Animal Cruelty and Science Literacy

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on Feb 10, 2013]

So I’ve been thinking…

I’m studying abroad in Thailand this semester, and the one thing that pains me about this beautiful country is the commonplace torture and neglect of its animals.

There are dogs everywhere - everywhere - living on the streets, sleeping splayed out on the concrete, skirting the edges of the road. Most have hip bones sticking out like elbows; others are bubbly fat from the human food people throw them.

- dipity.com

Then there are the animals used for tourism. Monkeys are dressed up and used as road-side entertainment. Slow lorises have their venomous teeth removed and are sold as pets. And elephants, for which Thailand is so famous, are used for begging, rides, circus shows, and logging.

- elephantayothaya.com

- buzzpicturez.blogspot.com

-mmbenya.com

I’ve also been thinking about scientific literacy as I’ve been writing an argumentative paper about it for a social problems class. One thing I have to articulate is why scientific literacy is important, what effects can occur in its presence and absence. One thing that occurs to me is the understanding of the biological needs and consciousness of animals: would it be more well-known if the public had the tools with which to search for and answer questions about such things?

Granted, those tools are much more available in America, where we have plentiful internet and higher scientific literacy. I wonder how one would even begin to promote scientific literacy in a place like Thailand.

Still, if we are so much better off, if we condone the practice of drugging tigers in order to turn a profit and beating baby elephants while lighting fire under their bellies, why do we Westerners continue to support such behavior with our money? Thais break and train elephants because we white people love to ride them. They sedate tigers because tourists from around the world will flock to love on lethargic big cats.

- austinernieteachasia.blogspot.com

It happens in America, too, and it’s the main reason I choose not to buy meat. Ironically enough, the animals who receive the best treatment here are arguably the farm animals. In America, we put our livestock in concentration camps. Maybe those aren’t the animals you might see by the roadside if you’re a rural dweller, but the animals that make up the burgers and nuggets of most grocery food and restaurant meals were mass-produced. The mass production of life, particularly when that life only exists in order to die and be eaten, is doomed to be corrupted by cruelty.

At least, that is, when too few people demand anything different.

A typical Concentrated Animal Farming Operation (CAFO) of cows

- greenrightnow.com

The problem is not just the fact that this cruelty is hidden, though exposing it is an essential part to the process of changing it. I think the problem lies much deeper, somewhere in that part of us that inspires us to hurt animals in the first place. I know people who have seen the footage of Western meat production and continue to buy just as much meat as they always have.

The optimistic part of me hopes that educating people about the science of animals’ intelligence, social ties, problem-solving skills, and suffering will cause us to rethink the way we see the hierarchies we have created. Do we have good reason to see cows differently than we see dogs, to see dogs any differently than we see ourselves? Can considering the repercussions our financial support has on animals become a more commonplace, widely accepted thing?

I certainly hope so. The question is how to get there. How do we solve scientific literacy problems? That’s something else I need to figure out for this paper, and I’m still plugging at the question.

What do you think? Are we right in seeing the needs of animals as lower in priority than the needs of humans? Is scientific literacy the answer to reducing animal cruelty? How do we increase scientific literacy, anyway?

Here’s a video to feed your thoughts; astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks for PETA.