So I was reading @why-animals-do-the-thing âs utterly fabulous article on Why Vegan Diets Will kill You Cat (And Sicken You Dog) at 1am, as one does, and hit upon a pretty good argument against how many people anthropomorphize animals and why it is dangerous.
Anthropomorphization is people assigning human traits to nonhuman beings. This is dangerous because is can lead to fundamental misunderstandings of how those animals function which can then lead to improperly caring for them while actually thinking youâre doing a good thing, like, say, an over-zealous vegan who tries to put their cat (an obligate carnivore) on a vegan diet. But the cat is not a human with a human digestive tract capable of supporting veganism (hell, there are many humans whose digestive tracts cannot support veganism for varying reasons). The cat is a cat with a carnivorous digestive system that cannot handle a vegan diet. Ditto for dogs, even if theyâre omnivores. Omnivore does not mean âcan be a vegan if you only feed it plantsâ, despite what some people think. Again, the article goes into this.
Worse, anthropomorphization can also lead to people not actually knowing that the reactions their animal is displaying to, say, a vegan diet or some new stimulus. Animals do not express emotions in the same way humans do.
Letâs take crying. I have mentioned to a few people over the last few days a crying incident my dog had while I was not homeâbecause I was not home, he is used to only living with me and was confused and distressed that my parents were home and I was not, we are still working on this as it is a new situation. But when I say he âcriedâ I do not mean he wept or blubbered as a human would. In fact my dog is baffled by human tears and thinks licking them (which is profoundly uncomfortable) is the solution to their existence, while being far more accommodating to almost all other human signs of distress other than tears. His âcryingâ was to sit at the door, refuse play, food, or treat, and make distressed noises. My father tried to comfort him, but as the reason for the discomfort was partially my fatherâs presence (âwhy are there humans in the house when My Human is not in the house, this is not something I am used to, I am unused to it and therefore upsetâ essentially) it did not work for a little while. Still, my parents recognized the source of the crying and acted accordingly, and eventually he calmed down and joined dad on the couch (albeit dad noted he was still clearly stressed, just less so). They also recognized his getting upset and urinating was due to being in distress (again, he is not used to being home with other humans but not me yet) and was not him being a Bad Dog. Itâs just that he hasnât even been here a month at their house and is still adjusting when things go off his usual routines such as âno humans in the house unless My Human is.â
A lot of people seem to think that an animal is âcryingâ when it looks as if tears are coming from its eyes. That is not how many animalsâ eyes function. Again, letâs take my familyâs dogs, this time two cocker spaniels (both now passed). In some dogs, there are issues with their tear ductsâthe eye socket is too shallow based on breed face shape, there are airborne irritants, or more serious issues. The first cocker spaniel, who was older than me, had constant tear tracts due to the stellar combo of all the crap in north Florida air, shallow eye sockets, and light fur making them more visible. He looked like he was constantly weeping, especially in heavy pollen season, but he was not weeping and was a perfectly happy dog.The second cocker was in almost the same conditions, but had lesser tear tracts due to differing head shape giving her deeper eye sockets and her nose shape being less conducive towards gunk buildup sliding down her face quickly. Neither of the âtear tracksâ meant anything other than that we as owners needed to clean around their eyes and make sure we were minimizing irritants. Excessive âtearsâ in dogs are not an indication of sadness but either of just flushing out irritants or a medical issue. If it seems severe, go to a vet. Otherwise, remember that animals have their own systems of showing distress and that you need to learn how your animal is likely to show upset, not assume that because a behavior seems like a human behavior it is the same as that human behavior with all that goes behind that human behavior.
