Potential Research
During Week 2, we did our group presentations for the six TIME magazine articles. Unlike the other five articles, which were written by Kluger, my group's article was an excerpt of Dr. Grandin's book Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. While I was initially reluctant to read the article, I found Dr. Grandin's argument interesting; she explained that the reason humans often misunderstand cats is due to the lack of domestication as compared to other pets, such as dogs. Dr. Grandin argues that, per this lack of domestication, humans are unable to communicate or read cats as well as dogs, that it is often more difficult to train cats, and that there is a marked lack of variability in cats as compared to other domesticated pets, such as dogs.
My group members and I did not run across many problems, other than trying to elaborate on the sources Dr. Grandin provided in her excerpt. While speaking in front of the class for the presentation was, again, terrifying, it was nice to have my group members with me. I believe we were successful in summarizing the main points of the argument and that we provided relevant information about the sources cited in Dr. Grandin's book.
It was interesting to read how the domestication of pets rose out of necessity, such as wolves being domesticated into dogs as a symbiotic relationship where the wolves protected the humans and the humans ensured the wolves' safety as well. It also went into detail how human intervention ultimately contributed to the variability of dogs. Whether intentional or not, humans have had an enormous impact in how animals' genes are passed onto the next generation, leading to problems such as puppy mills and over-breeding, which contributes to hundreds of (unhealthy) pets being thrown into shelters where they are ultimately euthanized. Utilizing this information, I may research this topic further, tying it into animal grief as well as domestication.
Lastly, for the three Tweets we were required to post, I linked to articles exhibiting examples of animals grieving as well as the unnecessary and unexplained hunting of wolves by a government agency in an attempt to raise awareness to these problems.
