Anthropomorphism

All right, so I'm studying animal intelligence; that's pretty much set in stone. "Animal intelligence" is a pretty broad topic by itself—probably too broad for this type of research paper—but also, I don't want to pick a topic so specific that it's not researchable. I'm basically just getting started, so we'll see how it goes.

Many biologists warn about the "dangers" of anthropomorphism—which, in a scientific context, is the tendency to assume that animals have similar emotions and motivations to what humans do, which, in many (if not most) cases, is a fallacy. However, some scientists see less of a problem with interpreting animal behavior in this way: in If Your Cat Could Talk, veterinarian Bruce Fogle argues that "both humans and cats have identical neurochemicals and regions in the brain responsible for emotion;" therefore, "it is not anthropomorphic to credit cats with emotions such as jealousy." Furthermore, in The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin dismisses this "anthropocentrism" mindset with the assertion that the differences between animals and humans are "only in degree and not in kind."

I certainly don't know anything about the similarities between human neurochemicals and animal neurochemicals, and I'll definitely need to find more perspectives on this issue before I can take any sort of side in it.

That's all I've got for now. I'll record some possible research subtopics in the coming week.