I’ve been thinking about animal consciousness and suffering even more than usual lately in light of the fact that my wife and I adopted a shelter dog last Friday that we’ve named Bwana. I’ve long expressed my ambivalance about dog ownership, even though I love dogs. They demand a lot of care and attention, their hair gets over everything, and my wife and I are gone all day most of the workday. Of course, a home absent of people is still far better than a shelter, and my wife has long insisted on our eventual dog ownership, so it was time. Now that we have a dog, and I’m taking on stay-at-home dog dad duties for the next three weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about how dogs perceive the world and dog brains, as well as the odd place that dogs occupy in our culture.
Naturally, the first place I went to for information on the subject was a book, What It’s Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience by Gregory Berns. My reading is still incomplete, but so far I’m finding it fascinating. Berns and his team trained dogs to get into a fMRI machine so he could scan their brains and design experiments to try to shed light on what it’s like to be a dog. The book explores these experiments, comparative neuroscience, and what non-human consciousness might be like in some fascinating ways, and I’m hoping it’ll answer some questions I have about how my pig is perceiving the world around her.
One of the first anecdotes Berns shares in the book is giving a talk at a conference on vegan issues. After his talk, a vegan (presumably) accuses him of being a speciesist for giving dogs special status, which he admits to being the case in the book. This anecdote stood out to me because just a couple days ago, I was thinking about how unusual it was that the dog industry is worth over 100 billion dollars in the US while simultaneously the average American eats 273 pounds of animal flesh every year, putting us at second in the world in per capita meat consumption. Americans spend more on their pets than any other nationality. And on top of this, about 1.5 million dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters every year.
These are some unusual contradictions, and certainly, as anyone who studies America knows, American culture is not monolithic. One thing that struck me right away adopting our dog is that almost immediately my wife and I developed habits of care and concern for our dog. My wife barely slept the first night, worried about our dog in her crate, and if I’m being honest, I didn’t sleep so well either. Many of our conversations over the last week have centered on the dog, her health as she heals from being spayed, and her pooping and peeing habits. Taking a step back, it’s a little ridiculous how much energy and attention we are devoting to this dog, as well as the attention she demands as she follows me around all day. Indeed, she’s currently trying to stick her head on my lap as I write.
There are plenty of cute things about her, and overall she is learning new things at a quick rate, but why is it that dogs occupy such a significant spot in American culture? The old adage that “dogs are man’s best friend” isn’t so far off. Despite her lack of ability to talk, she cuddles, does goofy things, and brings joy to our lives, even though she probably wouldn’t be especially sad if we gave her to some other loving family tomorrow.
In truth, Americans are speciesists. While most of us care greatly for the dogs or cats in our lives, we care little for the vast (out of sight, out of mind) suffering our eating habits are inflicting on less cute, but equally as intelligent and sophisticated animals like pigs. On top of this, plenty of Americans purchase or adopt animals they go on to later be unable to care for or train, and the result is that more invisible suffering is inflicted on America’s favorite animals that are essentially perceived as disposable. Just as out of sight and mind is the suffering experienced by people in the US and globally as a result of poverty and inequality, so perhaps that challenges a notion of Americans as speciesists, and suggests instead that we mostly just care for who we know or what we see. The challenge: how do we extend care to sentient life and alter systems that diminish the value of said life?