ANIMAL IDENTITY: just who is an animal?

it’s been snowing again, and my humans finally left the house. i’ve been in the house more than before. according to petra, my lady human, the neighbors had complained that i had been barking too much when i was out in the backyard. this was news to me as mckinley, the neighbor dog (he’s a sled dog, nice, but pees on my rocks too much) had mentioned nothing about me barking too much. i only bark at squirrels or when small humans come by the fence on wheels, especially ‘skateboards.’ i also bark when the neighbors have a bunch of male humans with their loud machines that come in the summer and make the neighborhood smell like grass. they use one machine (leaf blowers) that blows the smells all over the place, and well, they don’t always seem to realize what they are stirring up, but it’s a lot of information to communicate and explain to everyone around.

so, instead of barking outside, i’ve been trying to follow some dog news stories.

michael vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison this week for dog fighting. he used to be an atlanta falcon, which was initially confusing to me because he’s a human, not a bird, but then i remembered that humans like to pretend to be other creatures when they play certain games. what can i say, humans are weird; we dogs are content being dogs.

i started thinking about why humans would enjoy watching dogs fight. i read about dog fighting in wikipedia. they called it a ‘bloodsport,’ which they defined as ‘a term used by social reformers to describe sport or entertainment which is believed to be cruel and which involves needless animal suffering.’

the part that stood out to me here was ‘needless ANIMAL suffering.’ now, i would like to note (i sound like a lawyer, huh?) that humans rarely think of themselves as animals. one of many examples is boulder’s city code

6-1-17 Animals on Mall Prohibited.
(a) No person shall bring an animal onto the mall or possess an animal on the mall, regardless of whether the animal is on a leash or is confined. But a person with an animal may cross the mall in a northbound or southbound direction at 11th street, Broadway, 13th street, 14th street, or 15th street.

according to the code, it would seem that no humans are allowed on the mall ever, and i know that andy brought petra to the mall (not on a leash) to go to a party recently. now, i don’t know if you all know that humans are classified as belonging to the ANIMAL kingdom, but the last time i checked the darwinian classification of humans it was like this:

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: H. sapiens
Subspecies: H. s. sapiens
Trinomial name
Homo sapiens sapiens Linnaeus, 1758

you following?

now the picture that wikipedia uses for the human entry is a detail from NASA's pioneer plaques: the pioneer plates are pictures that NASA created to send into outer space so that ‘extra-terrestrials’ would know who lives on earth.

the anthropocentrism is appalling. . . apparently, the only creatures on earth worth depicting are human animals.
and let's look at these humans a little closer: human animals are officially depicted as non-furry creatures. i’ve seen my humans naked, and they have some pretty distinct furry regions. apparently, NASA was uncomfortable depicting humans with their natural furry areas. besides which, humans come in different levels of furriness:

here’s just one furry man i found on the internet:

and if you want to get really picky…look at the NASA picture. i’m wondering what breed of humans are they depicting? i know humans don’t like to categorize themselves into breeds like they do with cats and dogs and hamsters, to name a few popular ones. instead they use terms like nationality, race, and ethnicity, which, frankly, is way too complicated to try to explain what i understand about any of those at this point….

so, here are my new realizations:

humans don’t consider themselves to be animals or to be furry. they generally think that it’s bad for humans to watch other animals suffer needlessly, and if a human is involved in having or watching animals suffer needlessly, a judge will send the human to prison (this is not crate training), even if the human used to be a falcon.

the picture that NASA chose is kind of like when petra and i go to petsmart, and we walk down the crunchy balls food aisle. we shelties are depicted on a lot of the bags. i guess that must mean that i, a sheltie, am a top dog, more important than others, which is funny cause crunchy balls taste the same to me as mckinley, and he’s no sheltie.

and dog barking is annoying noise, but leaf blower noise is acceptable.