You’re a regular office worker born with the ability to “see” how dangerous a person is with a number scale of 1-10 above their heads. A toddler would be a 1, while a skilled soldier with a firearm may score a 7. Today, you notice the reserved new guy at the office measures a 10.
You decide it’s best to find out what you can about this person. Cautiously, you approach his desk. He’s a handsome man, tall, but with a disarming smile. How could such a friendly guy with such cute, dorky glasses be dangerous?
You extend your hand. “I noticed you’re new here. What’s your name?”
He shakes your hand warmly. His gaze is piercing, as if he’s looking right through you. “The name’s Clark,” he says. “So, how long have you worked for the Daily Planet?”
This one wins.
It’s been a few weeks, and one of Clark’s friends shows up. She’s pretty and all, enough muscle that she must work out. First thought would be that she should be maybe a 6.
Clark’s introducing her around. “This is my good friend, Diana, she’s in from out of town.”
You blink, and take a step back in fear. You’ve never seen an 11 before.
I follow a lot of awesome vegans and a lot of vegan posts pop up on my dash. I’M NOT GETTING INTO AN ARGUMENT ABOUT VEGANISM WITH ANYONE. THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. I just feel like I need to address a trend I see pretty frequently:
Anthropomorphism of farm animals.
This is DANGEROUS, for both the animals and the people who believe what’s being said about these animals.
For example, cows.
For obvious reasons the images of cows in posts talking about how cows aren’t dumb, unfeeling hamburgers in waiting are generally like this:
And usually they’re accompanied by talk of how they can be trained, how they have best friends (which is actually true!) and how sweet they can be.
On the other side, there are posts like this going around
Thing is, cows do not cry tears like humans do. In fact, there are a lot of posts claiming to present animals weeping like humans do (and not always by vegans). In fact watery discharge can be a sign of early eye infections in cattle. Claiming they’re tears of sadness normalizes signs of ill health as normal animal emotions. This is also I why I get so worked up over people saying a stressed out dog with its lips pulled back is ‘smiling and happy’.
All of these posts combine to make the popular perception of cows something they’re absolutely not and is very dangerous for people with their hearts in the right place looking to help the world out.
Cows are dangerous. I feel like I shouldn’t have to tell people that a thousand pound animal is dangerous, but I do. Not the people I see on my dash, but actual people looking to interact with actual cows (I work with them). Yes, they can be lovely and docile when socialized and handled correctly and consistently but if you have no way of knowing the cows background you have no way of knowing their temperament. If you decide to volunteer at cattle rescues, this will very likely be the case. Moreover, well socialized and docile cattle ARE STILL DANGEROUS AS FUCK. Even the most tame animals can lash out if in pain, under stress or “out of nowhere” (read: lashing out because from their judgement of a situation in makes sense to them, but you misread their judgement). So you get things like this:
With the huge emphasis on docile cows who are good, loving, devoted mothers it’s understandable someone would want to give her a calming and congratulatory stroke after giving birth.
That cow could have killed her.
This is obviously dangerous for humans but it’s also dangerous for cows. Aggressive animals are often euthanized, no matter what provoked the aggression and it also inflates statistics that could be used as a counter argument to veganism.
The same sort of thing happens to pigs.
The vegan info posts about pigs tend to use images like this:
Cute, eh? The posts also talk about how intelligent these animals are and how they can be kept as pets. Who wouldn’t want one? Usually people who look into pigs as pets look into ‘mini’ pigs or ‘micro’ pigs. Pigs that will stay small forever. Except even ‘mini’ pigs can grow to a hundred pounds in size and they’re STRONG. I say ‘mini’ because sometimes people are duped into buying regular piglets that are claimed to be fully grown.
Which brings me back to warning anyone who wants to volunteer at a pig rescue that pigs. are. huge. People mislead into thinking they’re not will likely not keep and care for their little pig once it’s not so little and I don’t know anyone who would/could keep a 500 lb hog in their home and/or backyard.
And, like with cows, they are DANGEROUS.
And, unlike cows, they are not herbivores.
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED AND EATEN BY PIGS. Yes, eaten. One could argue that this happens when pigs aren’t well socialized and habituated with humans, but if you’re working with a pig you don’t know you have no guarantee that they’re tame.
I could go on, but cows and pigs are the animals I see most represented in these posts (chickens too, but they pose less of a threat, unless you count avian flu) and another thing I see very frequently are cute pictures and videos and cows, pigs, and chickens interacting with dogs. If you’re under the impression that these animals are sweet and docile and your dog is also sweet, what could go wrong?
A lot.
Odds are your animals will not be used to interacting with an animal of that species and these animals ‘languages’ don’t always translate! Animals get things mixed up all the time! The most common one I’ve seen is a dog misreading a cat’s irritated swishy tail as a wagging ‘I want to play!’ tail. Claws to the face aren’t fun, but attacked by a large animal? Possibly deadly. Dogs do not comprehend size and strength and potential for an aggressive strike in the same way that we do. That’s why you end up with things like this:
Again, that dog could’ve easily died OR MIGHT HAVE DIED LATER.
This little trooper was kicked by a cow
Projecting your feelings and ideas onto an animal can potentially kill them. Again, if you have the opportunity to work with these animals KEEP YOUR OWN ANIMALS AWAY.
All of these things remind me very much of the people who claim wolves are nothing but big puppies, or who cohabitant snakes so they don’t get ‘lonely’.
