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Jim's Reviews > Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals
Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals
by
by
Jim's review
bookshelves: 1paper, animals, 2non-fiction, science, favorites
Mar 09, 2014
bookshelves: 1paper, animals, 2non-fiction, science, favorites
Read 2 times. Last read March 7, 2014 to March 12, 2014.
I listened to this a few weeks ago & gave it 5 stars as an audio book
(My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
even though I don't think that was the best format for it. While it's not filled with facts & figures that require study, there were some I would have liked to have reviewed, not easy in audio format, so I bought the HB paper edition & am skimming through it. Definitely the better format!
(Update: Here's a good interview with Herzog that covers some of what is in the book & gives a great idea as to his style:
http://blogs.britannica.com/2010/11/a... )
Herzog lays the book out exceedingly well. Each chapter covers one general idea & then is broken into many 2 or 3 page subsections that drill into it from various, specific angles. They contain not just factual data, but real world examples that bear real thought. Since they're logically arranged & short, the layout promotes this.
Chapter 2: "The Importance of Being Cute" starts on page 37 by looking at "Why We Think What We Think About Creatures That Don't Think Like Us" using the example of a couple that are crazy about bluebirds & then hits us with some facts a few paragraphs later about just how few species merit our concern & how based on cuteness it seems to be.
- Page 39 starts the next section on "Biphilia: Is Love of Animals Instinctive?".
-Page 41, "Why Do People Hate Snakes?"
-Page 44, "What's In A Name? Language & Moral Distancing"
-Page 46, "Pets or Research Subjects? Categories Count"
-Page 48, "When Bugs are Pets & Dogs Are Pests: Culture & The Sociozoological Scale"
- And so it goes until we get to Chapter 3, "Pet-O-Philia: Why do Humans (& only humans) Love Pets?" starting on page 67.
Here is the
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Is It So Hard to Think Straight About Animals? 1
1 Anthrozoology: The New Science of Human-Animal Interactions 15
2 The Importance of Being Cute: Why We Think What We Think About Creatures That Don't Think Like Us 37
3 Pet-O-Philia: Why Do Humans (and Only Humans) Love Pets? 67
4 Friends, Foes, And Fashion Statements: The Human-Dog Relationship 97
5 "Prom Queen Kills First Deer On Sixteenth Birthday": Gender and the Human-Animal Relationship 129
6 In The Eyes Of The Beholder: The Comparative Cruelty of Cockfights and Happy Meals 149
7 Delicious, Dangerous, Disgusting, And Dead: The Human-Meat Relationship 175
8 The Moral Status of Mice: The Use of Animals in Science 205
9 The Cats In Our Houses, The Cows On Our Plates: Are We All Hypocrites? 237
10 The Carnivorous Yahoo Within Ourselves: Dealing with Moral Inconsistency 263
Acknowledgments 281
Recommended Reading 285
Notes 289
Index 327
As you can see from the chapter titles, he has a great sense of humor. It permeates the writing, but is very low key & he never lets it interfere with the facts. He's not afraid to hold himself up as an example, either. Chapter 6 "In The Eyes Of The Beholder: The Comparative Cruelty of Cockfights and Happy Meals" is a perfect example. He studied cockfights & the culture surrounding it after he happened upon it while buying chickens of his own to raise. Then he got behind a couple of trucks carrying chickens (Cobb 500 variety) & studied the lives of factory farmed chickens. His gut reaction to cockfights was negative &, like most of us, he hadn't thought much about where a Chicken McNugget came from. He evaluates his own & society's reaction to this & came to some interesting conclusions that he touches on more in the final chapter.
5 "Prom Queen Kills First Deer On Sixteenth Birthday": Gender and the Human-Animal Relationship, might be one of the best chapters in the book because Herzog makes a lot of sense out of averages, bell curves, statistics, & their impact on us. While he is concentrating on gender roles, the concept is the basis for many misunderstandings today. He sums it up very well in one sentence:
"When two bell curves overlap, even a small difference between the average scores of the groups will produce big differences at the extremes."
These extremes are what make the news &, all too often, blow our minds.
