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Authors: Marc Bekoff
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morning and now was hanging out, waiting for what I’m not sure. He just sat and looked as happy as could be. I know better than to toss food over my porch or to leave garbage outside. To get to my car, I have to walk about a hundred feet up a hill, but I really couldn’t with the bear right there, so I waited until he meandered off to see what treats my neighbor might have. Ten days later, when I returned home from my trip around midnight, I stepped in a pile of fresh bear poop left right at my front door. Welcome home!
Mountain lions have also visited my home with little or no hesitation. Or, more accurately, after someone built a house in the middle of where they live, they have become extremely comfortable sharing their home range with me. Lions and I truly are close neighbors, so it’s not surprising that I’ve had some very close encounters with them. Once, in fact, I almost fell over a huge male as I walked backward to warn some of my neighbors of his presence.
Sometimes we don’t know just how lucky we are that other animals have allowed us to live in their homes and allowed us to coexist with them. We ought to pay them the same favor and make room for them in our own lives. This land is their land, too.
REASON 2
Animals Think and Feel
“It is remarkable how often the sounds that birds make suggest the emotions that we might feel in similar circumstances: soft notes like lullabies while calmly warming their eggs or nestlings; mournful cries while helplessly watching an intruder at their nests; harsh or grating sounds while threatening or attacking an enemy. . . . Birds so frequently respond to events in tones such as we might use that we suspect their emotions are similar to our own.”
— Alexander Skutch, The Minds of Birds
IF ANIMALS COULD CONVINCE HUMANS of only one thing with their manifesto, it would be that they think and feel. Animals are sentient, and they care about what happens to them. In their various ways, animals are passionate, deliberate, logical, self-aware, and have individual personalities.
Animals are, in other words, a lot like humans, even if they are not the same as humans. The emotions of our fellow animals are not necessarily identical to ours, and there’s no reason to think they should be. Their hearts and stomachs and kidneys differ from ours, and those of one species differ from those of another species, but this doesn’t stop us from recognizing that animals have hearts, stomachs, and kidneys that serve the same functions as ours. There’s dog-joy and chimpanzee-joy and pig-joy, and dog-grief, chimpanzee-grief, andpig-grief. Just because other animals feel differently does not mean that those animals don’t feel.
At a meeting in Palermo, Italy, a biologist told me about his dog, who for twelve years was friends with a mule. After the mule died, the dog followed the cart in which the corpse was being carried, and when the mule was buried, the dog slowly walked over to the grave of his friend and wailed. The biologist had never seen his dog do this before. The biologist told me that before my lecture on animal emotions, he ‘d been hesitant to tell this story. After all, how could he know what his dog’s behavior meant, if anything? But after hearing stories of animals ranging from turtles to magpies to elephants who displayed grief, he was now certain his dog had also grieved the loss of his longtime friend.
Anthropomorphism: Are We Just Making It Up?
Anthropomorphism is attributing human characteristics to animals and inanimate objects. Is this what we’re doing when we sense that animals are expressing sadness, anger, or joy? Are we just projecting human emotions onto them? It’s a valid concern. Humans have a history of solipsism, seeing anger in a hot wind and malice in shark attacks. We have a way of making everything about us.
In this case, though, we more often make the opposite mistake: we prefer to discount what is right before our eyes and
Mountain lions have also visited my home with little or no hesitation. Or, more accurately, after someone built a house in the middle of where they live, they have become extremely comfortable sharing their home range with me. Lions and I truly are close neighbors, so it’s not surprising that I’ve had some very close encounters with them. Once, in fact, I almost fell over a huge male as I walked backward to warn some of my neighbors of his presence.
Sometimes we don’t know just how lucky we are that other animals have allowed us to live in their homes and allowed us to coexist with them. We ought to pay them the same favor and make room for them in our own lives. This land is their land, too.
REASON 2
Animals Think and Feel
“It is remarkable how often the sounds that birds make suggest the emotions that we might feel in similar circumstances: soft notes like lullabies while calmly warming their eggs or nestlings; mournful cries while helplessly watching an intruder at their nests; harsh or grating sounds while threatening or attacking an enemy. . . . Birds so frequently respond to events in tones such as we might use that we suspect their emotions are similar to our own.”
— Alexander Skutch, The Minds of Birds
IF ANIMALS COULD CONVINCE HUMANS of only one thing with their manifesto, it would be that they think and feel. Animals are sentient, and they care about what happens to them. In their various ways, animals are passionate, deliberate, logical, self-aware, and have individual personalities.
Animals are, in other words, a lot like humans, even if they are not the same as humans. The emotions of our fellow animals are not necessarily identical to ours, and there’s no reason to think they should be. Their hearts and stomachs and kidneys differ from ours, and those of one species differ from those of another species, but this doesn’t stop us from recognizing that animals have hearts, stomachs, and kidneys that serve the same functions as ours. There’s dog-joy and chimpanzee-joy and pig-joy, and dog-grief, chimpanzee-grief, andpig-grief. Just because other animals feel differently does not mean that those animals don’t feel.
At a meeting in Palermo, Italy, a biologist told me about his dog, who for twelve years was friends with a mule. After the mule died, the dog followed the cart in which the corpse was being carried, and when the mule was buried, the dog slowly walked over to the grave of his friend and wailed. The biologist had never seen his dog do this before. The biologist told me that before my lecture on animal emotions, he ‘d been hesitant to tell this story. After all, how could he know what his dog’s behavior meant, if anything? But after hearing stories of animals ranging from turtles to magpies to elephants who displayed grief, he was now certain his dog had also grieved the loss of his longtime friend.
Anthropomorphism: Are We Just Making It Up?
Anthropomorphism is attributing human characteristics to animals and inanimate objects. Is this what we’re doing when we sense that animals are expressing sadness, anger, or joy? Are we just projecting human emotions onto them? It’s a valid concern. Humans have a history of solipsism, seeing anger in a hot wind and malice in shark attacks. We have a way of making everything about us.
In this case, though, we more often make the opposite mistake: we prefer to discount what is right before our eyes and
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