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Humanity has always pride itself of it's position in nature. We have been preconditioned by society to see ourselves as special, unique, or chosen. How about non-human animals? How much can we identify ourselves with them? Even considering the lack of communication and understanding. David Armstrong's short story is about bridging that gap...and the ethical consequences thereof.
How much are animals like us, and how much are we like animals? |
"What makes us human is that we are the most extreme. We are the most compassionate; we are the most violent. We are the most creative, and we are the most destructive animals ever to appear on this planet. But we are not the only animals that love one another. We are not the only ones who care for our mates or for our children."
Carl Safina
Neurologically speaking, the fretwork of synapses in the bovine frontal lobe resembles that of hominids. In the human brain, the dominant hemisphere, known as "Broca's area," harbors the language center from which speech originates. It is this region where the cow's brain most closely mirrors that of people. Some English farmers even claim that their cattle low in a dialect particular to the region. Alistair Thorne of Ottery St. Mary states of his South Devon beef cattle, "They'll moo at you all day in a West Country burr."
Only after Dr. Penelope Giese created a custom node array, using a combination of MRI, CT, and positron emission tomography, was she able to construct a comprehensive diffeomorphic map of the bovine brain. From there, it was only a hop, skip, and an AI-hard linguistic algorithm translating synapse-bursts into coded speech patterns to create a recognizable "bovine language."
Shortly thereafter, the neurologist everyone called the "cow lady" became the most famous scientific figure on the planet.
What did the cows say?
In the now famous video, a two-year-old Hereford named Marie is bedecked with a tangle of wires flowing so thickly from her skull it looks like a wig. Marie stomps and lows. A nearby monitor spits out a few lines of "dialogue."
The first recorded message from a cow is this: "Room grass no grass person pet person grass together."
For the first televised conversation with Marie, Dr. Giese displays a Barnum-esque showmanship, employing text-to-speech software with a customized phonetic output so Marie speaks in a buttery French-Canadian lilt.
Cameras rolling, Dr. Giese asks, "Marie, how do you feel?"
"Troubled, dearest."
Giese grimaces as if in the throes of debilitating indigestion. "Why are you 'troubled'?"
"I fear death, dearest."
"Do you even understand what death is?"
"Death is darkness. Night by night, dearest. Death and darkness."
"You fear the dark, Marie. Not death."
A spluttery, bovine snort. "I fear death."
"Okay. Why do you fear death?"
Marie swings her ponderous head toward Giese. Her black eyes glisten under the laboratory lights.
"I want to stay... with you... dearest. I love you, dearest."
Ruminants such as cattle are animals with four stomachs who regurgitate their own cud and chew again before digestion. To "ruminate" is to think deeply or "chew over" a topic. This etymology gave rise to a retroactive kind of thinking as to the anthropomorphic faculties of cows.
In her famous speech to congress, Dr. Giese publicly denounced this idea.
"Speech is too often mistaken for evidence of intelligence. Teenagers are proof of that."
A smattering of chuckles.
"I'm confident Marie and any cow like her will always be exhibiting a form of homoplasy, a convergent evolution in which the bovine mimics the emotional state of humans as a survival mechanism. It is not evidence of empathy or imagination. It is not, as some contend, evidence of a 'soul.'"
After countless allegations that she accepted money from the meat industry to give the speech, Giese disappeared from the spotlight. Despite cadging of her research, none could coax human words from another species--not whales or even dolphins.
Nor was the "empathetic cow" question fully answered.
A rash of vegetarianism did sweep the country. Legislation was shuttled forth on shaky legs to limit beef consumption--were cows citizens?--but lobbyists killed it in the cradle. Protestors called it cannibalism: consuming a fellow sentient being.
Then, flaunting logic, steakhouses experienced a boom. It seemed Americans, more than ever, liked the idea of eating their own.
Most people are appalled to hear Giese eats beef. After her speech to congress, she gave only one interview. "I have no illusions," she says. "I go into Morton's Steakhouse knowing full well I'm consuming another living being."
When asked what became of Marie, she answers, "I really don't know. It wasn't like we were friends. She was a cow, a lab animal. She didn't receive a governor's pardon or anything."
"You don't care?" asks the interviewer.
"I'll say this. The way this country treats its humans, I think my work brings to light an important discussion. If a cow were to feel and speak, and we still ate it, why not people? If we can let each other die, if we can say, 'each man for himself,' then what's the next logical step? Not to stop eating beef. I'm being frank here. It's to start eating people. That's how they think. The rich will eat the poor. Mark my words. Cows are just the beginning."
