I follow a lot of awesome vegans and a lot of vegan posts pop up on my dash. I’M NOT GETTING INTO AN ARGUMENT ABOUT VEGANISM WITH ANYONE. THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. I just feel like I need to address a trend I see pretty frequently:
Anthropomorphism of farm animals.
This is DANGEROUS, for both the animals and the people who believe what’s being said about these animals.
For example, cows.
For obvious reasons the images of cows in posts talking about how cows aren’t dumb, unfeeling hamburgers in waiting are generally like this:
And usually they’re accompanied by talk of how they can be trained, how they have best friends (which is actually true!) and how sweet they can be.
On the other side, there are posts like this going around
Thing is, cows do not cry tears like humans do. In fact, there are a lot of posts claiming to present animals weeping like humans do (and not always by vegans). In fact watery discharge can be a sign of early eye infections in cattle. Claiming they’re tears of sadness normalizes signs of ill health as normal animal emotions. This is also I why I get so worked up over people saying a stressed out dog with its lips pulled back is ‘smiling and happy’.
All of these posts combine to make the popular perception of cows something they’re absolutely not and is very dangerous for people with their hearts in the right place looking to help the world out.
Cows are dangerous. I feel like I shouldn’t have to tell people that a thousand pound animal is dangerous, but I do. Not the people I see on my dash, but actual people looking to interact with actual cows (I work with them). Yes, they can be lovely and docile when socialized and handled correctly and consistently but if you have no way of knowing the cows background you have no way of knowing their temperament. If you decide to volunteer at cattle rescues, this will very likely be the case. Moreover, well socialized and docile cattle ARE STILL DANGEROUS AS FUCK. Even the most tame animals can lash out if in pain, under stress or “out of nowhere” (read: lashing out because from their judgement of a situation in makes sense to them, but you misread their judgement). So you get things like this:
With the huge emphasis on docile cows who are good, loving, devoted mothers it’s understandable someone would want to give her a calming and congratulatory stroke after giving birth.
That cow could have killed her.
This is obviously dangerous for humans but it’s also dangerous for cows. Aggressive animals are often euthanized, no matter what provoked the aggression and it also inflates statistics that could be used as a counter argument to veganism.
The same sort of thing happens to pigs.
The vegan info posts about pigs tend to use images like this:
Cute, eh? The posts also talk about how intelligent these animals are and how they can be kept as pets. Who wouldn’t want one? Usually people who look into pigs as pets look into ‘mini’ pigs or ‘micro’ pigs. Pigs that will stay small forever. Except even ‘mini’ pigs can grow to a hundred pounds in size and they’re STRONG. I say ‘mini’ because sometimes people are duped into buying regular piglets that are claimed to be fully grown.
Which brings me back to warning anyone who wants to volunteer at a pig rescue that pigs. are. huge. People mislead into thinking they’re not will likely not keep and care for their little pig once it’s not so little and I don’t know anyone who would/could keep a 500 lb hog in their home and/or backyard.
And, like with cows, they are DANGEROUS.
And, unlike cows, they are not herbivores.
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED AND EATEN BY PIGS. Yes, eaten. One could argue that this happens when pigs aren’t well socialized and habituated with humans, but if you’re working with a pig you don’t know you have no guarantee that they’re tame.
I could go on, but cows and pigs are the animals I see most represented in these posts (chickens too, but they pose less of a threat, unless you count avian flu) and another thing I see very frequently are cute pictures and videos and cows, pigs, and chickens interacting with dogs. If you’re under the impression that these animals are sweet and docile and your dog is also sweet, what could go wrong?
A lot.
Odds are your animals will not be used to interacting with an animal of that species and these animals ‘languages’ don’t always translate! Animals get things mixed up all the time! The most common one I’ve seen is a dog misreading a cat’s irritated swishy tail as a wagging ‘I want to play!’ tail. Claws to the face aren’t fun, but attacked by a large animal? Possibly deadly. Dogs do not comprehend size and strength and potential for an aggressive strike in the same way that we do. That’s why you end up with things like this:
Again, that dog could’ve easily died OR MIGHT HAVE DIED LATER.
This little trooper was kicked by a cow
Projecting your feelings and ideas onto an animal can potentially kill them. Again, if you have the opportunity to work with these animals KEEP YOUR OWN ANIMALS AWAY.
All of these things remind me very much of the people who claim wolves are nothing but big puppies, or who cohabitant snakes so they don’t get ‘lonely’.
You can’t love and advocate for the protection of an animal when you only love and advocate for the protection of your fantasy of that animal because when real animals fall short of that, real animals get hurt.
Horses, cows, and pigs are big. Respect their size. Horses, cows, and pigs ALL have the potential to become aggressive. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Respect their potential to become aggressive.
Thank you,
Signed, a person who is sick to fucking death of watching adults assume every farm animal I work with has the personality of a bowl of whipped cream and the patience of a saint and encourage their children to interact with them as such. That’s how animal “attacks” happen, that’s how lifetime fears and hatreds are born.
This was actually featured on r/tumblrinaction as a piece of Sanity Sunday. Very excellent write up with good examples. I think it’s important that humans don’t project their own ideals and fantasies onto animals for exactly the reasons you listed here.
