Anthropomorphism

     Dr. Smith is one of the professors that I am made a course contract with - he teaches the wildlife behavior classes on campus. When I was in his office talking to him about my project he suggested several books to read, books with the fun side of animal behavior, or the stories rather than the science. I recently started reading one of these books. It is called If a Lion Could Talk. In the introduction it talks about anthropomorphism - giving inanimate/non-human objects or animals human characteristics. This is something we do with animals all the time. It is interesting that we compliment or appreciate animals more when they behave like humans. We are extremely self-centered. But the author points out that animals are doing this too - dogs treat humans as they would other dogs. Some guy Xenophanes wrote this: "If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce works which men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make gods' bodies the same shape as their own." So I guess we humans can't really be blamed for treating animals like humans. The author also brought up the point that sometimes it is just easier to describe something as if it had intention - a human characteristic. For example it is easier to say that giraffes grew longer necks to reach higher up in trees rather then going into the details of evolution and natural selection.
       Anthropomorphism is something I wanted to look at a little in my project - do zoo keepers give the animals in their care anthropomorphic traits? If they do, is that a bad thing? Or does it somehow help improve relationships? Does the zoo discourage giving human traits to animals? I mean we have already captured these animals, confined them, and forced them to act in ways that benefit man and not necessarily animal....So, we give animals human traits - partially in an attempt to understand them better. Animal conciousness is something that has more recently begun being seriously studied. A big motivation for these studies is a better understanding of animal welfare and animal rights - how should we treat animals? Thinking about it, I realize that my project anthropomorphizes animals right off the bat - they are developing relationships with humans. Aren't relationships a largely human realm? Maybe not, wolf packs and lion prides have hiearchies and relationships...so there is something that humans and animals share, the need for relationships, the need to work with other individuals for survival.
     Anyway, I want to be very aware of how I treat and talk about animals and see where I tend to anthropomorphize them...and if zoo keepers do the same.