What is "human-like" depends on where humans live

But first! I’ll be at DragonCon in Atlanta NEXT WEEK! It’s one of the best events I do every year. Sure, there are a lot of panels, but as deeply nerdy person, I honestly actually enjoy looking up silly science, defining what a “butt” is, and reading everything possible on sleep deprivation. So if you’re there, check out some of my panels, we will almost always make you laugh, and if you’re very lucky you might even learn something.

Now, conservation

First, let’s be clear, the desire to conserve habitat, to keep ecologies present in their hairy, buggy, and dirty glory, doesn’t really drive people to fund conservation. We care about it theoretically, of course we do, but theoretical caring doesn’t keep conservation workers fed and in the field.

What does is caring about specific species. Most of the time those species are what we call “charismatic” in some way. They are large (elephants), colorful and harmless (monarchs), intelligent in ways we can understand (dolphins and whales), aggressive and “cool” (sharks, lions), or just plain cute (pandas, koalas). There is a reason so many of these species come to mind when we think of “saving the environment” or “conservation.” They have been put on ads the world over for exactly this reason.

But there’s something else that makes people want to conserve a species: When it’s human-like, anthropomorphized. It has intelligence as we understand it.* It has forward facing eyes, like us. It appears to care about, and often obey, humans. It has motivations we can interpret.

Anthropomorphization is a tough topic for a lot of conservationists and ecologists, as well as for science writers. Believing that animals have human-like traits can mean we ignore other interpretations of their behavior. It might mean we blame them, or not, for something they’ve done, interpreting it as having motivation. It can also distract from other species that aren’t easy to anthropomorphize — species that might actually be more important to conserving an ecosystem than the human-like sexy thing we so adore.

On the other hand, when it comes to getting people to believe a species is worthy of being saved? Anthropomorphization works. Heck, when it comes to getting someone to even read an article that you wrote about a species? It’s often one of the only ways of getting people to care. We won’t move a muscle to save a particular species of fly, no matter how critical it is. But a whale that is a “devoted mother”? We’ll move heaven and earth alike.

But not everyone anthropomorphizes the same way. To some people, raccoons are darling little trash bandits with adorable little hands, and to others, they are hunched rabies-ridden thugs who leave your garbage everywhere and their hands are creepy. So what is the difference?

There is an idea that people in urban contexts are more likely to anthropomorphize, to attribute human like motivations and traits to animals. One mode of thinking is that this is because people living in cities don’t have much experience with animals. Like a visit to a zoo or a farm as a kid. The other is that urban dwellers have specific kinds of experience. People in cities and suburbs, after all, have pets, animals they form close bonds with (as I write this, there’s a cat in my lap), which often makes us see them as more human-like. Repeated safe interactions might lead us to assumptions about how the animals behave.

There could also be deeper culture at play. Urban vs rural, yes. But it can also be religious. Monotheistic religions like Christianity often assume that humans are the “highest” form of life and animals are under our control by default. But non-monotheistic religions tend to not draw such a hard line between what is human and what is not.

And then there’s loneliness. People who feel disconnected from others could rely more on animals for companionship (cat ladies, or the guy out in the woods, just him and his dog). Those people might anthropomorphize more, given who they spend most of their time with.

Enter today’s paper!

Amici, Federica et al. Experience with animals, religion, and social integration predict anthropomorphism across five countries. iScience, Volume 28, Issue 7, 112693

These scientists did 741 surveys across Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, and Spain. They asked people about their tendency to anthropomorphize, asking them how much they agreed with statements like “animals have free will,” and drilling down to “monkeys have free will.” They asked if they owned animals, if they considered those animals friends, and then asked how social the people were, how they felt about their families, and more. (There are a truly astonishing number of questions in this survey about monkeys. Everything asked about an animal was then asked about a monkey, but not about a dog, cat, or anything else. I think perhaps this is an effort for consistency, and also because knowledge about and perceptions of different animals varies pretty drastically country to country. Regardless, it’s monkeys all the way down.)

And sure enough: People who had more urban experiences with animals, who were lonelier, and who wanted to be around other people tended to anthropomorphize the monkeys more.

It was interesting to see that those who had experience with monkeys also anthropomorphized them. They just did it differently. Those who had more experience with monkeys were more likely to say they looked like people, but also that they could tell the difference between good and evil…and that they felt less pain. (Having spent time with monkeys, I can tell you: They are often jerks. Not because they’re in captivity, or because they had bad early relationships or anything else, no. Monkeys can be mean, petty, and highly opinionated.**…a lot like humans, actually.)

The authors interpret this as a way to create moral distance. The subjects see the similarities between themselves and monkeys, see they are responsible for their actions, but need to believe they are something NOT human—so they don’t feel as much pain. This is something that the authors note Western people do all the time when they justify things like meat consumption.

I also was interested in the religion findings. Religions with dominance of people over animals as a through-line tended to anthropomorphize less (Christians and Muslims in this case), while those with emphasize on interconnection between living things anthropomorphized more (Buddhists/Hindus).

The authors are thinking about this in terms of how it can be used to boost interest in other species and in conservation. But I find it interesting for another: How people’s ideas about wildlife change as the result of what they believe, where they live, and more.

It’s not something we often truly think about. We think our ideas about animals are based on our personal experiences, that they represent something fundamentally true about the world around us. Do they? They represent our experience. But our experiences, as you can see from the surveys, are very different. Our personal truths are not fundamental ones. They vary based on where we live, the religion we are born into and raised in. On who else we have to talk to.

So the next time I look at a deer, a cat, a bird, a fish, and I automatically interpret what it’s doing, I’m going to be asking: Why do I think that? And what does it mean for how I see an animal’s value?

Where WILL I be?

• DragonCon! As seen above. I will ALSO be giving a talk coming up at The People’s Book in Takoma Park, MD! On September 22. I’d love to see you all!

Where have I been?

• Writing about the phoenix! Not the real phoenix, but rather organisms that can survive extreme heat and live to tell the tale. All hail the desert weevil.

Things to read:

• I loved this piece from Gwen Pearson on the newly discovered species of giant stick insect. Because look, there’s a LOT OF STUFF in the world that looks like a stick.

• Is DC a city? Yes. Does that mean it has crime? Yes. Like have you SEEN the beer prices? And the Maryland drivers?! The humidity right now?! These are the real crimes.

• A truly fascinating convo about social media, showing that there’s not really a good way to fix it…because humans given the opportunity to share, comment and like are gonna….be human.

• Thanks to Jason for consulting with me on the rat king. Which exists. Rarely.

• Brussels is considering solving a rat problem with ferrets. Don’t worry, they’re on leashes, this is not an “I know an old woman who swallowed a fly” situation.

*Let’s be real “intelligence” is a completely subjective measure, and the way we think about it, value it, and measure it? Totally defined by us. There are other universes in which we’d be forced to acknowledge that slime molds are absolutely dang brilliant. But we don’t live in that one. It’s too bad. They’re brilliant.

**I have lab experience with monkeys, and one of the things we took in turns was getting up super early on the weekends to take care of the monkeys (they rise at dawn. You better be there. Breakfast had better not be late). I wasn’t allowed a phone or anything in the housing, and when I went in there, I would sing to myself…and therefore to the monkeys. I cannot say if they loved it. But they would be totally quiet while I sang, even during the rests, and when I stopped, there was whooping and hollering like you would not believe. Best audience I ever had, even if I can never tell what they truly thought.