November 11, 2002

This column responds to Michael Pollan's opinion published in the New York Times (An Animal's Place, November 10, 2002). I would like to offer the following comments as a person who holds a doctorate in Experimental Psychology, a Master's degree in Animal Learning and Cognition, and as a person who at one time worked with animals on a daily basis in neuroscience and animal learning laboratories:

First, one of the most highly respected animal learning and cognition researchers on the planet, Cambridge University's N.J. Mackintosh, refers to humans and other animals when speaking of other species in the animal kingdom. Simplistic as it may sound, Mackintosh's reference to humans and to other animals in his book, Animal Learning and Cognition, is based on decades of studying the learning and cognitive powers of other species. The statement says volumes. There are not humans and then animals. Humans are animals. We are one species in a complex kingdom that includes many other species with central nervous systems designed in much the same way as our own, ditto their immunological systems, skeletal systems, etc. That is why humans are in the animal kingdom. We share significant similarities in many important ways. Why would it surprise us that other species have highly evolved cognitive (mental), learning, timing, communicative and problem-solving abilities or that they experience fear, pain, suffering, joy, boredom and depression? Like it or not, we, in many ways are designed like other animals. The animal learning literature over the past several decades clearly demonstrates the cognitive, timing, learning and emotional abilities of these other animals. I always am amazed at the great philosophical debates on the suffering capacity and the mental capacities of other species, when the studies to document these capacities date back to Darwin, Pavlov, Thorndike, Mackintosh, and others. What we do to other animals should be judged with a full and complete realization and understanding of their abilities and capacities. If we really understood such things, I doubt we would be so quick to put our interests above theirs with no repercussions of conscience.

Second, scientists in animal learning and cognition have known since Pavlov that other animals most assuredly form associations that lead to expectations based on previous history. In other words, other animals are quite capable of anticipating that something terrible is coming and to experience fear and terror based on their expectations or to anticipate that something good is coming and to experience anticipation and joy. Other animals also are quite capable of feeling terrible fear based on seeing or hearing the suffering of others in their species in the same way that the human animal fears his own injury when placed in a prison camp and experiences the suffering and death of others. It is all classical conditioning and the evidence for it dates back to Pavlov. As a matter of fact, even those species with little cortical development can experience intense fear because recent studies show that anticipatory fear response can be learned with only a brainstem. The fear and suffering of an animal used as a research subject is no less than that of an animal used as food. When we injure an animal, that animal hurts and feels terror regardless of the location in which the injury occurred. If we determine it is not ethical to inflict injury on other animals; it is not ethical regardless of the circumstances or the reasons. In research, the injury is compounded by the fact that, unlike humans, other animals are not given the option of informed consent to be a research subject.

Third, animal learning people have been shouting from the rooftops for decades that each species' behavior must be understood within its niche. Maybe the loss of sexual potency is not as significant to a monkey or at least it does not appear to be as it is to a man. However, unless you understand other species in great depth, their behaviors, and their compensatory responses, it is a leap to say that castration does not bother them as it does a man. Even if this were the case, every species in the animal kingdom is biologically hardwired to value the loss of those things most important to its survival as an individual and as a species. If a monkey does not appear to be devastated by castration, maybe his priority for other things is more immediate at the time.

Fourth, while Mr. Pollan suggested that there is a debate over how the central nervous system in other animals differs from humans, my teachers and mentors in neuroanatomy and neurphysiology made great efforts to point out the very incredible similarities in the construction of the mechanisms of pain reception in the vertebrate animals that I studied. These included humans, canines, felines, birds, and rodents. The similarity in the construction of neurons that receive and transmit pain perception to the brain, process pain, and transmit responses to it are really quite remarkable across all these species. In our labs, the saying used to be, "If you want to know how a pig, dog, cat, or horse feels when it is burnt, hit, or kicked, do it to yourself."

Finally, all psychologists know that the simplest test of a sense of self is that you don't bump into other people and that you don't bump into other objects. If you don't do that, you see yourself as an entity separate from the world. Parents of children with certain forms of developmental disorders in which there is a question of sense of self know that these children frequently do bump into other objects and people because they do not see themselves as separate. Most members of other animal species do not bump into other things because they have a sense of themselves as unique from the rest of the world. In those species we domesticate such as dogs and cats, the sense of self also can be demonstrated when the animal responds to her/his own name but not to another name. These are simple tests used by all psychologists to get a sense of whether a child has a "sense of self." I have never met a member of another species that did not pass them. As far as whether other animals have an understanding of the ramifications of their own death; of course they do. Every species comes equipped with the flight or fight response. This highly evolved mechanism to preserve life is evolutionís way of saving us from death. Observe other species in frightening situations as they run or fight to preserve their lives and then ask yourself again if other species do not have a sense that death is the end.

I would encourage others to acquaint themselves with the published research on animal learning and cognition, ethology, and basic neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. I did and that is when I came to the conclusion that other species in the animal kingdom must be given a place under the law that protects them as beings with great capacities to communicate with others in their species, with complex cognitive and emotional aspects to their lives, and with unquestionable abilities to experience both joy and suffering.

Patricia Haight, Ph.D.
Southwest Regional Director
In Defense of Animals
2121 S. Mill Avenue, Suite 107 C
Tempe, AZ 85282
Tel: 480-394-0578
Fax: 480-394-0576

Patricia Haight of Phoenix is an experimental psychologist.

In Defense of Animals
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