On People Caring for Animals

I was reflecting on the subject of people caring for animals and how it's really part of our Human Nature to do so. If Aristotle and Aquinas were right that there is some sort of essential Human Nature, we could not possibly define that nature without referring to animals. I'm not just talking about our "animal" nature in the sense of evolutionary biology. I mean that when we think of what makes a human being a human being, we have to consider humanity's relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom. Animals make us human.

People caring for animals: who benefits the most from it?

When I watched Mickey Mouse cartoons as a kid, I always wondered why Disney portrayed Pluto and Goofy so differently. Both were dogs, but one was clearly just a dog, while the other was almost human. For the most part, Pluto was a typical dog. Although he seemed to understand human speech more than most dogs, he ate dog food, did not wear clothes, walked on four legs, and had an owner and master (Mickey). Goofy, on the other hand, was humanoid: he used human speech, walked upright, showed human emotion, wore human clothes, engaged in social interaction like a human being would, did not have an owner or master, etc. As a kid, this struck me as being very inconsistent and unfair. Why should Goofy get to be practically human, but not Pluto?

Later in life, I realized that this apparent contradiction actually signified something very profound about Human Nature. In order to make Mickey Mouse more humanlike, Disney needed to depict Mickey as caring for an animal. This was a bit of a paradox, since Mickey was a mouse and he had other anthropomorphic animal friends, including a humanoid dog named Goofy. But just showing Mickey as a humanoid mouse was not enough. In order to express Mickey's humanness, Disney had to depict another animal, Pluto, as merely an animal, and then show Mickey caring for that animal. By giving Mickey some responsibility for Pluto's welfare, Disney made Mickey's character more humanlike.

What this means, I think, is that humans could not be fully human in the absence of animals. Without animals, we would lose a part of our humanity, and not a small part either. We need animals in order to express ourselves fully as human beings.

That is the significance of people caring for animals. Some animals may need us (domesticated cats are definitely NOT in this category, though!), but we need them too, possibly more than they need us! We think of ourselves as humanizing our pets. Paradoxically, however, our relationships with animals humanize us, because human beings need animals in order to be fully human.