Partially domesticated

They’d been hearing the sounds for a few days. Not regularly, just often enough to take note of how long it had been since the last time. Today it started with a soft scuffling.

‘There,’ said Keith. ‘There they are.’

It was morning, but the sun wasn’t up yet.

They waited, looking at each other and not moving. The rustling stopped after a few seconds and then the humming began. It was tuneless and without a discernible meter. It sounded more like the human voice – more than one voice – than anything easily attributed to a bird or insect, yet without the phrasing and pauses that people use when vocalizing. It stopped suddenly, without slowing down or otherwise signaling that it was about to conclude.

Maddy sat back against the pillows. ‘Oh good. I woke up around two a.m. but I didn’t hear them.’

‘Were you disappointed?’ Keith said, smiling.

They had been together for two years.

Maddy smiled back at him. ‘Yes. A little bit.’

They listened for a while longer, but the sounds had stopped.

‘I suppose we ought to get up,’ said Maddy. ‘You can have the shower first.’

There was talk of evening plans, then breakfast, banter, kiss, departures for work.

It was several days before they heard the sounds again. This time it was evening when the humming began. They turned the stereo down, then off. Neither of them found the humming annoying, at least not yet, and neither of them had ventured any views on what to do about it or expressed any uneasiness. It was strange, wondrous, enthralling. It went on for ten or fifteen minutes and again stopped abruptly.

Keith broke the silence. ‘I wonder if we might want to think about getting a cat.’

‘A cat! What, right now?’ She looked as if he’d suggested they start trying to have a baby. ‘To catch them?’

‘I was thinking to scare them away,’ said Keith.

‘Like … mice? Do you think it’s mice?’

‘No,’ said Keith. ‘I don’t know what they are.’

‘I’d like to have a cat but not for that. Anyway, I don’t think we’re even allowed to have a cat. Why do you want to scare them away?’

‘I don’t really,’ said Keith. ‘But it’s not our house.’

‘And not our problem.’

‘That’s right. Unless we know they’re causing damage to the property and do nothing to stop it, and they destroy the wiring or cause a fire or something.’

‘“Humming Termites Eat Entire House.”’

‘I don’t think it’s termites,’ said Keith. ‘Termites make more of a crackling sound, like scrunching up a potato chip bag.’

‘Like the percussion in that Santana song,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s more like winding a clock.’

‘Yeah. Or that Steely Dan song.’

“‘Rikki Don’t Lose that Number?’”

‘No, I think it’s ‘Do It Again.’”

‘Whatever,’ said Maddy. ‘So what shall we tell the landlord?’

‘That we’re hearing strange noises that sound like music,’ said Keith.

‘It doesn’t sound like any music I’ve ever heard. Not Indian music, not Arabic music, and definitely not European music.’

‘Birdsong?’ Keith offered.

‘Birds don’t really sing.’

‘We tell the landlord we’ve got some sort of animals in the walls, but we don’t think it’s rats.’

‘Oh, I hope it’s not rats,’ said Maddy. ‘And I hope they don’t decide to poison them. I don’t want them to do that even if it is rats.’

‘Why?’ said Keith. ‘Don’t they just leave the building and go off somewhere and die?’

‘They get really, really thirsty. They suffer agonizing thirst for days. And then they finally die of internal bleeding.’

‘Okay, that’s cruel,’ said Keith. He didn’t say But they’re just rats. ‘But what’s the alternative?’

‘It’s not just about the rats,’ said Maddy. ‘Anticoagulants get into the food chain. If you poison a rat, you kill an owl.’

Keith was silent. Then he said, ‘That’s bad.’

‘Really bad. Bad for the rat, bad for anything that eats the rat. Hawks, owls, somebody’s cat.’

The humming started up again.

They listened.

‘What do you think we should do?’ Keith said.

‘I think we should just leave them alone.’

Interactions

History

From the beginning of their mutual history, animals of various types have posed a threat to humans’ lives and well-being, and vice versa. Within all phyla of the animal kingdom are creatures that will cause harm to humans, directly or indirectly. A sea urchin will sting if stepped on, and the flatworm paragominus can cause a serious lung infection in humans who have eaten an undercooked, infected crab or crayfish. Vertebrates’ defense mechanisms include biting, scratching, pecking, mauling or trampling creatures that interfere or appear to interfere with them, their offspring, or their habitat. And carnivores (subject to relative size and strength) will eat you.