If you're hoping for a direction for your moral compass, you won't find it here. Herzog often shows both sides of animal rights issues & sometimes even tells us which way he jumped - if he did - but he makes no judgments. He leaves that to the reader, which I appreciate with a topic this emotional & irrational.
Gave it to my daughter to read & she's taken it with her. Hope to get it back some day...
(My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
even though I don't think that was the best format for it. While it's not filled with facts & figures that require study, there were some I would have liked to have reviewed, not easy in audio format, so I bought the HB paper edition & am skimming through it. Definitely the better format!
(Update: Here's a good interview with Herzog that covers some of what is in the book & gives a great idea as to his style:
http://blogs.britannica.com/2010/11/a... )
Herzog lays the book out exceedingly well. Each chapter covers one general idea & then is broken into many 2 or 3 page subsections that drill into it from various, specific angles. They contain not just factual data, but real world examples that bear real thought. Since they're logically arranged & short, the layout promotes this.
Chapter 2: "The Importance of Being Cute" starts on page 37 by looking at "Why We Think What We Think About Creatures That Don't Think Like Us" using the example of a couple that are crazy about bluebirds & then hits us with some facts a few paragraphs later about just how few species merit our concern & how based on cuteness it seems to be.
- Page 39 starts the next section on "Biphilia: Is Love of Animals Instinctive?".
-Page 41, "Why Do People Hate Snakes?"
-Page 44, "What's In A Name? Language & Moral Distancing"
-Page 46, "Pets or Research Subjects? Categories Count"
-Page 48, "When Bugs are Pets & Dogs Are Pests: Culture & The Sociozoological Scale"
- And so it goes until we get to Chapter 3, "Pet-O-Philia: Why do Humans (& only humans) Love Pets?" starting on page 67.
Here is the
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Is It So Hard to Think Straight About Animals? 1
1 Anthrozoology: The New Science of Human-Animal Interactions 15
2 The Importance of Being Cute: Why We Think What We Think About Creatures That Don't Think Like Us 37
3 Pet-O-Philia: Why Do Humans (and Only Humans) Love Pets? 67
4 Friends, Foes, And Fashion Statements: The Human-Dog Relationship 97
5 "Prom Queen Kills First Deer On Sixteenth Birthday": Gender and the Human-Animal Relationship 129
6 In The Eyes Of The Beholder: The Comparative Cruelty of Cockfights and Happy Meals 149
7 Delicious, Dangerous, Disgusting, And Dead: The Human-Meat Relationship 175
8 The Moral Status of Mice: The Use of Animals in Science 205
9 The Cats In Our Houses, The Cows On Our Plates: Are We All Hypocrites? 237
10 The Carnivorous Yahoo Within Ourselves: Dealing with Moral Inconsistency 263
Acknowledgments 281
Recommended Reading 285
Notes 289
Index 327
As you can see from the chapter titles, he has a great sense of humor. It permeates the writing, but is very low key & he never lets it interfere with the facts. He's not afraid to hold himself up as an example, either. Chapter 6 "In The Eyes Of The Beholder: The Comparative Cruelty of Cockfights and Happy Meals" is a perfect example. He studied cockfights & the culture surrounding it after he happened upon it while buying chickens of his own to raise. Then he got behind a couple of trucks carrying chickens (Cobb 500 variety) & studied the lives of factory farmed chickens. His gut reaction to cockfights was negative &, like most of us, he hadn't thought much about where a Chicken McNugget came from. He evaluates his own & society's reaction to this & came to some interesting conclusions that he touches on more in the final chapter.
5 "Prom Queen Kills First Deer On Sixteenth Birthday": Gender and the Human-Animal Relationship, might be one of the best chapters in the book because Herzog makes a lot of sense out of averages, bell curves, statistics, & their impact on us. While he is concentrating on gender roles, the concept is the basis for many misunderstandings today. He sums it up very well in one sentence:
"When two bell curves overlap, even a small difference between the average scores of the groups will produce big differences at the extremes."
These extremes are what make the news &, all too often, blow our minds.
If you're hoping for a direction for your moral compass, you won't find it here. Herzog often shows both sides of animal rights issues & sometimes even tells us which way he jumped - if he did - but he makes no judgments. He leaves that to the reader, which I appreciate with a topic this emotional & irrational.
