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Numerous studies show that elephants are among the most intelligent species on the planet. They pass the mirror test, a test for self-awareness that is also believed to correlate with empathy. They display altruistic behavior for other elephants (and sometimes humans as well). They appear to mourn their dead and even perform death rituals. There is lots of scholarly research on the topic. Seemingly, it is the perfect research question: "Do elephants have emotions?"
...Until I realized midway through my preliminary research that almost nobody disagreed with the fact that elephants had emotions. This surprised me greatly—in all my other studies, there were plenty who claimed that no animal could feel true, human-like emotions, and that those who claimed otherwise were guilty of anthropomorphism. However, I could not find a single instance of any expert singling out elephants as not having human-like emotions. That meant that I had nothing to argue against—I would be writing nothing more than an "info dump".
So, I once again changed my topic, this time to...
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I'm not doing a broad "fish intelligence" or "fish emotions" paper; instead, I'll be writing about the possibility that fish feel pain. This is an important topic because it, more than anything, affects how humans interact with fish—most prominently, the way we fish. If impaling fish in the mouth and pulling them out of the water to suffocate becomes known to actually cause them pain, angling would definitely become a major moral problem. I will not be asking "Should angling be outlawed?" or making something similar my research question; my question will simply be "Do fish feel pain?" (From my research so far, it seems I can pretty much generalize this question across all fish species.) However, I will certainly mention the moral issues in the paper.
A good thing about this research is that it's very divisive—neurological experts disagree pretty evenly. I should note that unlike most of my previous research topic ideas, I have no initial opinion on the issue at the start—I don't know which side I'll ultimately argue for. This blog post is getting pretty long for me to go any further, but I'll discuss some of my findings in future blog posts.
When I first heard your topic, I was surprised to say the least, and you probably inferred as much. But reading over the blog, it is actually a very intriguing and complex issue, which I must say I have never thought about. It ties closely with the concepts we have toyed with in class about how humane are animals, and how much are people like animals. The problem comes down to one which you mentioned in your paper: mainly the moral consequences of the decision to the above question one reaches. If someone indeed believes that a fish can feel pain, then it would become so much harder for them to farm, catch, and kill mass quantities of fish; whether it is by giant fishing nets, or by way of enclosed fish farms filled to the brim with fish feces. If you view fish at having humane characteristics, then these actions are essentially wrong at a fundamental level.
ReplyDeleteLike you mentioned in the post, elephants are universally viewed as more humane than most other animals. As a society I do think we do attribute more disgust to killing or hurting elephants, whether by campaigns to stop tusk usage or such endeavors. Additionally, I think that most people would be semi-freaked out at the proposition of eating elephant meat. This raises an interesting question: at what point does an animal get from being to 'cute' in societies eyes to kill, to being pass the fish sticks at the dinner table?
I understand how hard it is to pick a topic and narrow it down. At first, I was reading through tons of different articles just for an idea as to a good topic to pick! Even after I had a vague concept of the topic I wanted to research, it took me an even longer time to narrow it down and propose an actual research question. And then, I had to make sure that the question was arguable. It's good that you were able to finally pick a topic that worked.
ReplyDeleteAnimal cognition is definitely an interesting topic, too. If you can argue or prove that animals have emotions and feel pain, that would change how we, as a society, look at them. A lot of things would have to change, especially in the food industry. There are a lot of things, such as mass production of meat, for example, that we wouldn't be able to justify. I also think it's interesting that no one argues against the idea of elephants having emotions, but that it is still unsure or unknown with other animals. What makes them different? Is there scientific reasoning behind it or is it just the way people view certain animals?