The transformation of such threats into beneficial relationships began at least 15,000 years ago with the domestication of dogs, which were valued for their hunting skills and subsequently for providing protection and companionship.¹ Other animals became ready sources of food (meat, milk, eggs) and/or clothing (skins, fur) for humans; these included sheep and goats (8500–8000 BCE), pigs and cattle (7000 BCE), and chickens (6000 BCE). The cat, a highly efficient agent of pest control and an object of fascination, was domesticated around the same time as the early herd animals (8500 BCE). Horses were brought into the fold fairly late (3600 BCE) to transport people and things (agricultural tools, weapons).²

Uses of domestic animals

Due to both natural selection (in which an organism’s survival and reproduction result from characteristics that fit well with its environment) and ‘artificial selection’ (in which humans have deliberately bred animals for characteristics that make them useful), domestic animals are genetically different from their wild ancestors. An individual wild animal may be tamed, but not domesticated. It may live in proximity to humans, interact with them and learn to respond to their actions, but changes in its behavior are not changes at the genetic level. Without similar conditioning, its offspring and the rest of its species remain wild animals.³ Part of the process of domestication is humans’ provision of benefits that encourage the animals to stay and to reproduce, passing on the desirable traits to offspring and future generations. In this way humans initiated and fostered the development of powerful equine helpers to carry heavy loads, hunters to chase down dinner or rid their homes of vermin, protectors of their children, companions with a friendly disposition, and creatures whose sole use is to be eaten and made into shoes.

Figure 1 lists some of the uses to which domestic animals are put today.⁴ The small, isolated category called ‘Captive wild’ represents animals that are not domesticated and that may or may not have been tamed, but live completely under the control of humans.

To eat, to wear, and to use

The largest category is the eye-popping 80 billion⁵ land animals plus at least 78 billion fishes that are created, kept and killed annually for the purposes of eating them, feeding them to our pets, and making things including clothing, cosmetics, medications, sports equipment, and glue.⁶

The use of live animals for the production of food (e.g. dairy products, eggs and honey) is shown separately. While large-scale industrial farming is not the only source of these products, the other production methods vary widely in their environmental impact and their efforts, if any, to minimize animal suffering. The productive lifespan of milk cows is three to five years, after which most are sent to slaughter.⁷ Commercial laying hens live two to three years on average, although it is common for hens to be kept for only 18 months before they are considered ‘spent’ and killed.⁸ In 2021, the number of dairy cows worldwide was more than 129,200,000⁹ and the number of egg-laying hens approximately 7.55 billion.¹⁰

Beasts of burden

Work animals include those used for transport, guarding, herding, ploughing, powering fixed machinery, the control of weeds (cattle, goats, sheep, geese), and for searching and retrieving hunted prey or other things (for example truffles). Where motor vehicles are not widely available and the terrain is difficult, animals may be the only feasible means of transporting people, food and water, fuel and goods, including luxury products such as tea, coffee, chocolate and sugar.¹¹ Animals are also used in police work and military endeavors, and to assist people who are visually impaired, diabetic, mobility impaired or otherwise require help.¹² More than 10,000 people in Europe use a service dog, and there are an estimated 500,000 service dogs in the USA.¹³ Information about service animals in other countries is not as easy to find, in some cases because of smaller population overall and in others because such uses of animals are a more recent cultural development.¹⁴

Scientific research

The most frequently quoted estimates of the number of animals used worldwide for scientific research, both basic (investigation of biology and disease) and applied (drug research and development and safety testing), are around 115 million.¹⁵ The research aims at greater knowledge about diseases and conditions, the effects of treatments and vaccines on the human body and how to increase efficacy, and the safety of new treatments and products. For the layperson, information from sources other than animal welfare advocacy organizations isn’t as readily available, and because of differences among countries as to whether and what types of information are collected and published (for example, the US has excluded data about purpose-bred lab rats, mice, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates), the estimates may be low and uninformative. The authors of a 2019 paper present evidence for an estimate of 192.1 million animals used for scientific purposes in 2015, and suggest that inconsistency and inaccuracy in what countries report stall progress towards decreasing the number of animals used.¹⁶ Medical research is a difficult area in which to see a clear path away from experiments that cause animal suffering.¹⁷ More rigorous and coordinated record-keeping internationally as well as regular scrutiny and interrogation of research aims and methods would be steps in the right direction.

