Good reading: 'Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals'

When I read books about the relationship between humans and other animals, I'm looking for several things: Insights that help me understand my thoughts, emotions and actions; ammunition for my rhetorical battles with anti-hunters; and, believe it or not, facts or ideas that challenge my thinking and assumptions.

I got all three with the new book, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by anthrozoologist Hal Herzog.

When someone from TLC Book Tours asked me last month if I'd like a copy of the book for review, it took me about two seconds to say, "Yes, please!" From the title alone, I could see it'd be right up my alley.

Once it arrived, I tore through it, and I loved it. Mostly.

The big take-away from this book is that we humans are wildly inconsistent and hypocritical in our attitudes toward, and treatment of, animals. Moreover, the more we try to be moral purists in our regard for animals, the harder it is for us to behave consistently toward them.

I suspect many vegans can relate to that, because it's just hard to live in a way that doesn't use animals at all. I found I could relate to it as well: Hunting has taken me on a journey that has soured my view of agriculture because of how it manipulates nature - both animals and plants - but I find it pretty much impossible to escape ag and live up to my own ideal.

This book has lots of other intriguing ideas and facts that, combined with Herzog's conversational writing style, make this a good read. Here's one of my favorites:

We have some really wacky inconsistencies arising from our use of animals in research, which Herzog illustrates with the distinction between "good mice" and "bad mice" in a lab at the University of Tennessee.

The use of mice in a research projects at the lab is allowed only after a committee weighs the potential benefits of the research against the harm that will be inflicted on the mice. Once a project is approved, there are strict guidelines for the treatment of mice. Those are the good mice.

Then there the bad mice: the vermin running loose, threatening the hyper-clean conditions of the lab. The people running the lab can do anything they want to eradicate these mice, and the method they use is sticky traps. Here's what Herzog says about them:

Sticky traps are rodent flypaper. Each trap consists of a sheet of cardboard about a foot square, covered with a tenacious adhesive and embedded with a chemical mouse attractant - hence their other name, glue boards. In the evening, animal care technicians would place glue boards in areas where pest mice traveled, and check them the next morning. When a mouse stepped on a sticky trap, it would become profoundly stuck. As it struggled, the animal's fur would become increasingly mired in glue. Though the traps did not contain toxins, about half of the animals were dead when the were found the next day...

Animals caught in sticky traps suffer a horrible death. I doubt that any animal care committee would approve an experiment in which a researcher requested permission to glue mice to cardboard and leave them overnight. Thus a procedure that was clearly unacceptable for a mouse labeled "subject" was permitted for a mouse labeled "pest."

Here's the kicker: The "bad" mice were not wild animals; they were escaped "good" mice.

Bonus points to Herzog for admitting to the same hypocrisy in his own home. When his son's pet mouse died, the family held a respectful funeral for the little rodent and buried him in the garden with a slate headstone. A couple days later when Herzog's wife discovered mouse poop in the kitchen, "She looked at me and said, 'Kill it,'" he wrote. He did, with a snap trap, and he tossed its corpse under a bush not far from the pet mouse's grave site.

One recurring theme in the book - what struck me as the biggest consistency in how we treat animals - is that we give the most respect and courtesy to the animals that are considered family (i.e., pets), and the least to animals that are generally out of our sight (i.e., farm animals).

Personally, I think we treat humans the same way. I'm not gonna lie: The plight of a human in my family or my community means way more to me than the plight of a human halfway across the country, or on the other side of the world.

This certainly explains how I can be a devoted slave to my cat Giblet at one moment, then head out to slaughter wild animals that are pretty close to her in size, and even charm, the next. Giblet is family; ducks are not.

It also explains why I might never raise animals for meat, despite the fact that I grew up in a household that did so: I'm not sure I could keep an animal in my care (making it like family), then slit its throat.

It's totally irrational, and totally human, that I feel that way.

Or wait, maybe it's not just human. Check this out:

Herzog wrote about some research aimed at determining whether mice would react to pain being inflicted on other mice. What kind of pain? Oh, injecting mild acid in their stomachs, injecting irritants into their paws and heating the surface mice were standing on until they lifted their paws to get away from it.

The results? Yes, mice who were subjected to these little tortures writhed more when they were in the presence of other mice being tortured than they did when they were being tortured in isolation ... but only if the fellow torture victims were relatives or cage-mates.

But wait, there's more! Pain was contagious only to mice who could see their relatives or cage-mates suffering. Merely smelling or hearing those fellow suffering mice did not affect them. Out of sight, out of mind.

This book is full of lots of fascinating stuff like this, and it covers way more than animal research: Herzog delves into pets, agriculture, cockfighting and animal rights/animal advocacy.

But I was really disappointed with one aspect of the book: Herzog didn't address hunting in any substantial way, despite the fact that hunters often express the baffling sentiment that we love the animals we hunt - not just that we love to hunt them and eat them, but that we revere and respect them. While I've given this paradox a great deal of thought on my own, I was really hoping to learn more from a researcher.

Moreover, I got the strong sense that Herzog doesn't particularly understand hunters or hunting. For example, in his chapter on cockfighting - which he studied at great length - he says this:

If cockfighters were sadistic perverts, it would be easy to explain their involvement in a cruel bloodsport. But given that most are not, how can they participate in an activity that is illegal and that nearly everyone in America thinks is immoral? The answer is that they construct a moral framework based on a mix of wishful thinking and logic in which cockfighting becomes completely acceptable. In this regard they are no different from any other person who exploits animals - hunters, circus animal trainers, even scientists and meat-eaters.

I don't object to his conclusion about the moral framework we construct. I accept that we do that. For some people, killing animals is justified by God giving mankind dominion over animals. I don't personally buy that; I justify my hunting by the fact that hunting is a fact of life in nature. Other people don't buy that either. And I know a vegan who eats oysters, despite the fact that they are living beings, because someone gave her an article in which someone said it was OK for vegans to eat them.

I don't object to the term "exploit" either, because I take it at its literal definition (to use), not with its emotional connotation (to abuse).

What bugs me is that he lumped hunters in with circus animal trainers, while he put scientists and meat eaters in a higher class. Yes, I'm really parsing words here, but I don't think I'm wrong. Hunters are meat eaters who go out and get their own, but I'm not sure he groks that.

If Herzog has spent any time researching hunters personally, it's not apparent in this book. I think every mention of hunters references someone else's research.

And funny thing? Because he spent a lot of time with cockfighters and got to know how they pamper their birds, he acknowledges that cockfighting produces far less suffering than producing broiler chickens. Yet, while he doesn't advocate the end of broiler chicken production, he does advocate the end of cockfighting. "It is time for rooster fighters to close down the pits and swap their gaffs for golf clubs and bass boats," he writes.

Bass boats? Those instruments of contest-driven, high-speed torture-and-release fishing? Really?

I guess Herzog suffers from the same moral inconsistencies as the rest of us.

Now, I don't think any of this should dissuade you from buying this book. If you're interested in how humans relate to and interact with animals, you'll learn a lot. And you'll probably think more carefully about your own views. Just don't expect to learn much about hunters.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011