The uncomfortable truth about pets
Is it ok to breed and keep animals for our enjoyment?
There’s lots of discussion around the ethics of breeding animals for food, but it’s occurred to me that we don’t have the same discussion around keeping pets — breeding animals for comfort and enjoyment.
Don’t get me wrong — I love pets. The rule in our house growing up was that you can have any animal except a cat or dog. At various times we had ducks, chickens, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, a budgie, a turkey, turtles, axolotls, a horse and a donkey. Animals were a big part of my childhood, and I loved them — but perhaps that’s the problem.
We live in a human-centric world. Obviously we can only experience things from our own human perspective. As a child, I loved to pat a guinea pig. I didn’t consider the possibility that the guinea pig might not like being patted. Maybe the small rodent was petrified into immobility as a prey animal survival instinct, and was just awaiting its chance to bolt to safety. Or maybe it loved pats — I don’t know. But that’s my point, we don’t really know.
I tried to teach chickens to fly (sorry chickens), I tried to feed baby mice (sorry baby mice), I helped a runt duckling push its way out of its shell and then didn’t know how to be an adequate duck mother. I did all these things out of love and an instinct to nurture. I thought (in my self-centred human mind) that I was helping them. I’ve since learnt that our love of nature can be destructive to the very thing we love.
So, what’s the harm in keeping a pet? They bring us joy and seem happy. Well, here are four ways we might be causing harm:
Breeding practices
Many ‘designer’ dog breeds aren’t very well equipped for, you know, being alive. Through centuries of selective breeding we’ve created dogs with characteristics that we find appealing. Living with these characteristics might not be so great though. The flattened faces of pugs and bulldogs mean they have difficulty breathing, especially when exercising. Persian and other exotic shorthair cats have a similar problem, plus issues with their tearducts. Dachshunds’ unnaturally long spinal columns often cause back problems, including disc disease. These are the more serious effects of genetic interference, but minor ones are true of most dog breeds. We might think it’s harmless to breed rabbits with extra-long hair, but we’re not really considering the impacts of that very cute, but very impractical, characteristic on the animal.
Unnatural conditions
Most pet-owners feel like their pet is part of the family. They give them shelter and food and attention. But houses are built for humans — not animals. Grey wolves (which domestic dogs are a sub-species) live in social groups which range over hundreds or thousands of square kilometres. This is an evolved survival tactic, but you can’t remove the need for social interaction or physical activity from a domesticated dog. The look on a dog’s face when you return home might melt your heart, but is a busy human family an adequate replacement for a wolf pack?
Houses also weren’t built for cats. Yes, houses are warm and dry and away from physical harm, but they’re also contained and don’t provide much stimulation for an instinctual hunter. Or, if cats are allowed to roam, that causes other problems…
Native species
In Australia, domestic cats are responsible for killing an estimated 230 million native birds, reptiles and mammals every year. In addition to pets, there are somewhere between 2–6 million feral cats in Australia. They have already directly contributed to extinctions of more than 20 native mammals, and threaten the survival of another 100 native species.
Dogs being allowed off-lead in wildlife areas can cause even more problems than cats. In one study, they found that domestic dogs were the second largest cause of injury and death (after cars) in Tasmania. Even ‘harmless’ animals like rabbits cause environmental damage if they become feral — reducing the regeneration of native plants and competing with native animals for food and shelter.
How do we know if they’re happy?
I think we should assume that animals have needs beyond food and warmth and shelter. From my outsider-view, I’d say some animals are more suited to domestic life than others — a mouse versus a tiger, for example. But ultimately, we can’t ever be sure if their other needs are being met. We prefer to believe that the guinea pig enjoys pats — because we enjoy patting it, and we think of ourselves as caring. But we may be putting our own happiness above the happiness of our pets.
If you have a pet, love it and care for it as best you can. If you want a pet, get it from a shelter. Pets mean a lot to people and I’m not saying anyone should get rid of theirs. But I am saying that we should be honest about our selfish humanity. We don’t keep pets for their benefit, we keep them for ours.
If it’s not ok to kill animals for our nutritional needs, why is it ok to breed them for our emotional needs? Do we have the right to genetically modify their bodies to please us? To keep them in an environment that was built for humans? To interfere with the balance of wild biodiversity?
I’ve enjoyed having pets most of my life, but I don’t know if I’ll ever have another. I wish I could go back to the innocent kid who just enjoyed the soft down of a duckling, but part of growing up is taking responsibility for your actions and their impact on others. And that includes animals.
This article made me think of a few excellent animal-perspective novels: Watership Down, The Call of the Wild, and White Fang.
If you enjoyed this, check out more of my Medium articles here: A little bit about me and my writing