Gave it to my daughter to read & she's taken it with her. Hope to get it back some day...
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Reading Progress
February 22, 2014
–
Started Reading
(Audio CD Edition)
February 22, 2014
– Shelved
(Audio CD Edition)
February 22, 2014
– Shelved as:
1audio
(Audio CD Edition)
February 22, 2014
– Shelved as:
animals
(Audio CD Edition)
February 22, 2014
– Shelved as:
2non-fiction
(Audio CD Edition)
February 24, 2014
–
Finished Reading
(Audio CD Edition)
March 7, 2014
–
Started Reading
March 9, 2014
– Shelved
March 9, 2014
– Shelved as:
1paper
March 9, 2014
– Shelved as:
animals
March 9, 2014
– Shelved as:
2non-fiction
March 12, 2014
–
Finished Reading
September 18, 2016
– Shelved as:
science
September 18, 2016
– Shelved as:
science
(Audio CD Edition)
December 5, 2017
– Shelved as:
favorites
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Thanks, Laura. If I had this to read over again, I'd listen to the audio book with the physical one handy. My daughter was visiting, so I let her take my HB copy before I got a chance to revisit the Trolley problem. That's fairly long & complex. Really best done in paper format. The audio version was excellent for most, though.
I find I can't listen to non fiction on audio. my mind usually wanders and i miss details. I see they have this book at the library so I'll check into it.
p.s. your comment about your daughter made me have a fond memory of my dad. He was a voracious reader and he was also a shift worker...so lurking around at unconventional hours. If he happened to find your book that you were in the middle of (say, when you had gone off to school and he was home during the day) then he would pick it up and abscond with it and you wouldn't get it back until he finished it!
Hah! We used to have fights about books, especially Harry Potter new releases. That's a fond memory & good fights to have. It led to long discussions, too. One reason I read so my PNR/UF was because my daughter was into it. Pretty tough for a middle age man & a teenage girl to connect, but books were one way.
I know what you mean. My parents had me in their 40s and I had my kids around 40 so our love of books is a big help in bridging the big age gap.
Sounds delightful. Wonder how he would react to the horse therapy they have now for troubled youth. Maybe Joyce Brothers was an idiot in many ways, but her maxim for health "Get a Pet" still rings.Maybe I am irrational but human by Herzog's standards for never eating another McDonald's hamburger after seeing "Fast Food Nation's" portrayal of the huge crowded feedlots under the McDonald production system. (An earlier step was the veal production expose, and sausages after reading Sinclair Lewis in high school)
As I wrote in the review, Michael, "If you're hoping for a direction for your moral compass, you won't find it here. Herzog often shows both sides of animal rights issues & sometimes even tells us which way he jumped - if he did - but he makes no judgments. He leaves that to the reader, which I appreciate with a topic this emotional & irrational."In the review of the audio version (linked at the top) I mention how the last chapter gets into animal rights & extremism. His explanations of it are wonderful & he shows why most of us can't live that way.
I quit eating veal around 1980 after working at an animal auction & dealing with veal calves there. If I applied the same logic to chicken, I would have quit eating that, too. I don't & didn't. Why don't we eat dogs & horses in the US? Read the book. It's an interesting topic to explore if only to see just how irrational we are. It's easy to see how these same thought processes carry over into other areas of our life, too.
Why do Humans (& only humans) Love PetsInteresting note: Wild baboons are known to keep dogs as pets.
James wrote: "Why do Humans (& only humans) Love PetsInteresting note: Wild baboons are known to keep dogs as pets."
If you read the update article I just posted, Herzog says, "In the wild, animals will sometimes play with members of other species, but these interactions are almost always short-lived and sometimes end with the death of the “pet.”
I have also read that there is some disagreement about what constitutes keeping pets & about the interactions between baboons & dogs. There's a pretty famous video of them together in a dump that some use to prove they do, but others disagree. Here's one such article:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...
I've watched one species raise another's get, but not in the wild. Mom's German Shepard bitch raised several fawns. Her Golden Retriever nursed a kitten. She used to have her Bantams raise guineas, ducks, geese, & pea fowl, so I suppose anything is possible. I don't know how often it would happen in the wild, though. Happening once in a million times doesn't really count, IMO.
