I really enjoyed reading Animals Like Us and learning about the relationships these people developed with these different animals and how it affected their everyday lives. An argument that was presented in this essay that I found to be significant was how 12 years old Judith Black was able to decide at such a young age that not only did she not agree with killing animals for their taste, but also that she was able to classify specific creatures as animals or not animals and that determined whether or not it was okay to eat them. I found this to be significant to Herzog’s argument because it shows how some people lead with their hearts when it comes to animals and Judith is the perfect example of how she in a way put the animals well being over her own. Her husband, on the other hand, was a graduate student in Biology and cared about animals, but remained a meat-eater. I found it to be surprising though that after 15 years of being a vegetarian he was able to convince her to be a meat-eater as well. This just shows how complicated relationships can be with animals and just because she started eating them again doesn’t mean she cares any less for them it just shows how her moral around it has shifted.
Someone else that also let animals play along with their heartstrings was Carolyn who had a strong relationship with a manatee. I found this to be a significant passage because not only did it show how much Snooty meant to Carolyn, but it also showed how much Carolyn meant to Snootty as well. Their relationship was so strong that it even got in the way of Carolyn’s relationship with her husband because she no longer could go on vacations with him because Snooty wouldn’t eat while she was gone because he missed her. I found that this passage also tied along with our last reading about consciousness and I think that that plays a huge role because it just shows how animals also feel the same emotions we do and are capable of love and sadness and forming relationships like we do.
The last passage I found to be significant was about Ron who is a graduate student that has a loving relationship for cats but is partaking in a study where he has to surgically destroy specific parts of the cat’s brains to observe how their abilities recovered over the succeeding weeks and months. I found this passage to be significant because it tells us how this put a damper on Rons well being. His classmates observed how before he started this study he was naturally a cheerful and warmhearted person, but partaking made him tense, withdrawn and shaky and just not himself. I thought this was important in supporting Herzog’s essay because it shows just how strong his relationship is with these creatures and how it really affected him personally to harm these animals.
