Heather Mattsongrosso -- Blog 5: Animals

By Heather Mattsongrosso

In this day in age we are constantly searching for better ways to reach equality amongst human beings, respecting the rights of everyone.  But sometimes people forget that our non-human friends and animals have rights too, and should be given the same respect that humans should be giving one another.

In the piece "Dwellings: Deify the Wolf", Linda Hogan writes about human being's connection to wolves.  She starts off by placing the reader in the setting of Ely, Minnesota where she and a group of others are on a search to see timber wolves.  All of the people had different reasons to why they wanted to find these wolves, but Hogan explains that she and many others believe that humans are the decedents of wolves and that we are much more connected to them than you would think.  Having this belief that us humans have blood connection to wolves, Hogan describes her trip as what seemed to be like diving into the archives of her ancestry.  "We are looking for the clue to a mystery, a relative inside our own blood, an animal so equal to us that it reflects back what we hate and love about ourselves." 

In finding these wolves, Hogan seems to believe that she will be able to interact on a physical as well as spiritual level.  Creating a sense of family between humans and wolves lets the reader form a deep connection with them.  This connection is deeper than one that would be made if the reader just simply respected animals in a humane way.  After the reader is spiritually connected with wolves, Hogan then begins to describe the struggles that these wolves face in order to survive alongside human beings.  She says: "The leading cause of death for wolves is contact with the human world.  Our presence means tragedy to them.  They are shot by hunters, trapped, poisoned, and hit by logging trucks as they travel the human roads." 

 After Hogan explained the connection that humans have to wolves, the reader is then exposed to the cruel reality that although we may be the descendants of these animals, we are now spending our time harming them.  Hogan then digs deeper and describes how humans are using the harm of wolves as well as the environment and other animals for their own personal benefit and disregarding the destruction that they are leaving behind.  Hogan says: "What a strange alchemy we have worked, turning earth around to destroy itself, using earth's own elements to wound it."  This is my favorite quote from the piece because it brings to light the unfortunate irony that human beings will harm the earth using the earth and its inhabitants.

Alice Walker also writes about human connection to animals in the piece "Am I Blue?"  She spends the piece comparing a neighboring horse to a human being, claiming that he had emotions like being able to feel loneliness.  Walker not only understands that animals can have human-like emotions but was fully capable of detecting when her neighbor Blue was lonely. She writes how human animals and non-human animals can communicate quite well, even though we do not speak the same language.  A little after feeling Blue's loneliness, Walker then notices that Blue has been accompanied by another horse, a female horse who he became very fond of, who diminished his feeling of loneliness.  This could be comparable to a human, how most people enjoy the company of others to various extents.  Unfortunately, after becoming pregnant, Blue's female companion was removed from his life, and Walker compares the situation to slavery. She describes the female horse as being "put with him" until he got her pregnant.   Once Blue and his partner completed the task made by their owners, she was taken away, similar to situations that slaves had dealt with.  It is sickening to be able to so closely compare the treatment of animals, who have emotions as strong as humans do to slavery.  Being able to make this comparison shows that many humans use animals for their own personal benefit, disregarding their livelihood of the animal.

In efforts to end the exploitation of animals, and fight for their rights, many groups have been formed to protest against the unfair treatment towards these nonhumans.  One event, taking a big leap for animal rights was the retirement of elephants at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum&Bailey circus.  Over the years there have been many opponents to elephants performing in the circus, being forced to do tricks and lugged around in cages across the country.  In a Washington Post article, "Ringling Brothers is finally freeing its elephant performers. It's not nearly enough," Natalie Prosin expresses her thoughts on the use of elephants in the circus. Prosin describes elephants as highly intelligent and that they possess traits very similar to those of human beings.  "Elephants are some of the most cognitively complex and social nonhuman animals that we know of: they are adept tool users, self-aware, and cooperative problem solvers…Elephants frequently display empathy; for instance, they have been observed feeding others who are unable to use their trunks to eat."  That being said, although it is inhumane to force any animal to perform for human entertainment, it is a shame to see such loving and intelligent animals be subject to that life.  Prosin states, "A circus environment cannot replicate the rich array of experiences and social life that the wild affords them." Although the retirement of these circus elephants was a giant leap, Prosin feels that it is not enough to simply relieve them of their duties, but they should be respected as humble beings.  She is part of The Nonhuman Rights Project, which in 2013 filed for a lawsuit to argue that nonhuman animals should be classified as "legal persons" rather than "legal things."  I believe that making strides like these to consider animals as equals rather than objects will help decrease and one day completely diminish unfairness and cruelty towards animals.