Jim wrote: "I have also read that there is some disagreement about what constitutes keeping pets & about the interactions between baboons & dogs"Yes. I take most of that in the same way that I take attempts to define life or intelligence. If it's not exactly the way that we do it, then it's not that... but that's silly. There's no way to define what a pet is, even for humans.
Is a pet a boon companion? Yes. No. Sometimes. Never.
Is a pet a protector? Yes. No. Sometimes. Never.
Etc..
The only commonality that I can determine for humans is that pets are another species (usually) that the human owns/possesses, has some kind of connection to, and doesn't eat.
The baboons seem to be keeping pet dogs.
James wrote: "...The baboons seem to be keeping pet dogs. "You didn't read the article I linked in the last post, did you?
...just confirming that these baboons are not keeping pets, even though they have more interspecies interactions than usual because of their common food source and distribution.
-----------
...The kidnapping of babies and infants is indeed part of the behavioral repertoire of some types of baboons. There is no evidence, however, that the baboon-dog relationships observed at the barren garbage dumps of Taif are fundamentally analogous to the relationship that I have with my cat....
I think that's more definitive, although I'd like to see several others weigh in.
The kidnapping of babies and infants is part of the behavioral repertoire of humans, too. Including both human infants and pets. This does not preclude humans keeping pets.My point is that newly discovered behaviors tend to be routinely dismissed by experts, because they have to believe they know better (or how can they consider themselves experts?). Even currently accepted scientific principles (I'm looking at you, Continental Drift) have been routinely dismissed by the heterodoxy, until said heterodoxy dies off and is replaced.
It used to be said that only humans kill without need (sport, war, etc), until a tribe of chimpanzees was documented hunting down a smaller, rival tribe and killing them, even though they had to leave their hunting grounds, to do so.
I can't verify that the baboons are keeping pets, but an expert on other baboons who watched a YouTube video and then dismissed it... well... let me just say that I reserve my grain of salt.
James wrote: "The kidnapping of babies and infants is part of the behavioral repertoire of humans, too. Including both human infants and pets. This does not preclude humans keeping pets...."Agreed, hence my last sentence, "I think that's more definitive, although I'd like to see several others weigh in."
It may also be that this is the first time another primate has kept pets (assuming that's what is happening). Possibly as a result of observing humans doing so.It is suggestive, that this happens in a tribe (?) that has a closer association with humans.
I don't know that it suggests anything except that perhaps 'wild' may not fully apply here. Learned behavior can be specific & fleeting. There is also symbiosis to consider & the point of view the observer takes. (Did we domesticate wheat or vice versa?) It's complicated & not something a lay person can judge very well, IMO. In some ways, it's similar to tool use among early hominids & how it is one indicator of that fuzzy line we crossed becoming modern humans. While I've read several books that discuss it, Fagan's does a good job of differentiating between the traits that define us in Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations. There are many subtle differences in using a rock to shaping it as a modern human tool & he missed a big one, finding specific types of rocks & carrying them. His book is about 15 years old & we didn't have the tech then, though.
Experts often don't agree, but they're also extrapolating off very small data sets, just as in this situation. That can lend outliers too much weight. Just because a sport does something in a specific situation doesn't mean it should be taken as a rule of general behavior, especially over time. Applying evolutionary terms to a few decades doesn't make sense in a species with this long of a life cycle. Learned behavioral terms do, though.
Anyway, I think Herzog's claim that we're the only species that keeps pets stands pretty well as a general observation. A few sports don't invalidate it.
Jim wrote: "but they're also extrapolating off very small data sets, just as in this situation. That can lend outliers too much weight... I think Herzog's claim that we're the only species that keeps pets stands pretty well as a general observation. A few sports don't invalidate it."I would agree, except that I wasn't making a general observation about baboons, as a species. I was making a specific observation about one group of baboons and their documented behaviours.
I've tried reading a few books on this topic in the past but have mostly emotional diatribes on one side of the fence or the other. This one sounds more balanced. I like it when authors credit their readers with enough brain power to make their own choices.