Marc Bekoff's The Emotional Lives Of Animals

In the text, The Emotional Lives of Animals, Marc Bekoff wants to shift the paradigm and the ways in which society views animals. In order to shift the dominant behavior and revise the stereotypes against animals, Bekoff uses various anecdotes throughout the text. Although anecdotes are not scientific evidence, Bekoff believes that a combination of anecdotes and scientific data support the existence of animal emotions. (Bekoff, 2007, p. 5). In relation to this, he also mentions the field of cognitive ethology, which focuses on the study of animal minds. One specific anecdote that Bekoff provides includes the story he mentions about his dog, Jethro, saving two animals from death (Bekoff, 2007,p. 18). Through this explanation, Bekoff is able to demonstrate to the reader that through cognitive ethology, individuals are able to realize that animals have emotions and that animal ethics needs to be a priority. Cognitive ethology, animal emotions and ethics are the …show more content…
This field of study is able to provide arguments about the ethical treatments of animals through the realization that animal emotions exist. Ethics is able to focus on the well being of animals and shift from anthropocentrism. By realizing the relation between cognitive ethology, animal emotions and ethics, humans are no longer seen as superior over animals because they are regarded as similar to them. Cognitive ethology and animal emotions allow ethics to “ enrich our views of other animals” as well as “ change how we do science” (Bekoff, 2007,p. 22-23). When we understand that animals have emotions and require ethical measures, their lives become important and they are appreciated as members of society. This also changes the ways in which scientists conduct experiments on animals because they can now be regarded as having feelings similar to humans, in which these experiments are now seen as