Wild but not free 

Animals that are not domesticated – whether because they are not appropriate candidates or because their uses by humans do not require it – can still be used to gratify the human desire for entertainment. Approximately 800,000 animals are held in accredited zoos worldwide.¹⁸ Advocates argue that zoos play vital roles in conservation, education, promotion of animal welfare, and scientific knowledge, as well as entertaining people. However, there are huge variations in the ways zoos acquire and treat their animals, depending on legal, cultural and material factors and on developments in knowledge of animal behavior and well-being.¹⁹ Another 550,000 wild animals including orangutans, bears, tigers, elephants, sea turtles and dolphins are held captive for tourist entertainment that can’t plausibly even pretend to have educational or conservation objectives. These circumstances include performing animal shows and forced interactions with humans.²⁰

The humming had been going on for several weeks, off and on. Neither Maddy nor Keith was sick of it yet, perhaps because it never lasted long. They’d had a couple of friends over, but on neither occasion did any humming occur and they had agreed in advance not to mention it unless others present heard it. They also agreed that the whole thing was weird, and that not telling anyone about it was a little bit weird as well. 

‘Have you spoken to the landlord?’ said Keith.

‘You know I haven’t,’ said Maddy. ‘Have you?’

‘You know I haven’t either. I don’t know what to tell them.’

‘I don’t know what would be accomplished by telling them.’

They listened to the humming. It wasn’t any different from usual. Keith remarked on this. Maddy said she didn’t agree; it was different every time.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Keith. ‘Like the same piece of music played by different orchestras?’

‘Yes. Or the same orchestra. They find different things to emphasize. Or they’re playing different songs in the same style.’

Keith didn’t hear anything that complex and he wondered whether she really did. It just sounded like humming. He said, ‘Maybe it’s not animals. Maybe it’s something else.’

‘Like what? A machine? A motor? Somebody’s phone? A tell-tale heart?’ said Maddy, smiling.

‘Well, nobody has said anything. None of the neighbors have come over and asked about it. If it was our house we could just let ’em sing, but it’s not.’ Even if it was their house, Keith thought, it probably wasn’t a good idea to ‘let ’em sing’ indefinitely.

‘Okay,’ said Maddy. ‘Go ahead and call. But if it’s rats, we should just set traps and not call. I don’t want them to send an exterminator to poison everything.’

‘Have you ever set a trap?’ said Keith. He really didn’t think it was rats but he had no fresh ideas about to what to do.

‘I’ve used humane traps. Catch and release. For mice, not rats.’

‘I guess we could try that,’ said Keith. ‘Although we don’t know how big they are. Or how many traps we’d need. Or where to take them if we catch any.’

‘Maybe we should just move,’ said Maddy.

Friends and family

Of all the functions that animals fulfill for humans, the one that brings them closest to us is that of being a pet. Pets may also be care assistants, security guards, exterminators, shepherds, or providers of recreational transport, or they may have been brought into the home solely for the purpose of companionship. More than half of the 8.1 billion people in the world have a pet at home.²¹ In a 2016 survey of pet owners in 22 countries, 33 per cent of the respondents owned dogs and 23 per cent, cats.²² However, customs and conventions around pets vary widely. These include the types of animals kept, their status and treatment, and the ways in which the relationship between people and pets is conceived, certainly among countries and cultures²³ but even within a single society.²⁴

For me and several billion others, pets are a unique and endlessly fascinating source of pleasure, company and affection. The boundless joy of a dog – it doesn’t even have to be your dog – is an instant antidote to low spirits. Many people who live alone find that having a pet keeps them focused and on an even keel emotionally. When you have a pet, you have responsibilities to somebody you care about, and who cares about you. You can tell your cat your deepest, darkest secrets and he won’t judge you (as long as you feed him on time).

Although some of the needs and feelings of animals are similar to those of people, it’s still the case that no matter how much you and your pet understand one another, how much you depend on one another emotionally and physically²⁵ or how apt is the epithet ‘fur baby’, he is still a member of another species. More crucially, humans choose which domestic animals reproduce, based on the traits they want in their hunters, their shepherds and their fireside companions. The genetic changes that would otherwise take centuries are accelerated by artificial selection. We have, in important ways, created the species within which we can now choose all sorts of traits, from having low-dander hair to being good with children.

Mutual domestication

Domestication takes place over many generations. It is the process by which animals are selectively bred for human purposes, and it happens at the species level. As a result of domestication, even if we have no flocks to guard or rodents to exterminate, we now have a vast choice of dogs, cats and other creatures to be our entertainment, our comfort and our buddies. Humans domesticated animals for practical reasons, but it didn’t take long for those reasons to include friendship.