Only after Dr. Penelope Giese created a custom node array, using a combination of MRI, CT, and positron emission tomography, was she able to construct a comprehensive diffeomorphic map of the bovine brain. From there, it was only a hop, skip, and an AI-hard linguistic algorithm translating synapse-bursts into coded speech patterns to create a recognizable "bovine language."
Shortly thereafter, the neurologist everyone called the "cow lady" became the most famous scientific figure on the planet.
What did the cows say?
In the now famous video, a two-year-old Hereford named Marie is bedecked with a tangle of wires flowing so thickly from her skull it looks like a wig. Marie stomps and lows. A nearby monitor spits out a few lines of "dialogue."
The first recorded message from a cow is this: "Room grass no grass person pet person grass together."
For the first televised conversation with Marie, Dr. Giese displays a Barnum-esque showmanship, employing text-to-speech software with a customized phonetic output so Marie speaks in a buttery French-Canadian lilt.
Cameras rolling, Dr. Giese asks, "Marie, how do you feel?"
"Troubled, dearest."
Giese grimaces as if in the throes of debilitating indigestion. "Why are you 'troubled'?"
"I fear death, dearest."
"Do you even understand what death is?"
"Death is darkness. Night by night, dearest. Death and darkness."
"You fear the dark, Marie. Not death."
A spluttery, bovine snort. "I fear death."
"Okay. Why do you fear death?"
Marie swings her ponderous head toward Giese. Her black eyes glisten under the laboratory lights.
"I want to stay... with you... dearest. I love you, dearest."
Ruminants such as cattle are animals with four stomachs who regurgitate their own cud and chew again before digestion. To "ruminate" is to think deeply or "chew over" a topic. This etymology gave rise to a retroactive kind of thinking as to the anthropomorphic faculties of cows.
In her famous speech to congress, Dr. Giese publicly denounced this idea.
"Speech is too often mistaken for evidence of intelligence. Teenagers are proof of that."
A smattering of chuckles.
"I'm confident Marie and any cow like her will always be exhibiting a form of homoplasy, a convergent evolution in which the bovine mimics the emotional state of humans as a survival mechanism. It is not evidence of empathy or imagination. It is not, as some contend, evidence of a 'soul.'"
After countless allegations that she accepted money from the meat industry to give the speech, Giese disappeared from the spotlight. Despite cadging of her research, none could coax human words from another species--not whales or even dolphins.
Nor was the "empathetic cow" question fully answered.
A rash of vegetarianism did sweep the country. Legislation was shuttled forth on shaky legs to limit beef consumption--were cows citizens?--but lobbyists killed it in the cradle. Protestors called it cannibalism: consuming a fellow sentient being.
Then, flaunting logic, steakhouses experienced a boom. It seemed Americans, more than ever, liked the idea of eating their own.
Most people are appalled to hear Giese eats beef. After her speech to congress, she gave only one interview. "I have no illusions," she says. "I go into Morton's Steakhouse knowing full well I'm consuming another living being."
When asked what became of Marie, she answers, "I really don't know. It wasn't like we were friends. She was a cow, a lab animal. She didn't receive a governor's pardon or anything."
"You don't care?" asks the interviewer.
"I'll say this. The way this country treats its humans, I think my work brings to light an important discussion. If a cow were to feel and speak, and we still ate it, why not people? If we can let each other die, if we can say, 'each man for himself,' then what's the next logical step? Not to stop eating beef. I'm being frank here. It's to start eating people. That's how they think. The rich will eat the poor. Mark my words. Cows are just the beginning."
Ponder this
Certain plants have been shown to have some degree of sentience, how are their case in comparison/contrast to animals?
Are there any loopholes that may let us out of this moral conundrum?
Discuss
If animals are proven to be sentient, is it morally wrong to harm them? Can we justify this using the predator-prey argument? Human society had justified harm upon other humans in the name of justice (e.g. jailing, corporal punishment, even capital punishment). Can we justify harming animals in the name of survival (as food), tradition (eat as our ancestors did), or entertainment (bull fights, or sport hunting)?
Further readings
"Are Plants Entering the Realm of the Sentient?", astounding findings are emerging about plant awareness and intelligence.
Cultured meat, a way to sidestep the ethical and moral issue of meat-eating.
"The world’s biggest meat companies are betting on cell-cultured meat", America’s meat companies are going big into cell-cultured meat.
