Month: December 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9l94b3x9U

After 22 years of raising chickens for Perdue, one brave factory farmer Craig Watts was at his breaking point and did something no one has done before.  This video raises a bunch of issues we discussed in both in class and in our readings. This video does a oddly good job of giving the animals personal identities through close up shots, which shift into larger shots of the inhumane living conditions. These stylistic qualities give the video a sense of melancholy and sadness, aid the viewer to sympathize with the animals and their abusive situations.

I attended a talk this semester called “Coats and Collars: Fashions for Animals in the Early Modern Period” that was held at Lafayette College. The talk was given by Dr. John Black Friedman who works at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The Ohio State University.

Dr. Friedman began to discuss the prominence of animal accessories at modern pet shops such as rhinestone collars and doggie sweaters. He stated that the reason we dress up our dogs in such a way is to assert their identity. We like to individualize our dogs. I thought this was interesting because the dog himself does not feel a need to assert his own identity. Instead, it is the owner who is projecting his or her own needs to be recognized as an individual onto the dog.

It is not just today that we feel a need to dress up our pets in order to show their identity, which is a projected version of our own identity. For example, dogs in the medieval period often wore the family coat of arms shown on their collar. We have evidence of this from various tapestries made during this era that showcased royal dogs. Some dogs also wore heavy gold collars to assert their owner’s wealth.

This class helped me realize that using dogs in order to assert your own wealth and/or identity means that you are viewing your pet instrumentally and not intrinsically.

References:

Friedman, John Black. “Coats and Collars: Fashions for Animals in the Early Modern Period.” Lafayette College. Skillman Library. 10 November 2014. Guest Lecture.

Today I stumbled upon one of Science Daily’s latest articles which discusses new research that has been recently published about how goats show positive emotions. Apparently, when a goat is happy it points its ears forward, keeps its tail up, and produces more stable calls.

So why does this matter?

We often talk about what stresses and animal out but the ultimate goal of animal welfare is not just to eliminate stressors, but to actually keep animals happy. By knowing what signs to look for in a happy animal, we can promote agricultural behaviors that promote positive emotions within an animal. Also, learning more about animals’ emotions helps us to appreciate them as sentient beings.

This image appeared in my Facebook feed this morning, and it struck me as one we might talk about.  What do you see in this representation on an animal?  What cultural commonplaces about animals? About human-animal relationships?  About dogs in particular?