That role wasn’t the chief one for domestic animals until machine manufacturing supplanted manual methods. Just as the way we live has changed radically since the Industrial Revolution, so too have the ways our animals live. No matter how much a sheep dog or a barn cat is cared for and valued, its primary role is not that of a pet. And even when pets retain characteristics that made animals of their kind useful to humans in the first place (the border collie who has never seen a sheep in her life tries to herd the kids; the cat brings you her ‘dead’ stuffed toy), we brought them home for their temperament or their agreeable habits, not for the work they could do. 

Indeed, we may work for our pets more than they work for us. We supply food, shelter and medical care; we provide exercise by taking them for a walk in all weather, throwing the ball a thousand times, or offering playthings as enticements. To avoid adding to the population of unwanted pets we ensure that ours are spayed or neutered, and if our concern extends to other animals and the environment, we take steps to prevent our pets from slaughtering wildlife. Even though we’re the masters, we try to act in ways that are conducive to their well-being.  This may be by keeping the cat inside or letting him out to enjoy the outdoors;²⁶ training the dog with strict discipline or taking a more relaxed approach; or ascertaining whether the animal needs more company or is disinclined to share your attention with a second pet.

If human relationships with dogs, cats, horses and other animals have changed because utilitarian reasons for keeping pets have largely been supplanted by companionship, it seems that people have changed as much as animals have.²⁷ Pet owners willingly expend money and time on the furry, feathered or finned members of their household. They may not be so besotted as to treat their pets exactly like humans (it is hoped), but the kind of affection and care that we have for our pets is qualitatively different from the care that we can also have for Sumatran tigers or the echidnas, chipmunks or hedgehogs in our backyard. Cats and dogs have been domesticated, but in significant ways, so have we.

It was time to call the landlord. Well past time, Keith thought. He wasn’t sleeping well. A couple of their friends had expressed concern. When he asked Maddy if she was okay she said she was fine, but every time he woke up in the middle of the night she was wide awake too.

It took a while to explain to the landlord why they didn’t think the source of the sound was rats, mice, birds or insects. The landlord said he could send someone on Monday. Then they had to explain that while that would be fine, they couldn’t predict when the sounds would happen so he might not hear anything.

Maddy said, ‘Maybe we could call you the next time we hear them.’

‘So you’re not sure whether you heard anything,’ said the landlord.

‘Oh, we’ve definitely been hearing something,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s just a bit … unpredictable.’

‘Maybe you’ll need to look behind the walls or something,’ said Keith.

The landlord said he would contact an exterminator.

‘No exterminator!’ Maddy yelped.

There was a moment of silence. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Maddy said, ‘It’s not rats.’

‘But you don’t know what it is,’ said the landlord.

‘Pretty sure it’s not rats.’

Keith said, ‘The sounds are different from anything we’ve ever heard before. It’s like a humming.’

‘But you don’t think it’s insects,’ said the landlord.

‘No. Humming, like this.’ Keith tried to imitate the humming. ‘But not exactly like that.’ His rendition had sounded a bit like Happy Birthday. ‘More like a group of hummers.’

The landlord didn’t say anything.

‘Hello?’ said Keith.

The landlord said again that he’d send someone around on Monday.

After they hung up Maddy said, ‘They’d better not send an exterminator.’

Keith said, ‘It’s not up to us.’

‘If they put down poison it’ll kill everything else.’

‘Well, what do you want to do then?’ said Keith. ‘Is it bothering you yet?’ They’d be reading or watching TV or having a conversation and the humming would start. ‘I don’t want to live with it. I’m sick of it.’

‘Of course it’s bothering me, but we can’t just start trying to kill it without even knowing what it is.’

‘It’s a pest,’ said Keith. ‘We can either get rid of it or learn to live with it. It’s not our pet and it’s in our house.’

Friends or food, and food with friends

It’s not just the billions of pet owners who like animals. Many more enjoy watching wildlife, support environmental or animal welfare organizations, or have jobs or hobbies involving animals. Alternatively, an affirmative answer to ‘Do you like animals?’ may be followed by ‘Yes, medium rare, with potatoes and salad.’ The jokester doesn’t need to explain that your dog is safe, as would be a lamb or even a pig provided it’s a pet or otherwise off limits. Some animals enjoy the status of companion animals; others are food.

