Literacy Blog #9: Dogs Are People, Too

The reason for some scientist trying to dismiss questions about what animals think and feel is because dogs don't have some of the actions that humans have, such as talking. As said in the article "You can’t ask a dog why he does something. And you certainly can’t ask him how he feels. The prospect of ferreting out animal emotions scares many scientists." Does an MRI tell us the content of someone’s thoughts or feelings? I do believe that dogs do share some of the same emotions that are present in humans. For example, when a master comes home from work, the dog may show excitement by wagging its tail in joy. MRI's don't necessarily show a persons thoughts, but it does show the internal state of the brain. Different emotions trigger different parts of the brain, showing that dogs do have different emotions It is Berns right to say that the law treats dogs as things because it is his opinion and he has a right to express it. On the other hand I don't exactly agree with him, because I have always thought that dogs were apart of a family. I treat my dog as just another member and not as a thing that are playthings for humans. It would be wrong to treat humans like they do dogs being we are the dominant species and I would be weird the other way around. Dogs don’t have opposable thumbs, they don’t talk, they don’t have as clever minds as humans do, so I don’t see how humans could ever be treated as a lesser being. I mean dogs are animals, they don’t do the same things as humans, although they have similar emotions, doesn’t replace their right to be treated higher than a person. If our world does come to a time where dogs somehow gain the ability to think and act like people, then we should be scared because an animal talking is crazy!