Steven Imbrenda Imbrenda 1
ENG-110G
Professor Jesse Miller
April 17th
Humans and Animals
Humans have been living on Earth for a very long time and in just the last few thousand years we have become the most superior species on the planet due to our communication and ability to develop cultures of unique formalities. We constantly now keep increasing the advancement of our technologies and have an incredibly large system capable of obtaining the food required in order to feed the near 8 billion humans on earth. What I think many people overlook is how the animals we use to feed ourselves and even those we experiment within medical research for our greater good as a species are treated before they are killed. This brings into question that, since humans have now reached the top of the food chain, does that give us the right to decide the fate of all the other animals on earth? Authors David Foster Wallace, Ross Anderson, and Hal Herzog all cover their point of views with their pieces “Consider the Lobster”, “Animals Like Us”, and, “What the Crows Know”. Each one of these authors makes a point that we as a society are unsure of how animals other than ourselves feel anything such as pain, emotion, or even sight. This shows how society holds more value to ourselves rather than other species. This doesn’t just isolate life and death either, it includes the way we treat them from culture to culture and what type of rights any basic living thing deserves.
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The way we treat animals seems unfair, but we gotta eat right?. David Foster Wallace’s article “Consider the Lobster” tackles this claim by discussing lobsters and the way humans treat them. I have been familiar with lobsters ever since I was a toddler. My grandparent’s house was right on the ocean and we would often go there for family dinners and a lot of the time lobster was the go to dinner. I was a child who would always play with these crustaceans but I always got a little sad when it was time to cook them alive in boiling hot water. This brought about me always wondering why that was the only thing I have eaten that was alive just an hour ago. I love the taste of lobster but do feel terrible when watching them be cooked alive. This is what Wallace and Herzog call the ‘troubled middle’. The troubled middle is where the line between ethics and values intersect in our ideas of treating animals. Herzog adds that “We middlers see the world in shades of grey rather than in clear blacks and whites of committed animal activists and their equally vociferous opponents.”(Herzog 6) Wallace also questions the practice of cooking lobster by adding, “Lobsters can at least exhibit a preference for not being lowered into a pot of boiling water.”(Wallace 1) . The possibility that we have become numb to the lives of anything but ourselves is concerning. But, is this different than any other type of way we eat?
When we pick out steak, chicken, pork, etc. at the supermarket we are buying something that was slaughtered elsewhere in order to be sold. It seems logical that to kill your own food so that is fresh as could be. But do to our societies values and culture, many people cannot get themselves to murder an animal. This is cruel and/or inhumane to society even though it happens every day in order to feed everyone. By going to the store to buy frozen meats and such, the
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cause is still being supported to keep killing animals for our sustenance but the majority of the public doesn’t have to do the gory part of it. When others start to question the ethical aspects of this though it becomes a very difficult subject to discuss without bias views.
When it comes to other species, humans seem to defy our concepts of logic. We have commercial farms that’s sole purpose is to breed and kill animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens. But when we look at other cultures we see them use dogs, dolphin, and whales as food and this creates conflict. Why do certain animals hold more of a value to us that it seems unethical to kill them but ok to kill a different type of animal? These concepts are all developed by the cultures we are brought up in. In the United States most would frown upon eating any type of dog meanwhile in Asian culture this is a normal practice. Hal Herzog discusses this blurry view on animals by introducing us to Judith, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology, thinks of “herself as a vegetarian, yet still experiences the joys of smoked Copper River salmon and lemon-grilled swordfish.”(Herzog 1) Fish definitely are living animals and it is mind-blowing that someone with such a high education can still be unsure of this. So it seems to me that a lot of people in our world are still unclear about what we consider an animal is.
Animals have proven on various occasions that they have cognitive abilities. Problem solving and ingenuity are two areas where a vast amount of different species have shown to have success in. Ross Andersen describes one of the more impressive acts of animal ingenuity by talking about the crows, “In Japan, one crow population uses traffic to crack open walnuts: the
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a crow drops a nut in front of cars at intersections, and then when the light turns red, the swoop in to scoop up the exposed flesh.”(Anderson 5) I personally find this behavior to be truly fascinating, as these crows are not only responding to the nature of the environment they inhabit but also the actions of the other residents with whom these crows share space with. Anderson also talks about ants and their problem solving, “Ants build body-to-body bridges that allow whole colonies to cross gaps in their terrain.”(Anderson 9) It is astounding that the ants can discover solutions to problems in their environment and solve them by working together. It is these actions we see animals do that can cause a grey area between humans and other animals.
Herzog and Anderson find themselves in the strange space of the “troubled middle”, as does Wallace. Before attending the Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace found statistics like the 100,000 people (and 25,000 pounds of lobster) that attend the festival each year, but he also read up on the anatomy and physiology of the lobsters themselves. Many will argue that lobsters can’t feel pain since they don’t have a cerebral cortex, which is a key component of the complex human nervous system. While the nervous system of a lobster is much different from that of a human and most similar to that of a grasshopper, Wallace found that “pain reception is known to be part of a much older and more primitive system of nociceptors and prostaglandins that are managed by the brain system and thalamus” (Wallace 4), concluding that lobsters can definitely feel the physical trauma of being prepared for a meal. This theory is tested every time a lobster is cooked, fighting to escape the boiling water it is trapped in. Bluntly Wallace puts it as a lobster “behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water”
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(Wallace 6). Wallace’s studies put him in a conflicted position, recognizing the most common way of lobster preparation are cruel and inhumane. More so, he seems unsure whether or not the practices be reconsidered since it has become a yearly custom in Maine. Traditions are often difficult to reverse and are rarely questioned because it becomes normal to society over time, no matter how controversial it may be at its roots.
The “troubled middle” sounds all in all a bad place to be, but rather this area of thought shows that we are recognizing what we are doing as a society. It also infers whether or not we need to reconsider cultures in order to respect the moralities of others. Eating animals will always be a part of natural life but the way in which we do it desires a change. Authors Herzog and Wallace make strong arguments regarding a vast amount of animals the are questionably treated by humans as well as Anderson. If we do not consider changing in our near future, there very well might be consequences. Tasks such as being able to cope with death and normalizing the idea that animals other than humans have feelings as well. Nobody is perfect but if we as a society can’t start to talk about these things I fear for our future societies and cultures.
Works Cited
Herzog, Hal. “Animals Like Us.” UTNE Reader. July-August 2011. Accessed 10 April 2019.
Wallace, David F. “Consider the Lobster.” Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays. 2005. Accessed 10 April 2019.
Anderson, Ross “What the Crow Knows” A journey into the animal mind. March 2019 issue, The Atlantic. Accessed April 10
