Monday, July 25, 2011

The Ecstatic Animal

Photo from theveganvoice.org, credit Amanda

Can a pig smile? Is the dog really happy you walked through the door? Is the cat smug that she swallowed the canary? (The canary is, at this point, not happy.)
Talking of animal emotion sounds like the stuff of fairy tales and myths, with their addiction to anthropomorphism and creatures that talk. In an over-correction to humanized animals, modern science avoided attributing emotion to animals and focused on behavior responses and adaptations. Defenders of animals often focused on mistreatment and observable physical harm, though they certainly entertained the idea that animals could be miserable. On this topic,  Eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham is often quoted on animal feeling: "the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?" (Bentham's ideas are often overshadowed by the bizarre example of his mummified body in London. For this treat, watch a mini-lecture on "Bentham's Corpse and Corpus".)
If animals can suffer, can't they also experience its opposite? Dr. Jonathan Balcombe, who has been researching animal awareness for some time, documents the possibilities with a new book that presents photographs from many sources that appear to document tangible animal emotions.  The book, The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure, was recently reviewed by Katherine Bouton for The New York Times. In evolutionary terms, pain serves some useful purposes, discouraging a being from pursuing destructive activities, and the same could be said of pleasure--it encourages life-sustaining activities, like eating, sex, let's see, sex, and other stuff too.
Sometimes with animals (including the human one) the pleasure principle can get out of hand. You've experienced this if you've ever played fetch with a retriever that won't stop or had a cat be very insistent about curling up in your lap whenever your lap appears. Balcombe shares this interesting lab rat tale: "Rats will enter a deadly cold room and navigate a maze to retrieve highly palatable food (e.g., shortbread, pate or Coca-Cola.)" If the goodies have been replaced with high-fiber, low-sugar chow, "they quickly return to their cozy nests, where they stay for the remainder of the experiment."
The Exultant Ark is a picture book to an extent, and explanations are probably more detailed in Balcombe's earlier book, Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good.
Bolcombe's cover photo in the above book and an image in the NY Times review feature pigs, animals that in many farm situations do not have opportunities for play or contact that might be construed as affectionate. Current hog production for the food market is often faulted for its use of "farrowing crates." The theory: the sow is confined to a crate with bars that keep her from standing or rolling, to prevent her from crushing her piglets or eating them. (From what I gather, the eating is not common and tends to happen with a piglet that is sickly or already dead.) What I don't know at this point is how much of her year a sow spends in such a crate--one week or many months? For pro-crate views on hogs and hog babies, see ThePigSite: Pig Health. The same web source also mentions alternatives, with an emphasis on the outside pressures on pork producers to provide better animal welfare. See Alternative Farrowing Accomodation.  Jonathan Balcombe, a self-described animal activist on his website, is not focused on high pork output but on the implications that an understanding of animal feeling will have on ethics. Animal life in his view is not or should not be mere grim survival. He intends to "debunk the popular perception that life for most is a continuous, grim struggle for survival and the avoidance of pain. Instead he suggests that creatures from birds to baboons feel good thanks to play, sex, touch, food, anticipation, comfort, aesthetics, and more."

Two parting thoughts:
Are animals happy because they don't have politicians?
Rats will endure a freezing maze for Coke, but would they do the same for Diet Pepsi?







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