Animal Cultures

Gwen at Sociological Images does a quick survey of yet another place where humans and non-human animals seem to have a brightline but do not: culture.

Persons of the Sea

Over at Oxford’s Practical Ethics,  Lena Groegner’s post on the dolphins as “non-human persons” issue is sober and short, but there is one bit that intrigued me:

The word has long been used to refer to non-human entities: in Christianity we find the three persons of the Holy Trinity, or in law we find the notion of “legal person” to refer to organizations like cities, colleges, or (stirring up quite a controversy recently) corporations. It’s commonly acknowledged that not all persons are human beings. But why should we consider dolphins persons, and what would change if we did?

A great point.

PS – how did I not think of the “Chicken of the Sea” pun? Newlyweds joke + uplift = so goooood

A Dog Is Not A Human Being, Right?

Old School Border Collie via Time Life/ Google

New York Magazine asks and answers the question with the article “The Rise of Dog Identity Politics,” wherein John Homans probes the life of dogs as fashion accessories, the perfect companion, how city life has changed them from working animals, the Victorian mindset of the AKC, the disagreements between rights groups and how we deal with our pets’ deaths. It’s a great article, but Homans neglects the bizarre cognitive dissonance necessary to treat a dog as both a human and non-human animal simultaneously.

The most interesting point, for me, was Homans describing how dysfunctional a lot of the human-animal relationships are precisely because we mis-perceive dogs as having more personhood than they do. He returns again and again to the same basic idea: many people love dogs because they seem like perpetual children that many owners see as the perfect friend – someone they can completely control and who will love them unconditionally. The sadness inherent in Homans’ piece is that we both treat dogs as people and utterly neglect them. I was disappointed to see Homans’ didn’t cite Donna Haraway’s most recent work When Species Meet, because she hits on this very point when talking about feral cats. In the book, Haraway advocates recognizing these species for what they are – limited persons – and against shoehorning them into the role of little people.

Pets are not people, but they are limited persons, which is a distinction that both grants the animal more respect and requires more responsibility on behalf of the owner.

Consider this: dogs, in the case of most breeds, have been bred to the point of retardation, disease, and disability. Dog breeds are entirely human creations, yet there is little sense of responsibility for the grotesque features and disabilities of many of these animals. Homans could talk about how “human” dogs seemed to their owners without addressing the cognitive dissonance necessary to justify our vast genetically engineering the species and the virulent loyalty of people to various breeds.

Or, to take another example, Homans talks about how people like dogs because they are similar to the “little dictatorships” parents have over children. Read that again. Imagine an article on parenthood about a child being described as living under a “little dictatorship.” Stories like that are often about parents like Joe Jackson’s torment of his children in an effort to get fame and wealth for himself, or the parents of youth beauty pageants, so perfectly parodied in Little Miss Sunshine. Our society recoils at people who manipulate, control, and basically abuse their children in the name of their own entertainment, but to treat a dog this way is seen as endearing and normal.

The problem, of course, comes from our society’s lack of a middle ground between a full-person, that is, an adult human, and a non-person. Dogs, cetacean, great apes, elephants, parrots, pigs, and pinnipeds all fall into the non-existent middle category of non-human persons. But because we lack a cultural and legal understanding of this category, the companion animals, dogs in particular, are forced to straddle the line between the two, ultimately ending up with more problems than benefits. The result is people buying clothes for their dog and giving it an outrageous, trendy diet while still advocating canine eugenics in the name of appearance, at the cost of health, intelligence, and quality of life for the dog.

The result is people buying intelligent, high energy, loving companions that they kennel for 8 hours a day and refuse to socialize properly. The result are animals that get dressed up in clothes and carried in designer bags and exist merely as a prop, receiving affection at the owners discretion, neglected and ignored when they lose their fashion capital.

If we see dogs as humans, we shouldn’t be practicing eugenics on them, neglecting their basic needs – like training and exercise, enjoying “little dictatorships” over them, or subjecting them to the latest trends. Homans’ article reveals that, for many dog owners, dogs allow for a dysfunctional, one-way relationship in which the totalitarian owner takes and takes from an animal that is only too happy to give, never once questioning the cruelty and neglect it suffers.

Pinniped Squee

Ridiculously cute.

via Cute Overload

To justify the above posting, here is a video about how seals, sea lions, and walruses are also much, much smarter than we previously thought.

