Farm Animals Emotions
article by Professor Jeffrey Moussaieffe Masson
Jeffrey Masson has been a university professor and a Freudian psychoanalyst
and is a co-author of the best-selling book When Elephants Weep: The
Emotional Lives of Animals. A self-confessed animal lover, he has written
about his extraordinary findings in the uncharted territory of animal
emotions. Who doubts that farm animals have the same emotions as their
evolutionary cousins, the animals from whom they were domesticated? Only
those who stand to profit from this particular kind of ignorance. If
you are going to take a calf away from its mother as soon as it is born,
it would be disturbing to admit that the reason the cow is bellowing
for hours on end is that she "misses" her child. When a human
mother is frantic because she is separated from her baby, we call it
love. When a cow does the same, we do not give it a name, and say it
is purely instinct. (What, by the way, is wrong with an instinct for
love?). If a chicken, a bird born to nest in a tree, is deprived of any
chance to move, it is not likely that the person who put them there will
welcome a discussion about the joy chickens derive from dust-bathing
and sun-bathing.
"Joy" is not a word likely to cross the lips of a person
who works in a shed with a million chickens. When I told one that at
least he was there of his free will, while the chickens had no say in
the matter, he put me straight: "Pal, you think I enjoy this?" He
was right. He was not about to be tortured in the same way as the chickens,
but he was as much a part of this soul-deprived machine as the chickens.
What he did not see was that solidarity would mean taking the side of
his fellow workers AND the chickens, against the bosses of both sets
of victims.
Ask a farmer, some time, what is the meaning of the strange sounds coming
from his pigs when one is in trouble. "Doesn't mean anything," he
will probably tell you. Wrong. Pigs are very sensitive to the suffering
of other pigs. Like us, they don't enjoy hearing a fellow in agony. Like
us, they are "programmed" to
rush to his or her aid.
Baby pigs squeal because they know an adult will try to help. Imagine
the terror in a herd of pigs listening at the gate of a slaughter house.
"Stupid" is a word I often hear from people who work with
sheep, but what is so stupid about wanting to be close to your friends?
A sheep can, as we have recently learned, recognise 250 of his closest
friends by sight. If we prefer the company of our loved ones to that
of complete strangers, are we said to be stupid?
In my opinion, when it comes to emotions, farm animals are just like
us. Those seem to be fighting words to animal scientists and farmers
alike. But stop for a moment to consider the reason: we dare not recognise
the similarity between the emotional lives of farm animals and ourselves,
because we would have to ask ourselves how we can treat them as if they
were not even living creatures.
Is it not possible that, far from having no feelings at all, farm animals
may have even more intense emotions than humans? After all, some animals
have physical abilities beyond those of humans; they fly, they run faster,
are stronger and so on, so why should it be so surprising that a cow's
love for her calf might be every bit as intense, or even more intense,
than our love for our children? Is it not possible that the joys experienced
by a chicken surpass our own? And if this is true, is it not something
to celebrate, rather than rue? Maybe what we need from chickens is not
their meat, or their eggs, but lessons in how to be more joyous.
If we stop thinking of farm animals as existing only to be of use to
us, if we grant them individuality, life-interests, inner lives, is it
not possible that we could develop an entirely new relation with these
most demeaned of all domestic animals? Yes, we might have to give up
meat, eggs, milk and feather pillows, but think what we might gain in
return: an entry into a whole new world of intense and pure emotions
the likes of which we may not previously have even suspected. I, for
one, think it's worth the chance. Pass the soy milk please.
Is it not possible that, far from having no feelings at all, farm animals
may have even more intense emotions than humans?
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