Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat

This finding would have been predicted by Jonathan Haidt, one of the leaders of a new school of moral psychology that emphasizes the primacy of heart over head in ethics. Haidt believes that human cognition involves two distinct processes. The first is intuitive, instantaneous, unconscious, effortless, and emotional. The second process, in contrast, is deliberative, conscious, logical, and slow. Usually, it kicks in only after we have made our quick intuitive decision and cleans up the cognitive mess by coming up with justifications for our emotion-based decisions

Haidt’s theory of morality was nicely captured by Lucy, a special educator and animal rights activist I interviewed. When I asked her about the importance of logic and emotion in her path to animal activism, Lucy said, “It always stems from the emotional. But a lot of times I have to find an intellectual rationalization for my emotional reactions. Otherwise, I can’t sway people or defend my position.”

Imagine a grid with four quadrants. The emotional dimension is represented by a vertical line with love/affection on the top and loathing/fear on the bottom. It is bisected with a horizontal line representing the utility dimension—the left side is “not useful/detrimental to our interests,” and the right side is “useful.” The grid now forms a four-cell category system that helps us think about the roles of animals in our lives and the categories we put them in: loved and useful (upper right); loved and not-useful (upper left), loathed and useful (lower right), loathed and detrimental (lower left).

This four-category system even applies to cultural differences in attitudes about man’s best friend, the dog. Guide dogs for the blind and pet therapy dogs clearly fit into the “loved and useful” category. The typical American pet dog, on the other hand, is loved but is not particularly useful in the traditional sense. In Saudi Arabia, dogs are generally despised; they exemplify the “loathed and detrimental” category. Perhaps the most interesting category consists of animals are both loathed and useful. For example, dogs living with the Bambuti people of the Ituri Forest are derided, beaten, kicked around mercilessly, and left to scrounge for offal. However, the same dogs are considered valuable assets, as the Bambuti would be unable to hunt without them.

When I heard about the deaths of David and Cookie, the logical part of me thought that the execution made no sense. While he weighed nearly a ton, Cookie’s brain was the size of my thumb. It is safe to say that a crocodile is not what philosophers refer to as a “moral agent.” After her husband shot Cookie, Haast’s wife said, “The crocodile was just doing what comes naturally to him.” She was right

About half the participants approved the monkey study, while only a quarter of them supported the mouse amputation study. We were not surprised by their decisions, but we did not anticipate their thinking. In the case of the monkey experiment, the students tended to be rational. They based their decisions on considerations such as the costs and benefits of the research or the intrinsic rights of the animals. Not so with cutting the legs off mice. In this case, the participants wrote statements like, “This experiment repulses me.” “Think of the expression on the poor little animal’s face!” and “Gut-wrenching!” Our subjects based their judgments about amputating the limbs of baby mice not on logic but on their emotional reactions to the experiment

The children’s questions reflected a deep-seated category system that distinguished between living creatures and inanimate objects. When shown a pangolin, the kids ask questions like “What does it eat?” When presented with a garflom, they asked “How does it work?” or “What is it for?”—questions they never asked about the animals

In her book Naming Nature: The Clash between Instinct and Science, Carol Kaesuk Yoon describes a series of fascinating cases of people with brain damage whose mental capacities are intact except that they can no longer name animals. J.B.R., whose brain was damaged when he contracted encephalitis, could easily identify inanimate objects like flashlights, wallets, and canoes, but was completely stumped if you showed him a picture of a parrot or a dog. Researchers have also reported that some parts of your brain light up when you see pictures of animals but not pictures of human faces or inanimate objects. Further, these same brain areas are activated when people who are blind from birth hear the names of animals. These studies suggest that parts of the human brain evolved to specialize in processing information about animals.

Mushi are a male thing. Boys catch them, keep them in elaborate cages, and even conduct mushi strength contests. Tokyo department stores sell mushi collecting gear, mushi breeding material, mushi terrariums, mushi mattresses, and, of course, the bugs themselves, which can cost hundreds of dollars. Popular mushi activities include staging matches to see whose beetle can pull the most weight and provoking beetles to fight over pieces of watermelon—an insect version of sumo wrestling

Joan Dunayer would approve. The author of Animal Equality: Language and Liberation, she believes that some words makes it easier for us to exploit other species. She proposes linguistic substitutions such as “aqua-prisons” for aquariums, “inmates” for zoo animals, and “cow abusers” for cowboys. She wants us to refer to our pets as “my dog friend” or “my cat friend.” I am happy to call Tilly “my cat friend,” but I suspect that my dentist, who has an aquarium in his waiting room, will be reluctant to say that it is time to change the water in his “fishy friends’ aqua-prison.”

We got him when he was just a baby. IM was unusual in that he had two heads and one penis (most snakes have one head and two penises). One head was named Instinct and the other one Mind. You can see why we gave him a nickname.