Thanks to domestication, we now have a continuing supply of cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens and fish, brought into existence to feed human beings (and their pets). The consumption of meat is rising globally, bolstered by demand in Asia and the Middle East and attributable to growing prosperity.²⁸ At the same time, pet ownership is on the rise. Again, contributing factors include an expanding middle class in countries such as China and South Korea, along with fewer regulations and changes in social attitudes involving animals.²⁹ In other words, while people around the world are still eating plenty of meat and affluence drives meat consumption in new markets, people are also choosing to share their homes, their leisure time and their income with pets. With more discretionary income, you can have your animals and eat them too.

The project of domesticating human beings has been highly successful from the perspective of cats and dogs. Cows, pigs, sheep and chickens haven’t been so fortunate, whether because they are tastier or more tractable. The number of people worldwide who abstain from eating meat or using products whose manufacture involves killing is tiny. Sources ranging from animal welfare organizations to market research companies estimate that the total amounts to 1–2% of the world population as of 2023. Other people consume only some types of animal products, or they try to consume less meat all or some of the time. They may do this because they believe it’s healthier, or in an effort not to contribute to environmental harm or to the unremitting misery of the meat industry.³⁰ But while the number of people making such choices may be increasing, as reflected by the burgeoning selection of ‘plant-based foods’ (also known as ‘fake meat’), it would be highly optimistic to draw any conclusions about the demise of meat. Most people continue to eat meat or aspire to eat it, including people who well understand the moral arguments against it.³¹

How do people reconcile an enjoyment of meat with concern for animals’ well-being, as is evident from their care for pets? The discomfort that is felt is called cognitive dissonance, a term that is also used to refer to the tension between our beliefs and our own behavior. More specifically, it’s called ‘the meat paradox’.³² This is the state of mind that results when you would really enjoy a smoky, salty slice of bacon but don’t want to think about how the pig lived and died to produce it. Dogs and cats are our friends; cows and pigs are destined for the table. Culture and custom allow us to construct this distinction and we know it’s arbitrary. I think this understanding goes some way towards accounting for the jocular comments with a slightly hostile undertone and the defensive defiance that occasionally surfaces.

Drawing a distinction between food animals and pets is a common technique for overcoming cognitive dissonance. Another is to dissociate the cute Highland calves and baby ducks from the Beef Wellington and Christmas roast they will be someday. A third is to deny that the lives of livestock are really all that bad. An alternative to all of these is to investigate whether and how the meat industry affects the planet, not just the livestock.

Pause to consider

This discussion has focused on two kinds of animals: the ones that live in our homes as friends and family members, and the ones that are raised and killed for food, clothing and other products. Both have been subject to intensive and ongoing selective breeding to enhance the characteristics that we like in a pet or in a steak.³³

As for the other uses of animals briefly summarized in the first section, I think most people would oppose the use of captive wild animals for some forms of entertainment if they knew the details, and would support efforts to improve the lives of work animals in the developing world. Medical research requires separate consideration and does not admit of easy answers, but at the very least, its function is quite different from the pleasures of palate and wardrobe.

Pets, the animals that we love and care for, are protected to some extent by laws and social norms, but they are the property of humans and we have the last word on how their welfare will be overseen.³⁴ In the United States alone, 6.3 million companion animals are taken to shelters annually, and approximately 920,000 (390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats) are euthanized.³⁵ Even in the most pet-friendly circumstances, a person or family can only adopt a limited number of animals. Compounding the problem is the breeding of pets for unusual and striking characteristics and the creation of new breeds. Along with the genetically transmitted health problems and weaknesses resulting from this fetish, the commodification of animals does nothing to help the ones languishing in shelters. Nevertheless, our dogs, cats, and other companion animals are treated very well compared to the livestock brought into existence to be food.³⁶

I have chosen to focus on the staggering numbers of domestic animals subject to the appetites, whims, and (perhaps, in the case of pets at least) some mutually beneficial arrangements that humans have constructed. If you are unmoved by the use of sentient animals as food for tens of billions of people,³⁷ there are other arguments that you may find more powerful. These will have to wait for separate treatment in a subsequent essay.

Keith was in the middle of a complicated dream that wasn’t making him happy, but he wasn’t ready to wake up. There were animals in it and he couldn’t find his suitcase, which was important for some reason. At some level he knew he was dreaming and he knew why he was dreaming about troublesome animals, and this understanding was as irritating as the dream itself. He could hear a muffled thumping somewhere and started coming awake, groggy and cross. He was alone in the bed, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Maddy?’

