Attitudes towards animals
As some of you may know, I've been doing some animal-related research the last few days to help one of my friends with a project; she wants to teach our Romanian orphans (I say "our" because they're the same kids I worked with while I was over there) about animals, and I agreed to give her some background info. (This is, for those of you who are curious, the reason I was searching for moose distribution....) Many of the animals on her list are domesticated animals.
Now, to be completely up-front about the whole thing, part of my problem is that my main resource (a HUGE book called "The Encyclopedia of MAMMALS"*) does not like to discuss domesticated mammals for whatever reason**. Perhaps some of the same problems would be found with other animals on my list, only I covered them all through the book.
Caveat aside, I was annoyed and disgruntled to find what the internet says about our attitude towards domesticated animals. First of all, I could find hardly anything in the range of what I was looking for. To give an example, I was trying to find the following information about each animal's reproduction: age of sexual maturity, gestation/incubation period, number of offspring, time of year for mating season/birth, time young nurse, time young stay with mom/parents, and perhaps size at birth. With domesticated animals, it was nearly impossible to find this. With cattle, for example, I could either find extremely in-depth information ("What effect does sunflower oil have on the calf's birth weight?") or extremely basic ("A baby cow is called a calf. The end."). Where is the middle ground? Surely there are people interested in learning about more of the basics of animals than this! Who want to learn more than 2-3 quick facts, while not wanting to read up on exotic research.
However, what annoyed me even more than this was what was displayed. Nearly all the sites that I came across looked at domesticated animals purely from a point of view of how we can use them. Information about meat, eggs, milk, wool... this was readily available. Want to know how best to cram your animals into a small space and raise lots of them at one time? No problem; the internet's your friend. Want to talk wistfully or scornfully of days when animals were treated decently by their keepers before being slaughtered (while still pointing out that there is no way possible of going back and treating them that way again)? Still, no problem. Want to learn about the animals themselves, their lifestyles (are they social? living in small family groups? life span? favorite food?), and what makes them unique creatures? Who cares?
I'm not trying to argue against eating meat or getting things like milk, eggs, and wool. They are an important part of our lives, and we can't deny that. Nor would I argue that animals who have spent thousands of years learning to live with humans should be turned back out into the wild. I just want us to have more respect for the creatures who feed, clothe, and carry us around the world. Let's find out what they're actually like, so that the next time I have to do this sort of research I don't have to look up the red jungle fowl*** to find out the size of a live chicken, not just their weight after having been chopped into bits. Perhaps if we were more aware of where these resources come from, we could treat the animals with more humanity.
* The front cover has the word "mammals" in all caps; I'm sure it's a font choice, but it does sort of fit the very "mammal-ish to the exclusion of all others" feel.
** This is the only serious drawback to this book I have come across, other than the fact that it would be awful to drop it on your toes. I mean, we're talking SERIOUSLY heavy.
*** The wild ancestor of the domestic chicken, and still living in India and SE Asia. Who knew?
Now, to be completely up-front about the whole thing, part of my problem is that my main resource (a HUGE book called "The Encyclopedia of MAMMALS"*) does not like to discuss domesticated mammals for whatever reason**. Perhaps some of the same problems would be found with other animals on my list, only I covered them all through the book.
Caveat aside, I was annoyed and disgruntled to find what the internet says about our attitude towards domesticated animals. First of all, I could find hardly anything in the range of what I was looking for. To give an example, I was trying to find the following information about each animal's reproduction: age of sexual maturity, gestation/incubation period, number of offspring, time of year for mating season/birth, time young nurse, time young stay with mom/parents, and perhaps size at birth. With domesticated animals, it was nearly impossible to find this. With cattle, for example, I could either find extremely in-depth information ("What effect does sunflower oil have on the calf's birth weight?") or extremely basic ("A baby cow is called a calf. The end."). Where is the middle ground? Surely there are people interested in learning about more of the basics of animals than this! Who want to learn more than 2-3 quick facts, while not wanting to read up on exotic research.
However, what annoyed me even more than this was what was displayed. Nearly all the sites that I came across looked at domesticated animals purely from a point of view of how we can use them. Information about meat, eggs, milk, wool... this was readily available. Want to know how best to cram your animals into a small space and raise lots of them at one time? No problem; the internet's your friend. Want to talk wistfully or scornfully of days when animals were treated decently by their keepers before being slaughtered (while still pointing out that there is no way possible of going back and treating them that way again)? Still, no problem. Want to learn about the animals themselves, their lifestyles (are they social? living in small family groups? life span? favorite food?), and what makes them unique creatures? Who cares?
I'm not trying to argue against eating meat or getting things like milk, eggs, and wool. They are an important part of our lives, and we can't deny that. Nor would I argue that animals who have spent thousands of years learning to live with humans should be turned back out into the wild. I just want us to have more respect for the creatures who feed, clothe, and carry us around the world. Let's find out what they're actually like, so that the next time I have to do this sort of research I don't have to look up the red jungle fowl*** to find out the size of a live chicken, not just their weight after having been chopped into bits. Perhaps if we were more aware of where these resources come from, we could treat the animals with more humanity.
* The front cover has the word "mammals" in all caps; I'm sure it's a font choice, but it does sort of fit the very "mammal-ish to the exclusion of all others" feel.
** This is the only serious drawback to this book I have come across, other than the fact that it would be awful to drop it on your toes. I mean, we're talking SERIOUSLY heavy.
*** The wild ancestor of the domestic chicken, and still living in India and SE Asia. Who knew?