Personhood Week: People and Their Pets

I would be remiss, in a series about personhood, not to mention animal rights and the notion of non-human personhood. It’s incredibly interesting.* And yet… it’s not an issue that I can think about with much clarity or insight. When it comes to animals, my choices are full of contradictions and hypocrisies. I eat meat, wear leather, and endorse the use of animal models in medical research. On the other hand, I’m totally taken with the growing body of research demonstrating that non-human animals have cognitive skills once thought to be uniquely human. I believe animal cruelty is wrong and, as regular readers know all too well, I consider my dog part of the family.

So it’s that last thing I’m going to discuss here: pet-keeping. Nearly two-thirds of American families allow animals (animals!) to live with them. People are (arguably, more on that below) the only species to keep pets. Why do we bother? And what does our love of pets say about our personhood?

Scientists have proposed many different theories, as Harold Herzog outlines in the current issue of Animal Behavior and Cognition. Herzog, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University in North Carolina, has been studying our relationship with animals for decades. His theory, which I find quite compelling, is that our love of pets comes from an innate predisposition to form emotional attachments, combined with rapid and powerful cultural evolution.

Read more at...Only Human, November 2014.