You can’t love and advocate for the protection of an animal when you only love and advocate for the protection of your fantasy of that animal because when real animals fall short of that, real animals get hurt.
Horses, cows, and pigs are big. Respect their size. Horses, cows, and pigs ALL have the potential to become aggressive. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Respect their potential to become aggressive.
Thank you,
Signed, a person who is sick to fucking death of watching adults assume every farm animal I work with has the personality of a bowl of whipped cream and the patience of a saint and encourage their children to interact with them as such. That’s how animal “attacks” happen, that’s how lifetime fears and hatreds are born.
These are all excellent points. Anthropomorphism is dangerous. Just because you might find something good or appealing doesn’t mean that an animal would nor does it mean that they would necessarily have the same emotional response to something. Even within mammals, the range of responses can be very different depending on the species background, natural level of social interaction and structure, and environment it was adapted to.
This goes triple for birds, which do not share most if any of the common mammalian body language modes. Outside of pet species, and we know how often people get pet body language wrong, the average human’s ability to interpret and predict the behavior of other animals is not terribly high, and we should acknowledge that.
The production animal classes I’ve taken have spent time teaching us the appropriate body language and signals for the species we’re working with, and that’s a very important part of working with a species.
Prey animals respond to very differently to certain cues, and an animal’s range of vision makes a huge impact and how they react to certain things, which is why you have to be very careful when approaching a horse, let alone cattle.
Most people also don’t really understand just how much damage from animals can do, either because they’re stressed, or because you read their body language wrong, or they got startled. Heck, I have been head-butted in the stomach by a friendly cow, and let me tell you, the cow might have been happy, but I certainly wasn’t, and I got off lucky there.
This is an excellent post and I’m glad it’s making the rounds. (And the pig thing is 100% true. If pigs could eat humans, they probably would, they will go after just about anything else anyways, especially feral pigs)
Back a year or so ago when piglet prices were through the roof, someone asked me if I was worried about my piglets being stollen because they are out in pasture and not secured in a barn. I told them no and that we likely wouldn’t even find the body of whoever was stupid enough to try and take a piglet away from our herd.
I have some of the nicest pigs around… except if they don’t know you or are messing with one of the babies.
Pigs and cows are no joke. There are so many stories in the pasture pig group of inexperienced farmers being hurt by one of their pigs because they treated them like a puppy. These are massive animals, and if you cannot respect the damage they can do, you should not own or work with them.
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we likely wouldn’t even find the body of whoever was stupid enough to try and take a piglet away from our herd.” I think that applies to any mother protecting her young, but at the same time, I would most definitely not mess with a sow and her piglets if I liked my internal organs where they were, unless it was under very controlled conditions and I had a lot more training (and thicker clothing).
Your comments are 100% accurate. So very accurate. Pigs are bred for lean meat - that means muscle, and that means they can do a lot of damage by accident. They are big, play rough, and don’t understand we are squishy. The pig barn on campus has some very sweet, friendly Duroc boars that LOVE head scritches. And I’ve been by once or twice for other things and stopped by to say hello. But even these friendly fellows who get lots of attention on a regular basis and are very fond of humans are still big long bricks of solid muscle and I don’t forget that for a second.
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if you cannot respect the damage they can do, you should not own or work with them.”
THIS - thanks @compulsivefarmer ! (and I’d love to hear more about your pigs sometime if you’d like - I am quite fond of pigs)
Green, who lost her parents young, was raised by her aunt and uncle. While still at school, her aunt died from cancer, and three months later her uncle was diagnosed with cancer, too. Green went on to earn her degree in physics at Alabama A&M University, being crowned Homecoming Queen while she was at it, before going on full scholarship to University of Alabama in Birmingham to earn her Masters and Ph.D. There Green would become the first to work out how to deliver nanoparticles into cancer cells exclusively, so that a laser could be used to remove them, and then successfully carry out her treatment on living animals.
her studies thus far are only on head and neck cancers, but her theory is this treatment platform would work on all types of cancers. But needs $$$$ to keep doing research.
It seems the issue is how to target the cancer cells and in her head and neck cancer tests, she had success in mice by utilizing fda approved immunotherepy antibodies to deliver nano particles to mark the tumor. Then she could proceed to blast the shit out of cancer with fuckin lasers.
she was ready or prepared when opportunity arose
I’m so proud of her. I wish more young black women would go into science.
#BLACKGIRLMAGIC
Yes!!!!! If she really does cure cancer, watch her name & face disappear behind some white man.
“You walk at home? Do you even need your wheelchair?”
Yes, because walking in my own house is different than walking class to class at school. I don’t carry a heavy backpack at home. I’m not on a tight schedule at home. I can sit on the ground at home. I can ask my parents or siblings to help me at home. I can crawl on my hands and knees at home. I can lie in the middle of the hallway at home. I can sit on counters and tables at home. I can bear a lot of pain at home. I can show that pain at home. I can collapse in the middle of crawling up the staircase at home.
Don’t tell me or anyone else where or when they need to use their mobility device
The new headcanon is that Junkrat has never seen D.Va outside her mech and believes she’s an omnic who ate a teenage girl
He sees her mech start blowing up and she pops out and he’s like “phew thank god that lil sheila got free of that tin can before it blew up” and then another one falls from the sky five seconds later and scoops her back up and he LOSES HIS SHIT
