LogFAQs > #983812298

OneSpookyGirl posted...

I think too many people anthropomorphise animals, especially in fiction, to an extent where they fail to understand that their hard coded behaviours are not actually analogous to human thought or reasoning.

Obviously, if you magically granted a given animal human sapience, intelligence, speech, and the ability to stop and reason like a person, they might tell you any number of things. This doesn't change that real life animals have deeply ingrained instincts that trigger certain behaviours and needs, whether it's free roaming, running, digging, chewing, foraging, hunting, seeing their own kind, etc. Not all of these can be fully accomodated in captivity, especially within secure, miniaturised habitats, which is a common conundrum for zoos (and for less savvy pet owners), because those actions provide degrees of stimulation and enrichment necessary for a healthy animal.

But on the opposite end many people are also afraid to recognize how similar many of the base emotions animals feel that are similar to humans. We all followed a similar evolutionary path after all. And most animal research just keeps finding more and more similarities between humans and other animals. We know animals have sentience and feel pain, fear, and even joy. But people would rather not think about that because it's inconvenient and incompatible with how much we exploit and harm them.