Yeah, I see a lot of shark positivity posts on my dash these days and I really appreciate that. But I think something is being left out of the message so I’m just gonna say that:
YES, Sharks are not bloodthirsty monsters. They only do what they do because they are instinctively driven to do so.
NO, sharks are not your friends. They are not sea-puppies, gentle babies, or whatever BS anthropomorphic “cute” term you want to use to describe them.
YES, you are more likely to be killed by falling coconuts and any number of improbable circumstances than you are to be killed by a shark attack,
NO, sharks are not “harmless”. They are apex predators of their habitats and deserve to be treated with the same respect that you would give to a wild lion, bear, or wolf. JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT LIKELY TO ATTACK YOU DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY WON’T. ACCIDENTS CAN ALWAYS HAPPEN, AND A SHARK’S PATIENCE IS NOT LIMITLESS.
YES, you should take every precaution to prevent a shark from “test-biting” you.
NO, a test-bite is not just a harmless consequence of shark curiosity. A TEST-BITE CAN KILL YOU. Just because sharks generally release people after the first nip and don’t make any effort to eat them does not mean that the bite is somehow any less deadly. You will bleed out in the water if the wound is bad enough.
YES, sharks are endangered and unfairly demonised and worthy of our support.
NO, that does not mean that anthropomorphising them and spreading false information is okay.
Please support sharks, but please, for the love of god, give them the respect they deserve when you do so. YOU ARE NOT HELPING THEM BY ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO SWIM RIGHT INTO THEIR JAWS.
Your annual Shark Week PSA. Sharks are incredible, thrilling creatures but spreading the idea that they are all harmless or interested in eusocial behavior with humans does them no favors.
ska-ana brought up a really interesting point in a reblog I think deserves it’s entire own thread.
An interesting concept, but there has been something on my mind recently regarding anthropomorphizing animals, and that is: where do you draw the line?
Complex mammals like whales, dolphins, primates, elephants, etc. have been known to ‘grieve’ and express emotional distress, form alliances (friendships?), among other behaviors that might only be interpreted through our own human lens. It’s especially prominent with these mammals, as we begin to see so much of ourselves in them, and so much of the animalian side in ourselves. Some mammals are right up there with us (maybe surpassing us) in terms of mental capability, which again begs the question: with anthropomorphizing, where do we draw the line?
As far as I can tell, this is a question that various fields of animal science argue over constantly. Wikipedia summarizes the question of considering animal sentience pretty well:
Beginning around 1960, a “cognitive revolution” in research on humans[16]gradually spurred a similar transformation of research with animals. Inference to processes not directly observable became acceptable and then commonplace. An important proponent of this shift in thinking was Donald O. Hebb, who argued that “mind” is simply a name for processes in the head that control complex behavior, and that it is both necessary and possible to infer those processes from behavior.[17] Animals came to be seen as “goal seeking agents that acquire, store, retrieve, and internally process information at many levels of cognitive complexity.”.[18] However, it is interesting to note that many cognitive experiments with animals made, and still make, ingenious use of conditioning methods pioneered by Thorndike and Pavlov.[19]
The scientific status of “consciousness” in animals continues to be hotly debated. Serious consideration of conscious thought in animals has been advocated by some (e.g., Donald Griffin),[20] but the larger research community has been notably cool to such suggestions.[21]
Personally, I feel like how much anthropomorphism is okay really depends on the situation and the context. When talking about your pet dog, whom you have observed for a long time and whose body language and behavior you’re familiar with, it’s probably okay. When doing education in a zoo or aquarium, probably not (because it communicates incorrect information) except in carefully constructed metaphors that aim to enhance the learning outcomes of the interaction. When talking colloquially about animal science or writing a media piece, I would honestly say just no because of how easily misinformation travels. When doing research? Never.
Ska-ana brings up a really good point that many of the more complex mammals exhibit behaviors that appear analogous to human grief as well as other emotional states, and that those are hard to not interpret from human lens. As far as research is concerned, that’s currently one of the big debates about how to interpret. I had professor explain it to me thusly: we know from various studies that many animals are capable of experiencing physical states that appear chemically analogous to human experiences: e.g., stress, fear, and pleasure. What we don’t know is if, when they appear to be experiencing more complex emotional states such as grief, they’re experiencing it in the same way that humans do. That would likely need to be tested on a physiological level as well as a behavioral one to be able to safely hazard that they’re analogous states. Until that sort of research exists, the best thing we can do to accurately describe the experiences of these animals is to say that they ‘appear to be experiencing a state similar to the human experience of x’ and not that they’re ‘doing x’ – because it’s very unlikely that a whale or an elephant has any similar internal state to a human due to evolutionary and individual history, and immediately assuming an anthropocentric approach to their internal state is likely to lead us to completely misunderstand their actual experience.
I once had a professor say that the scientific study of animal cognition cannot be approached through philosophic arguments about sentience or sapience, because philosophy is inherently anthropocentric. Once you attempt to interpret an animal’s experience through the human umvelt, you’ve immediately removed all scientific validity because you’re studying a non-human animal with a non-human umvelt.