Mistaking animal behaviors can lead to problems. Thereâs of course the common âmy dog is smiling!â when in reality the dog is showing its teeth as a sign of distress. But, moving back to the vegan issue, thereâs things like âmy dog ate it so they must like it or think itâs okay for them!â Dogs will eat anything. My current dog will eat the fluff from inside stuffed animals or wads of hair pulled out of hair brushes and put in the garbage. One of the cocker spaniels loved shrimp, which turned out to be an issue as he ended up being allergic to it later in life. Dogs do not know what an acceptable diet is for them and will eat almost anything. It is what they do. Dogs also cannot be vegan because veganism is not just a diet but a series of lifestyle choices and dogs cannot actually make the choices inherent to veganismâthey are dogs. They are not eating something because they have any moral feelings about it, they are eating it because they are hungry and it is there. While people say âoh, you can feed your dog a vegan diet with vet assistance!â Iâm sorry, but having to have a vet constantly monitor your animal and give you supplements to prevent your chosen diet from killing your animal is honestly not much betterâsure the vet can make sure you donât do them serious harm but the fact that you admit what you are doing is so iffy that you need a vet to keep a constant eye on things should be a huge warning sign.
And this is an area where I blame the media. For example, in the wangst-laden film Seven Pounds, the âtoo good for this earthâ love interest has a massive Great Dane that she claims is a vegan (which Iâm 90% certain was done to make the love interest seem like a good person to the viewer). In one moment of the film the dog happily gobbles up some meat from the protagonist (which upsets the love interest) and its diet is mentionedâitâs so bad, just steamed broccoli and tofu. No wonder that poor thing wants more protein, sheâs killing it! And of course any number of animated movies. I donât mind pets being anthropomorphized to star in the story, but maybe donât have their humans do things that are completely bad animal care (unless thatâs the point of the story). Even otherwise good movies fall into this trap a lot just for the sake of showing an animal, say, enjoying hot chocolate or ice cream (I like Oliver and Company, but Oliver should have been dead or at least very sick with what Jenny was letting him gobble up). And this has just never been a thing Iâve understood, even as a kid. Probably the âbestâ example from kids movies is Lilo and Stich were a) Stitch survives being given coffee because he is not a dog but an alien, b) there are still negative repercussions to giving him coffee and c) all of Liloâs poor animal care is tacitly acknowledged by the story to be misguided as she is five and Nani is too busy to help her. And even then itâs pretty iffy.
I just do not get why so many shows and movies seem resistant to feeding pets pet food. Hell, not even to feeding pets pet food, but often by showing animals as disliking pet food and wanting something else, usually something humans desire but pets shouldnât have like cake, ice cream, or hot chocolate (with no repercussions, of course). It baffles me. And then that causes people who donât put too much thought into animal care to assume diets are wider than they are or that thereâs no (or just very little) difference between feeding a pet and feeding a human. Or worse, to convince people that typical pet food is not going to be something their pet desires enough to eat and so start looking at ways to spice it up or feed them something else. Protip: if your dog or cat is not eating normal, healthy pet food, as in refusing to eat it or not eating enough to sustain themselves despite it being provided, go to a vet and ask them what to do. Not eating is normally a sign of a problem. It is a sign something is wrong not âoh, heâs being pickyâ. Go to a vet.
While animal and pet care has definitely improved over my lifetime in many ways, there are still a lot of people who are hugely uneducated in how to keep their pets properly and I think anthropomorphization plays a role in that. While you still certainly have your assholes who treat pets just as property instead of living creatures with needs, you also now have well-meaning owners who have gone so far in the other directionâseeing their pets as practically humanâthat theyâre ignoring the needs the animals have as animals and treating them and their behaviors as if they were humans. Animals are not âpractically humanâ with human behaviors and people pushing that as the way to get people to empathize with animals can often be the wrong tactic as it can lead to misinterpretation of animal behaviors due to anthropomorphization making people think the behavior must be related to the nearest human analogue. And the well-meaning can be as much trouble as the assholes since they might (and often do) react very badly to the very suggestion that their behavior is harming their animal because they love their animal and would never intend to harm it. But lack of intent does not mean lack of harm. So there needs to be a lot more education so that the well-meaning learn that itâs not an attack on them and that weâre not saying they donât love their pets, just that their pets need a better standard of care and need to be treated as the animals they are, not as the animal-shaped humans they are not.