The only sound he could hear was the thumping. He got up and went to the kitchen, which was on the other side of the bedroom wall. Maddy was down on her knees taking the wall apart with a crowbar, which seemed like an odd tool to use. There were medium-sized pieces of plaster all over the floor and some wood. ‘Good morning.’

‘Hi,’ said Maddy, turning around. ‘I thought I’d get a head start on it.’

‘That’s going to go over well with the landlord.’

‘I want to see what’s back there.’

Keith nudged a piece of wood with his toe and didn’t say anything.

‘I know,’ said Maddy. ‘They probably won’t show up now.’

‘Can you see anything?’

‘Just wood beams. Studs.’

‘What do you propose to do with them if they do come out?’ said Keith. ‘Catch them? Call the animal rescue people, what’s it called, the SPCA? Take them to the zoo?’

‘I was thinking the university.’

‘It’s Saturday. What about rabies?’

‘Of course. Good point,’ said Maddy. ‘If they can hum they can obviously transmit rabies. A well-known connection. Why are you so scared?’ She picked up the crowbar and pulled at a piece of wall. A chunk of plaster came away and fell on the floor.

Keith rattled off a list of movies involving aliens, genetic mutations gone rogue, cute but deadly escapees from laboratories, Russians threatening to unleash Armageddon, Republicans threatening to unleash something ten times worse, or an ancient but deadly species that had been trapped in the permafrost prior to global warming.  ‘Maybe we’re the alien life form. Maybe we’re in their habitat and they’re deciding whether to make pets of us.’

‘Or something else,’ said Maddy. 

‘Soylent Green.’

‘Termites.’

‘I don’t see any termite holes,’ said Keith.

Maddy put the crowbar down. ‘Why don’t we have some coffee.’

They sat on the couch and drank coffee.

They’re not going to come out, thought Keith. They’ll wait ’til we think they’ve departed – except we won’t, we’ll be lying there waiting, wide awake until they start up again.

After a while Maddy said, ‘What do you want to do?’

‘Forfeit the security deposit and move out,’ said Keith.

As humans often do, he thought. When they can.

Photo and artwork credits

Fluffy cat playing with mouse, by Katherine Mihailova from Pexels.com

Sea urchin on the sand, by Ish Sookun from Pexels.com

Camel pulling a cart on a desert, by Shivram Murarka from Pexels.com

Dog running on beach during daytime, by Oscar Sutton on Unsplash

Catio with cat, by hack.rva Makerspace on Flickr, licensed under CC Attribution – ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed)

‘20-year-old woman red t-shirt “Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.”’, Microsoft Designer, 30 September 2023 version, image edited.

Man brushing dog’s hair, by Ron Lach from Pexels.com

Paw stone relief, by Sofia Morgado from Pixabay

Citation

Please cite as: Miller, L. Elaine, ‘Partially Domesticated’, It Could Be Words (blog), 11 March 2023, http://it-could-be-words.com/partially-domesticated