Followers, what do you think about anthropomorphism and where the line is drawn?
I think it’s crazy that anyone still thinks that humans are the only animals with elaborate social needs and corresponding emotional and psychological states. I think it’s wrong to label as anthropomorphism any attempt to recognize the similarity we have with our fellow animals. Any social animal, i.e. one that depends up on living in groups or pairs will have some form of cognition that is similar to ours, and probably will have more than one. For example, why is anyone surprised that horses, lions, and elephants seem able to recognize each other after years apart? Ability to know who is part of your group and who isn’t over long periods of time is a highly adaptive trait for social animals that is undoubtedly favored by evolution.
The feelings of safety that must come from being around members of your own group probably cultivates an overall satisfaction or contentment with life. It might be anthropomorphizing to call this “happiness”, because we have no way of knowing if it’s the same emotion that humans experience, but that shouldn’t prevent us from recognizing it in the animal as a distinct kind of emotional state. The same should go for grief, frustration, anger, etc. The more dependent animals are on social behaviors and relationships, the more important and elaborate these sorts of things become. I suspect that in long-lived animals, like chimps, gorillas, elephants, and dolphins, we will find rich, complex relationships between individuals and the emotions to accompany them, as we do in humans, although naturally, they will be different from those of humans in important ways. Decades of fieldwork with chimpanzees, for example, has shown pretty much beyond all doubt that they experience many forms of cognition and emotion that are very comparable to those of humans. It’s not anthropomorphism to say that. It’s recognizing a continuum between ourselves and our close relatives.
Basic cultural relativism can help us to view animal intelligence and emotion for what it is, to appreciate it in its own right, without having to compare it to humans or rank it on some kind of scale where “more human-like” means “superior” or “smarter”.
Anthropomorphism is when people project a human intention or feeling onto animal behavior because their actions or appearance recall the way a human would look or act in a similar situation, without any other evidence to suggest that is the case, or even when the animal is actually experiencing the exact opposite of what the human projects onto them.
Bringing this discussion back because it’s really important. An addendum now:
What’s important about making sure that we view animal intelligence and emotional experiences as non-analogous to human experience is that it’s disingenuous to assume that human experiences are the pinnacle of possible experiences – doing so devalues whatever animals are experiencing before we can even learn about them.
The belief (often inherent and subconscious) that humans are the most significant species on earth; that humans and human experience is best, more important, of higher value, and more moral than that of animals; assessment of reality through a human-centric lens.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
The act of attributing human experience (e.g., mental state, emotions, conscious choice, logical thought) to non-human animals.
BIOPHILIA
The inherent human tendency to want to connect in an empathetic manner with non-human living things.
SENTIENCE
“The ability of a living thing to feel, perceive, and experience subjectively.” (Source) This can include but is not limited to nor does not necessarily contain: emotions, self-awareness, logical and procedural reasoning, conscious thought.
SAPIENCE
In humans, often defined as “wisdom, or the ability (…) to act with appropriate judgement, (…) may be considered an additional faculty, apart from intelligence, with its own properties.” (Source).
In animals, the conference of ‘personhood’ to a nonhuman; accompanied by the implicit assumption of anthropocentric worldview; experiences of the non-human animal assumed to be analogous to those of humans under the same stimuli.
Training / Behavior Modification Terms:
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING = Developing an association between initially neutral stimuli and biologically important stimuli (google Pavlov’s dogs). E.g. Dogs salivating in anticipation of food.
OPERANT CONDITIONING = An animal’s behavior operates on the environment to produce a good, bad, or neutral result. Animal learns from successes and failures. E.g. Positive and negative reinforcement.
HABITUATION = Getting used to a stimulus that once elicited a greater response by the animal.E.g. A horse becoming less fearful of traffic noises after it has been turned out in a field next to a road.
SENSITIZATION = Becoming more responsive to a once neutral stimulus. E.g. A horse becoming fearful of traffic after a negative experience with it.
POSITIVE (X): Adding something to increase or decrease a behavior.
NEGATIVE (X): Removing something to increase or decrease a behavior.
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT = A stimulus is added to reward a desired behavior. Encourages that behavior to happen more frequently. This is the basis of clicker training. E.g. dog sits on command, receives a treat.
NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT = A stimulus is removed to reward a desired behavior. Encourages that behavior to happen more frequently. Often used in terms of scary thing going way or an unpleasant stimulus stopping. E.g. squeezing a horse forward, stop squeezing once it is moving OR backing away from an animal that is allowing you to be close even though it is uncomfortable.
POSITIVE PUNISHMENT = A stimulus is added as a consequence for a behavior. Encourages the behavior to happen less frequently. Often used to “discipline” animals for “doing something wrong.” E.g. using the whip on a horse as a punishment for bucking.
NEGATIVE PUNISHMENT = A stimulus is removed as a consequence for a behavior. Encourages the behavior to happen less frequently. Is not necessarily “bad” – often represents “natural consequences”. E.g. removing yourself from play when a dog is being too rough.
(behavior and training terms partially sourced from @operationvet).
PiraticOctopus 