Urban Animals Still Evolve

And Moscow’s wild dogs and beggar dogs are proving it:

[B]eggar dogs have evolved the most specialized behavior. Relying on scraps of food from commuters, the beggar dogs can not only recognize which humans are most likely to give them something to eat, but have evolved to ride the subway. Using scents, and the ability to recognize the train conductor’s names for different stops, they incorporate many stations into their territories.

Could uplift happen by virtue of environmental shift alone?

["Moscow's Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence, Including Mastery of the Subway" - Pop Sci]

The Perils of Bird Research

Dig out your Halloween gear:

Field biologists have observed that crows seem to recognise them, and a few researchers have even gone to the extreme of wearing masks when capturing birds to band (or “ring”) them, so that they could later observe the birds without upsetting them. However, it was unclear whether the birds distinguish people by their faces or by other distinctive features of dress, gait or behaviour. To find out, John Marzluff at the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues donned a rubber caveman mask and then captured and banded wild American crows.

Whenever a person wearing the same mask approached those crows later, the birds scolded them loudly. In contrast, they ignored the same person wearing a mask of former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, which had never been worn during banding. “Most of the time you walk right up to them and they don’t care at all,” says Marzluff.

Folks, getting to test whether a caveman or Dick Cheney mask is more upsetting to crows is part of avian research is conclusive proof that science is cool.

["If You Think a Crow is Giving You the Evil Eye..." - New Scientist]

Animal Prosthetics

Here are a few of stories about animal prosthetics to start your day off right:

In 2005, the chances of surviving didn’t look good for a bald eagle named Beauty, which was found wandering a landfill in Alaska with no means to feed itself. Sadly, the bald eagle had its beak shot off by a hunter. When recovered, Beauty struggled to rehabilitate, having to be force-fed food. Fortunately for the bald eagle, she was able to benefit from some compassion as opposed to the cruelty that injured her in the first place. A titanium, lifelike beak was designed for and fitted on the eagle, which was able to regain its ability to drink and feed itself. While the beak is not strong enough for the bald eagle to return to the wild and tear at prey, it at least allows Beauty to function better and regain her natural appearance while now living a safe life free of hunters.

["Animal Prosthetics: Uplifting Stories of Rehabilitation" - Webecoist via Neatorama]

Dolphins Even Smarter Than We Thought

I suspect the next decade is going to be packed with news about animal intelligence. Researcher Lori Marino (the humor of a Marino working on Dolphins is not lost on me) notes two major reasons dolphins are so smart:

First, various features of the dolphin neocortex — the part of the brain involved in higher-order thinking and processing of emotional information — are “particularly expanded” in dolphins.

Second, behavioral studies conducted by Marino and other experts demonstrate that dolphins exhibit human-like skills. These include mirror self-recognition, cultural learning, comprehension of symbol-based communication systems, and an understanding of abstract concepts.

My thoughts on dolphin personhood here. Oh, and enjoy the hunting techniques of the bottlenose while we’re on the topic:

["Dolphins: Second-Smartest Animals?" - Discovery News]

Avatar Sex

Meredith Woerner at io9 brings up the prickly situation of sex in Avatar. As most of us guessed, Na’vi sex happens, at least in part, with their mind-link cords:

If [no genitalia are involved], then we’d have to assume that Na’vi mating only includes the hair tail syncing system. Which puts us in a bit of a dirty little conundrum. If syncing up basically means “the most amazing orgasm” ever, um, what does it mean when the Na’vi are syncing up to the rest of the Pandorian wildlife? Can the animals really consent, or even understand what’s going on here?

Now that is a weird question. As I mentioned earlier, Cameron’s biosphere on Pandora is far more interesting than anything in the film’s plot. I must admit, when I initially read the headline about “Avatar” and “bestiality,” I thought Woerner was implying that having sex with the Na’vi was akin to having sex with an animal. That, thankfully, is not her point. Instead, what she is asking is: if Na’vi-Na’vi link equals sex, then Na’vi-Pandorean critter link would also, weirdly, equal sex, which, in turn, would equal bestiality. By Woerner’s logic, the movie should have been NC-17 because just watching Jake Sully learn to ride the horse would be way beyond MPAA standards of decency.

Of course, Woerner is just exploring the possibilities, so let’s take her lead and run with the idea of Na’vi sex. The question of consent is the most important one here, as that’s what makes a behavior unethical. Let’s assume that Na’vi sex is genital free and only involves the mind-link, so every animal-Na’vi interaction is potentially a sex act. A worrying set-up, since we see a lot of linkage throughout the film.

