED Talk about our relationship with animals is the property status of animals under the law. The idea was put into place sometime around the 1700s that animals should be treated the same way that an inanimate object that is owned by a person should be treated under the law. At this time, Immanuel Kant was spreading the idea that animals can feel pain but are not conscious beings, and that they should be treated well by humans because cruelty to animals leads to cruelty to other humans. Since this time, our view of animals has changed greatly. We now know that they are not only able to feel pain, but many animals have some level of intelligence and can maybe even feel emotion. For example, rats have been shown to help their peers out of confinement when given the opportunity, and crows can solve complex puzzles to get food and even appear to mourn their dead. Bisgould suggests that because we now understand that animals are conscious beings, many with some degree of emotion, we should consider changing their status from property to legal person under the law. While I agree that animals should be treated humanely, I believe that they deserve their own category under the law that is neither legal person nor property because they are neither humans nor inanimate objects. Animals deserve to be upgraded from their status as property now that we understand more about them, but considering them legal persons would be too complicated and grant them too many unnecessary rights. As it is stated in the animal ethics reading, women and men both have the right to vote because they are equally capable of making rational decisions. A dog is not capable of this sort of rational thought, and does not need that right. I agree with the direct but unequal philosophy that animals deserve some rights but not more than humans.

Bisgould seems to be under the impression that humans in general practice extreme speciesism and want to keep the property status of animals so that we can do whatever we wish to them. I do not necessarily agree with this, but I do agree that there are many situations in which animals deserve more than property status under the law now that they are widely recognized as sentient beings. Speciesism is also a concept that is largely used by extreme animal rights activists and is at least partially justified in my opinion. Animals are not as intelligent as humans and do not deserve exactly the same rights, but they do all deserve to be treated as humanely as possible for the situation they are in, be it a farming facility, a lab, or a household. It is not possible to treat animals in such different situations exactly the same, but I ultimately agree with the concept of equal consideration based on sentience. The fact that animals can feel pleasure and pain and possibly experience some emotion should be put into consideration and they should be upgraded from their property status under the law, but not to the point of being considered legal persons.

 

 

Blog Post One - The Human-Animal Bond: Made for One Another

Since the dawn of time, humans and non-human animals have shared the earth with one another. However, we did not always have the same relationship with animals that we have today. All animals were once wild animals to us, and the only interactions we had with them involved hunting or being hunted. It took us thousands of years to domesticate animals to use for food and companionship, and many factors to determine which animals were able to be successfully domesticated.

There is a bond that emotionally connects us to our companion animals known as the human-animal bond, or HAB for short. As was discussed in Meg Daley’s TED talk, the HAB is heavily influenced by oxytocin. Oxytocin is known as the bonding hormone, and is largely responsible for connections between mother and infant. It also plays a role in most other relationships. Oxytocin is present in high levels in social species, and it lowers adrenaline levels so that members of the same or different social species will not be in constant fear of one another. Because of this, primitive humans were able to have some level of interaction with other social species such as lions or wolves. The domesticated dogs that we have in our homes today exist because humans were able to interact with less aggressive wolves closely enough to eventually come into possession of wolf pups by one method or another. When these wolf pups were hungry, human women fed them the only way they knew how; suckling them. This caused oxytocin release in both the human women and the wolf pups, most likely leading to the earliest HABs. Humans eventually bred many generations of the tamest wolves to create the many species of domesticated dog that we have today. As was discussed in lecture, oxytocin is released in both human and dog when a dog is pet and it is also release in both parties when looking into one another’s eyes. Oxytocin release causes a feel-good reaction that rewards both the dog and the human for these interactions. The HAB is stronger than ever today between owners and pets because of the same hormone that first assisted us in the domestication of wolves.

Belyaev with a fox. Examples of domesticated coat color, upper left.

One quality that humans seem to select very highly for in domesticated companion animals is cuteness. We like companion animals that have qualities that we see as infantile, and we like them to retain many of the characteristics that they have as juveniles. The retention of juvenile physical and behavioral characteristics into adulthood is known as neotany, and much of the breeding that we do with companion animals selects highly for this trait. We enjoy pets that stay playful their whole lives with traits like large eyes, and soft, rounded features. These characteristics trigger a protective and nurturing response in humans because they remind us of our own infants. They also activate a key reward center in the brain, the nucleus accumbens. We are hardwired to enjoy traits like these because it helps to ensure the survival of human infants. Man's new best friend? A forgotten Russian experiment in fox domestication discusses the experiments of Dmitri K. Belyaev in domesticating silver foxes. By selecting the tamest foxes from each generation he bred, he was ultimately able to breed foxes that enjoyed human interaction in much the same way dogs do. They had lower adrenaline levels than wild foxes along with altered coat coloration, and Belyaev hypothesized that the pathways for adrenaline and melanin were connected. This was later confirmed. Along with this change, these foxes had more neonatal characteristics than their wild counterparts such as licking their caretakers, staying playful longer, and altered skull shape. By breeding only the tamest animals when we first began to domesticate them, we most likely inadvertently created more neotany with each generation and grew more attached as a result.

As was discussed early on in the video, one of our first main reasons for wanting to domesticate animals was so that we could eat the same way we saw the top predators were eating. It was also mentioned that there was a point at which humans were afraid of even large herbivores because it is much more difficult to approach a wild animal than a domesticated one. We eventually domesticated these large herbivores and they would eventually be bred to become the modern horse and cow. However, attempts to domesticate similar large herbivores such as the zebra have been unsuccessful. Jarod Diamond suggests that all species that could possibly be domesticated share six traits: flexible diet, fast growth rate, pleasant disposition, the ability to breed in captivity, a social hierarchy, and no panic. When it comes to diet, herbivore diets have always been cheaper and easier to provide meaning that herbivores were fairly easy to feed in captivity. Carnivores had to be able to scavenge or hunt when humans couldn’t necessarily provide meat regularly, so cat and dog ancestors were able to take care of their own dietary needs pretty well. Almost all domesticated species reach sexual maturity within a matter of a couple of years or less depending on the species. We have bred animals that did not originally possess a pleasant disposition to have one now by selecting their tamest ancestors. All domesticated animals can breed in captivity, and many that we use for food are bred using artificial insemination to speed up the process and make it more efficient. Even animals like chickens have a social hierarchy, although social hierarchies are not necessarily as complicated in animals as they are in humans. Domesticated animals that are handled well and are not abused or neglected will generally not be panicky. These qualities that diamond came up with are the basis for what any animal needs in order to be domesticated, and every animal that humans have successfully domesticated seems to possess these qualities.

There are many factors that lead to the domestication of animals and the formation of the strong human-animal bond between pet and owner. We are lucky to have been able to use these factors to our advantage, and we can now enjoy food, clothes, companionship, and much more that would have been off limits without the help of domesticated animals.