It has helped me understand how we study animal behavior and emotion. Or in some scientific communities, how they make it a point not to study animal emotion purely on the basis that animal emotions don't exist. It is believed that through special animal stories or anecdotes, science is colored by our emotions. Another way to say we transfer our human emotions unto animals is through anthropomorphism.
As a pet owner, it's very difficult not to look at my rabbit Dobbie and see my "baby" rabbit. She's so full of personality and life, that counts for something doesn't it? Or because she's a pet, does that change things? She's not from the land of survival anymore and no longer has priorities the same that wild rabbits have.
As far as Dobbie's emotions? I can see them clearly. When Noah leaves the living room to go to the bathroom, Dobbie follows and stands at the doorway waiting. When he reappears, she follows him back to the couch, then finds her place on the floor where she was before. What does that mean? She misses Noah? Can a rabbit miss someone?
The squirrels on my back patio are clearly wild ones. They've torn apart my Halloween pumpkins and eaten the seeds. Yes, I could call them little savages. But they also exhibit interesting characteristics that I associate with humans. The curious look they give me when I sit outside and smoke with them. The rollicking good time they seem to have chasing each other around my patio. Is it territory protection or fun and games? When they've finished chasing one another, they all settle down and eat the sunflower seeds I've thrown for them.Are they sharing their loot with one another?
I'm not done with the book and this is by no means a review of it. I couldn't buy it because I was in Barnes and Noble loitering. I did take some interesting notes on what I learned from it:
- Anthropomorphism is a sin in the scientific community.
- Funktionslust: A German word referring to the pleasure taken in what one can do best. For example, Dobbie is really good at destroying my carpet by pulling it up at the edges, I can only assume that she enjoys doing it as well has being good at it. Because she won't stop. This suggests that animals do things for pure enjoyment and not always out of practicality. Her gnawing on the card board box that hold my Christmas decorations might not just because she has to wear down her teeth. We've set down a hay block next to the box for that very purpose, but she ignores it. Perhaps destroying that box is her joyful activity.
- Could evolutionary terms in research possibly sidestep emotions that animals might have? "The squirrel subject is becoming aggressive towards human contact." This could mean. "The squirrel is angry or afraid of human contact."
- Rene Decartes was famous for saying: "I think therefore I am." He also said of animals: "The reason why animals do not speak as we do is not that they lack the organs, it's that they have no thoughts." Apparently he was also famous for kicking his own dog because he believe it's yelps were nothing more than predictable clock work function, making the animal more mechanic. Weirdo.
- Later on Voltaire criticized Decartes of being an idiot, my words not his. But he maintained that animals were more than machinery.
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