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1. See for example American Museum of Natural History, ‘Domestication Timeline’, http://tinyurl.com/5n76x4c7); however, some scholars have placed the date of dog domestication much further in the past: 23,000 years ago according to Thomas Cucchi and Benjamin Arbuckle, ‘Animal domestication: from distant past to current development and issues’, Animal Frontiers 11(3), May 2021, pp. 6–9, https://academic.oup.com/af/article/11/3/6/6306445. ↩︎
2. K. Kris Hirst, ‘Animal Domestication – Table of Dates and Places’, ThoughtCo, 12 September 2021, https://www.thoughtco.com/animal-domestication-table-dates-places-170675. As with dogs and cats, humans’ relationships with horses have often constituted a kind of interspecies friendship. ↩︎
3. See Katherine J. Wu, ‘You asked: how are pets different from wild animals?’, Science in the News,  http://tinyurl.com/mpse44ax and ‘Domestication of vertebrates’, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, updated 3 January 2024, http://tinyurl.com/23pfak9j. ↩︎
4. The drawing does not purport to be a precise representation of the numbers or relative numbers. ↩︎
5. A billion is a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000. ↩︎
6. Kansas Farm Food Connection, ‘Seven everyday items with animal byproducts’, http://tinyurl.com/vy4djujn; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, ‘Animal-derived ingredients list’, http://tinyurl.com/3n7v2f5f; Faunalytics, ‘Global animal slaughter statistics and charts: 2022 update’, 13 July 2022,
   https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-charts-2022-update/ and ‘How many fishes are slaughtered annually?’, 2 October 2023, https://faunalytics.org/number-of-farmed-fish-slaughtered-yearly/. Information for both land animals and farmed fish is based on United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data. For fish, the task is made problematic by fish production being quantified as biomass rather than number of individuals (in contrast to cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens). Using FAO aquaculture production tonnages as estimates of individual weight, estimates of the number of farmed fishes slaughtered annually across the globe range from 78 billion to 171 billion. ↩︎
7. P. J. Pinedo, A. De Vries and D. W. Webb, ‘Dynamics of culling risk with disposal codes reported by Dairy Herd Improvement dairy herds’, Journal of Dairy Science 93, 2010, pp. 2250–61; J. Fetrow, K. V. Nordlund and H. D. Norman, ‘Invited review: culling: nomenclature, definitions, and recommendations’, Journal of Dairy Science 89, 2006, pp. 1896–1905; Andrew Jacobs, ‘Is dairy farming cruel to cows?’, The New York Times, 29 December 2020,
   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/science/dairy-farming-cows-milk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.R00.FfNu.CM2gOG15VZla&smid=url-share . ↩︎
8. H. Fan and J. Wu, ‘Conventional use and sustainable valorization of spent egg-laying hens as functional foods and biomaterials: a review’, Bioresources and Bioprocessing 9(43), 2022, http://tinyurl.com/5ca2jjwa; R. C. Newberry, A. B. Webster, N. J. Lewis, C. Van Arnam, ‘Management of spent hens’, Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 2(1), pp. 13–29. ↩︎
9. Ceva Santé Animale, ‘Top countries shaping the global dairy industry’, https://ruminants.ceva.pro/dairy-industry ↩︎
10. Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock Primary, 13 July 2021, cited in Compassion in World Farming, ‘Egg Track 2021 Report’, http://tinyurl.com/yc2xtj8e. ↩︎
11. See The Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (SPANA), ‘What is International Working Animal Day?’, http://tinyurl.com/4asmh7x3; World Horse Welfare and The Donkey Sanctuary, ‘One Health and One World: Working Animals to Help Achieve a Safe and Sustainable World’, 2020, http://tinyurl.com/3xjfc5j2. ↩︎
12. Assistance Dogs International, 6 June 2023, http://tinyurl.com/ymnnx9r4. ↩︎
13. The Zebra, ‘Animal Therapy Statistics’, 30 January 2023, http://tinyurl.com/3r2pvc7p. ↩︎
14. See for example Manya Koetse, ‘More awareness for guide dogs in China, but still a long way to go’, What’s On in Weibo, 15 October 2016, http://tinyurl.com/42s3vurc. ↩︎
15. See for example Humane Society International, ‘About animal testing’, http://tinyurl.com/4vpej2v2 and RSPCA, ‘Animals in science’, http://tinyurl.com/2dxs6p8t. ↩︎
16. K. Taylor and L. R. Alvarez, ‘An estimate of the number of animals used for scientific purposes worldwide in 2015’, Alternatives to Laboratory Animals 47(5–6), 2019, pp. 196–213, http://tinyurl.com/mt3apsm2. See also A. Akhtar, ‘The flaws and human harms of animal experimentation’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24(4), October 2015, pp. 407–19, http://tinyurl.com/59ptkyjt . ↩︎
17. See Becky Jones, ‘Animal research saves lives. So why do opponents say it is ineffective?’, 3 February 2022, European Animal Research Association, http://tinyurl.com/ts4tkav8. ↩︎
18. Karlyn Marcy, ‘Interesting zoo and aquarium statistics’, Association of Zoos and Aquariums, 26 May 2021, http://tinyurl.com/3h4j87mw. ↩︎
19. See Björn Jóhann Ólafsson, ‘Are zoos good or bad for animals? The argument, explained’, Sentient Media, 8 August 2023, http://tinyurl.com/24njaes4.  ↩︎
