This morning I came across an article on a comedy site I like to read that seemed relevant to the course, so I decided to share it here. One of the major elements of the course has been the (mis)interpretation of animal behaviors by humans, and this article addresses some of the ways we misinterpret the behaviors of our canine companions. While it’s a comedy article, it’s grounded in real scientific study and has some very relevant points about human-animal interactions. The fact that it’s presented in a comedic fashion doesn’t hurt either.
*Potentially offensive language warning, there are some obscenities used in the article although none are particularly pointed
The video I chose depicts a group of children at Yellowstone National Park approaching far too close to a wild bison bull with the encouragement of an adult filming the events (hereafter referred to as “Moron”), and then running for their lives when the bison – entirely predictably – charges them. This human-animal interaction illustrates the dangers of substituting voyeuristic thrill for respect for an animal.
The very first thing we hear in the video is Moron assuring the children that “he’s friendly” (B Loy). Rather than shepherding the children away from the beast that has greater strength and weight than all of them combined, Moron just stands back and films the children as they approach the bison while repeatedly exclaiming “oh my gosh” (B Loy).
As the children approach, the bison turns to face them and begins shaking its head and hind quarters about while snorting loudly: classic warning signs that it is preparing to charge. Moron even notices these “gestures,” (B Loy), although he doesn’t take any action to mitigate the considerable danger facing the children; whether this is because he didn’t realize what the gestures meant or because he was simply too empty-headed to act is unclear but given what we’ve seen of him so far, either is possible. The bison then moves to block the path it saw the children taking; because it stands its ground as the humans approach and even moves to block their path, this is clearly territorial behavior and not self-preservation instincts.
Which is bad.
As the children continue advancing, the bison’s warning gestures become more pronounced and it lowers its head – this bull is going to charge whatever draws its attention next. The two children who had managed to get past the bison are saved from almost certain death by a man who quickly hops onto the wooden footpath on the other side of the bison, the sudden motion causing it to charge. The main group of tourists flees away from the bison’s territory, but one child breaks from the group and runs parallel to the border; the animal singles this child out and pursues him, quickly closing the distance until the child turns and sprints away from the bison’s territory with less than a yard between him and the animal, at which point the bison, satisfied that it has made its point, abandons the chase (B Loy).
It is by sheer luck that nobody was killed in this incident; it’s hardly uncommon to hear about tourists gored or trampled by bison, almost universally killing the tourist. The worst part about this kind of thing is that it’s a 100% completely avoidable situation; even a modicum of common sense would have defused the situation before it escalated to the point that it did. It was by sheer luck that nobody was killed, and if it were to happen again fatalities would be almost guaranteed. It’s truly infuriating that nobody had that little bit of common sense not to approach Nature’s Rage-Filled Battering Ram.
Well, we’re calling the camera guy Moron for a reason.
Since I grew up on a farm that counted several heads of bison among its livestock (the bison were there before we were), I’m more familiar with the temperament and physical capabilities of bison than your average person idiot dad on vacation. This is why I find it simply infuriating seeing things like this charge happen. Not only does this sort of behavior jeopardize the safety of the tourists but it also epitomizes the marginalization of both the animal itself as it is reduced to a check box on the family’s vacation summary as well as its “wild-ness” as the people in the video treat it like it is a tourist attraction there solely for their amusement.
Bison are not animals to be trifled with; they can weigh to 2,000 pounds (read: a lot bigger than a person), run at up to 30 miles per hour (read: a lot faster than a person), jump up to six feet vertically (read: a lot higher than a person), and their heads sport two long, sharp horns sprouting from a bone plate in the skull that they can use to smash through a reinforced fence (read: a bison will ruin your day). Furthermore, bison are typically ill-tempered and remarkably unintelligent animals with highly aggressive and territorial dispositions, and will not hesitate to use the aforementioned physical abilities to run down and kill anything that threatens it or intrudes on their turf. As seen in the video, that includes tourists small children with questionable adult supervision. Long story short, despite being herbivores a bison can and will mess you up if you don’t treat it with caution and respect.
The group’s close approach to the bison also encroaches on its “wild-ness” as an animal and reduces it to a sideshow stop on Yuppie Dad’s Great Yellowstone Vacation Plan (patent pending). The father displays several behaviors that Malamud condemns, such as engaging in the voyeuristic thrill of watching the bison from a, at least in theory, superior vantage point of greater power (Malamud 221). While he (thankfully) doesn’t take it as far as the physical self-stimulation Nimier witnessed (qtd. in Malamud 220), Moron does take part in the all-too-common metaphorically masturbatory exercise of wrapping oneself in warm, fuzzy feelings of superiority while sipping on a hot mug of smugness and looking at the “inferior” animals of the wild. In the eyes of the tourists in the video, the bison was not a living, breathing creature but a tourism draw like Old Faithful (note: at no point has a geyser ever tried to violently kill somebody).
By reducing the bison to nothing more than a spectacle to provide fleeting amusement on vacation, the animal that was once revered as a sacred creature by the Plains Indians is marginalized until it is nothing more than a silhouette on the souvenir T-shirt your 15-year old son wears to let all his friends know about his awesome summer vacation. The bison has been marginalized to something that is only good to look at for a few minutes by the side of a road; the animal that once owned the Great Plains has been reduced to Yellowstone National Park’s Bison™, merely a mascot for a tract of land in Wyoming and Montana – or for a certain clearly inferior liberal arts college that shall remain nameless (looking at you, Chris). In the popular opinion, bison are simply objects for humans to look at in mild-to-moderate wonder; few people particularly care if the bison is looking back. Berger identified this imbalance in Why Look at Animals?: “animals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance” (Berger 16). Humans are too wrapped up in looking at the bison from the windows of their Winnebagos to bother wondering if the bison is looking back, and what it might think of them.