In a worst case scenario, the more mentally powerful (intelligent, advanced, evolved, etc.) creature controls the situation and every mental-link would be somehow sexual. Thus, every interaction that isn’t between two fully matured Na’vi adults, say, between a Na’vi adult and a Pandoran banshee, is rape. It is rape because consent is impossible, due to the imbalance of both power and intelligence. In this worst-case scenario, Jake Sully effectively raped most of the flora and fauna he encountered on Pandora via his avatar. Re-read that sentence, ladies and gentlemen, and remember this is what happens to your brain if you read too much Foucault.

That scenario, however, doesn’t quite make sense.Through Jake’s trials and tribulations, we see that learning to deal with the mind-link is not easy and, even with the plants of Pandora, requires significant effort to make effective. Furthermore, the link is shown to work in both directions, effectively uniting the two creatures. Jake can “feel” the emotions and sensations of the creature. It brings into question the whole idea of sex for the Na’vi. With a pure mental link, one that flows in both directions, the fundamental barrier between two entities is broken. By linking together, the two entities must, in a sense, decide to give the other pleasure. A bond can be made, but it need not be pleasurable, or pleasurable in the way sex is. When I pet my border collie, that isn’t sexual, but she seems to take pleasure in it. The mind-link, like physical contact, probably requires a lot more than just the basic connection for it to be a) pleasurable and b) sexual.

Based on my arbitrary, totally unverifiable speculation, it would seem that the way the Na’vi link to each other and to the wildlife of Pandora makes it possible for two different species that cannot communicate via language to have consensual sex.

The weirdest point is that, because the pleasure isn’t physical, one can presume that the intensity of the experience comes from a mutual desire to interact in a pleasurable  way (is it even sex?). By extension, the quality of the mind linked would determine the quality of the sex. Therefore, not only would rape be a technical impossibility due to the nature of the bond, there would be no point in having sex-like mind-linking with a non-humanoid entity.

So, I think, if I’m getting this right, Meredith Woerner does not have to worry about the alien bestiality that is ostensibly implicit in Avatar. Probably.

Dolphins as Non-Human Persons

I have been lucky enough to swim with dolphins twice in my life. Once it was as a “swim with dolphins” experience in Mexico where I was pushed around by the dolphins in an awesome little display of power and warned not to “pet them on the tummy, or they might get horny, and, by extension, violent.” It is a strange thing to be cautious not to arouse a cetacean. The second time was snorkeling, when a pod of dolphins came out of the deep and decided to investigate my dad and me for a few minutes before getting on their way. In both cases, the dolphins were visibly intelligent. It was like the uncanny valley in reverse – instead of a lifelike body with dead eyes, I was confronted with unsettlingly intelligent eyes within an inhuman body.

Because the environment of humans and dolphins so rarely intersects, it is much harder for us to observe and casually appreciate dolphin intelligence the way we do with chimps and parrots. Furthermore, dolphin faces are not as familiarly emotive. Thus, the news in The Times about a scientific consensus is developing around the rights of dolphins as non-human persons is fantastic. Here comes a huge chunk of the article summarizing all the reasons why:

Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioural studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.

It has also become clear that they are “cultural” animals, meaning that new types of behaviour can quickly be picked up by one dolphin from another.

In one study, Diana Reiss, professor of psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, showed that bottlenose dolphins could recognise themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect various parts of their bodies, an ability that had been thought limited to humans and great apes.

In another, she found that captive animals also had the ability to learn a rudimentary symbol-based language.

Other research has shown dolphins can solve difficult problems, while those living in the wild co-operate in ways that imply complex social structures and a high level of emotional sophistication.

What makes the assertion of dolphin personhood so important is that the first recognition of personhood rights in a non-human, even if limited, will have tremendous, spectacular ripple effects. If we accept dolphins are non-human persons, say, with limited rights akin to that of a human child then here are some logical conclusions one might be able make:

1. Dolphins could have limited sovereignty rights, making the oceans they patrol effectively their territory. The ocean might become a UN protectorate.

2. Dolphins would no longer be in zoos and aquariums. It would be tantamount to imprisonment.

3. Alternatively, state funding for the study of dolphins would skyrocket. To ensure the law is accurate and neither a farce nor insufficient, a very accurate, very clear understanding of dolphin intelligence would be needed.

4. Dolphin deaths would become literal murders and deaths resulting from fishing would become genocide.

Without a near global consensus on the issue, it will be nearly impossible to recognize dolphin personhood. Can you imagine the equivalent of the COP15 dealing with international animal rights?