20. Animal Legal Defense Fund, ‘Animals in entertainment’, https://aldf.org/issue/animals-in-entertainment/; World Animal Protection, 22 August 2022, ‘The world’s cruellest attractions’, http://tinyurl.com/bdfpv79w ‘Animal shows’, http://tinyurl.com/bdht5nke. ↩︎
21. Health for Animals, ‘Global state of pet care: Stats, facts and trends’, September 2022, http://tinyurl.com/43j9rd4n. ↩︎
22. Petfood Industry, ‘Infographic: Most of the world owns pets; dogs are tops’, 31 May 2016, http://tinyurl.com/4bce33mw. ↩︎
23. I have never seen as many stray and free-ranging cats as I did in Greece and Italy two years ago – my first time in those countries. While I firmly believe that the cats of Rome and Athens would be better off if they were spayed/neutered and vaccinated, and if they were fed rather than having to hang around cafés for a handout, the free-rangers were generally tolerated or even treated with care. ↩︎
24. See Harold A. Herzog, ‘Biology, culture, and the origins of pet-keeping’, Animal Behavior and Cognition 1(3), May 2021, pp. 296–308, http://tinyurl.com/yc736k5n; Rami Gabriel, ‘Why do we have pets? The culture of domestication’, Psychology Today, 16 February 2023, http://tinyurl.com/mr3jrny5. ↩︎
25. Particularly in the case of an assistance animal. ↩︎
26. Keeping cats contained, especially when you live near fragile ecosystems (such as pretty much all of Australia and New Zealand), is the most effective means of protecting small native animals, but this is not always easy in practice and some owners balk at depriving a pet of its freedom. Although both environments and species kept as pets have been radically changed by humans, the argument is that it’s cruel – or, weirdly, unnatural – to confine them. ↩︎
27. In some cultures, dogs and cats have lived in proximity to humans but stayed outdoors and eaten whatever scraps they could scrounge. The extent to which these cultures have changed is a separate and interesting question, but not one I shall address here. ↩︎
28. See OECD–FAO Agricultural Outlook 2021–2030, https://www.fao.org/3/cb5332en/Meat.pdf and C. Whitton, D. Bogueva, D. Marinova and C. J. C. Phillips, ‘Are we approaching peak meat consumption? Analysis of meat consumption from 2000 to 2019 in 35 countries and its relationship to Gross Domestic Product’, Animals (Basel), 11(12): 3466, 6 December 2021, https://tinyurl.com/49rtkjvf. It should be noted, though, that the affordability of meat is tempered by diseases, natural disasters and discretionary factors in higher-income countries, for example consumer preferences, convenience, and the pursuit of healthier diets. ↩︎
29. See above n. 21, Health for Animals, ‘Global state of pet care: Stats, facts and trends’, September 2022, http://tinyurl.com/43j9rd4n. ↩︎
30. I am not referring to meat that is lab-grown from cells. ↩︎
31. People have reasons for eating meat besides habit and enjoyment, and ceasing to eat it is not a simple matter for everyone. Each human body is a unique collection of capabilities and needs. For every person who thrives on a vegan diet, there are others who do not because of allergies, digestive conditions or other circumstances, or they just don’t feel as well. Still others live in places where food options are limited by climate or topography (north of the Arctic Circle, sub-Saharan Africa, central Australia), yet people have lived there and flourished for centuries, eating meat. ↩︎
32. See Marta Zaraska, ‘Meet the meat paradox’, Scientific American, 1 July 2016, http://tinyurl.com/yc48asy6. ↩︎
33. By contrast, a wide variety of human beings fit the criteria that pets prefer in their owners: clearly evidence of the successful domestication of people by dogs and cats. ↩︎
34. For a provocative argument that pet-keeping is morally indefensible, see Gary E. Francione and Anna E. Charlton, ‘The case against pets’, Aeon, 8 September 2016, http://tinyurl.com/2zsyj17th. Also taking this line are Troy Vettese, ‘Want to truly have empathy for animals? Stop owning pets’, The Guardian, 4 February 2023, http://tinyurl.com/mtxe5cpj; Corey Lee Wrenn, ‘Pets: Is it ethical to keep them?’, The Conversation, 25 April 2019, http://tinyurl.com/2myk7y53; and Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, ‘Should we stop keeping pets? Why more and more ethicists say yes’, The Guardian, 2 August 2017, http://tinyurl.com/yjxbvtsv. ↩︎
35. ‘Pet statistics: Shelter intake and surrender’, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Estimates based in part on Shelter Animals Count data and other known and estimated sources, 2019, http://tinyurl.com/34x4uke. ↩︎
36. Even if we choose not to eat meat, there is still the question of how we are to feed our carnivorous pet cats and dogs. The Petfood Industry website (cited in note 22 above) is owned by Watt Global Media, which provides information, resources and connections to the pet food, ‘animal feed’ and poultry industries. ↩︎
37. The suffering of animals bred for meat on the massive industrial scale is no secret. If you want to know more about (for example) the short miserable lives of broiler chickens in the United States or the sheep that Australia exports, https://faunalytics.org/category/animals-used-for-food/ is a good starting point. ↩︎