By forgetting that bison are more than source material for screen-printed images on T-shirts, they marginalize the animal until they also forget the sheer strength and lethality it carries. This marginalization is the result of the reduction of the bison to a mascot or a tourist attraction, and stems from Man’s tendency to look down on animals who do not resemble himself. However, the human perception of the bison, no matter how erroneous, cannot change simple facts such as this:
Those kids are damn lucky.
Works Cited:
B Loy. “Angry bison charges small child at Yellowstone in scary video.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 5 Sep. 2012. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.
Berger, John. Why Look at Animals?. New York: Vintage International. 1977. Print.
Malamud, Randy. “Zoo Spectatorship.” The Animals Reader. Ed. Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. New York: Oxford Press. Print.
I chose to write this post about the package for some honey I found in the kitchen of my suite. This stuck out to me as a good product to use for this post because, unlike many other uses of animals on food labels, bears are not used for production of honey.
The bears that are used in this product’s packaging are on opposite ends of the anthropomorphism spectrum: the bottle bear is so abstract that it displays very few human qualities, while the bear on the label has a very human-like expression and looks directly at the consumer. Although they are not as anthropomorphized as some other examples of food mascots, the way they are depicted is still very telling about how they are seen by the company that designed the packaging.
While the first bear, the bottle bear, does not exhibit particularly human traits, it has also been stripped of many of the things that make it a bear. The animal this bottle is shaped like has been stripped of its bear-ness, conveniently leaving a hollow shell to hold honey.
Meanwhile, the bear printed on the label is peeking over the brown region of the label in the way a human might, and looks directly at the viewer with a smile, something human added to the bear for the sake of advertisement. This anthropomorphized bear’s image is being exploited by humans for the sake of advertisement.
Foer defines anthropomorphism as, “the urge to project human experience onto the other animals” (Foer 46). This “urge” is exploited by the advertisers to allow consumers to make a connection the bear on the package, as bears are commonly associated with eating honey. By anthropomorphizing the bear on the label, people are encouraged to partake in the same activities as the bear, i.e. eating honey. The bottle bear contributes to this attempt at influence through anthropomorphization, as he is literally full of honey, just as the consumer should be.
The package for this honey shows how anthropomorphized animals’ images are exploited by food companies to further the industry’s own goals. In this case, that goal is selling honey. Foer’s definition of anthropomorphism as an “urge” plays right into this use of animals. or more accurately their images, in the food industry as instruments of marketing departments and tools of the giant food producers of the world.
I came into the class late and got swept up in the Laika work pretty quickly, but I figure this is better late than never…
I’m Alex Lehmann, a sophomore mechanical engineering major originally from a tiny town in New Hampshire called Warner. Warner is known for its small farms and its thriving arts scene, as it is home to many nationally-renowned artists and writers including Pulitzer Prize winner Maxine Kumin. Legend even has it that Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken was written following a walk in the rural areas around Warner.
Outside of studies, I am a member of the Lafayette Ski Team. I began alpine ski racing when I was six and haven’t stopped to this day. I have raced every one of the last 13 winters and have also dipped my toes into the coaching world, working with high school varsity and club teams in New Hampshire. Since it’s such a big part of my life, it seems fitting to include a picture of my racing here.
Animals have always been in my life as both pets and work partners. Throught my life my family has had five cats and a dog, and I have worked with a Marine Corps MWD (military working dog) named Mushi. I think this gives me an interesting view of both sides of the intrinsic/instrumental value argument as I have experience with both sides of the debate. The Marine Corps Times put together a good report about a working dog handler that illustrates the relationship between MWDs and their handlers very well.
I look forward to continuing to improve my writing skills and also gaining some insight into a topic that I wouldn’t have thought much about before. Here’s to a great rest of the semester!
Although my time in class has not dramatically affected my attitudes and views regarding human-animal relationships, it has encouraged me to put much more time and effort into thinking about and analyzing the source of these views and their underlying components. When I came across a Far Side comic drawn by cartoonist Gary Larson, I found myself searching for details that would tell me more about what Larson was attempting to say about human-animal relationships.
The comic depicts a domestic scene with a couple eating dinner in their living room and the family dog on the floor nearby. The dog is highly anthropomorphized, standing upright on two legs and wearing an angry expression that would be more at home on a human face than a canine one. The dog is wielding a revolver pistol and aiming it directly at his owner, and the caption reads, “’Hey, bucko…I’m through begging.’” Although they are being held up by their dog over food, neither human in the image appears at all concerned. The man looks at the dog with a blank expression and his mouth full of food, while his wife seated opposite him doesn’t even give the dog any heed.
Before joining this class, I would have found the image moderately amusing and moved on to other ventures. However, now that I have spent time in class thinking in much more depth about human-animal relationships, this seems to be an exaggerated example of the impact that exploitation at the hands of humans can have on animal psyche. The dog is clearly fed up with his low-ranking position in the household and his use as a novelty as a pet. Blue, the horse in Alice Walker’s Am I Blue?, experiences the same feelings as he is left alone in his field until he is wanted for human purposes, be them riding or breeding. Even when under these circumstances, Blue is treated as an object and not as a living being since the children who ride him, “ride furiously for ten or fifteen minutes, then get off, slap Blue on the flanks, and not be seen again for a month or more.” His mate is also taken away immediately after he impregnates her, hammering home the point that Blue is simply seen as a tool by his owners. Like Gary Larson’s dog, Blue also becomes fed up with this and snaps after his mate is removed, wearing, “the look of disgust with human beings, with life; the look of hatred.” Both the Far Side comic and Am I Blue? Are making the point that when their intrinsic value is ignored in favor of their instrumental value, irreversibile damage is done to the human-animal relationship.
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