Articles Analysis Essay on Animal Behavior

Introduction

This is a research paper that compares and contrasts two case studies. The articles highlight the various incidents in which animals show signs of grief in How Animals Grief which is a significant contrast against scientific reasons that animals are not capable of displaying emotions. In the second article, A Man and His Cat, the persona explains the transition he had with his cat and the effects that it had on him. This is an excellent contrast to the community beliefs that men are not meant to be affected by interaction with animals such as pets. This essay identifies some of this contrasts as they are highlighted in this texts.

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The first article, When Animals Mourn is mainly an analysis of animal behavior especially about how they express some emotions such as grief. Several incidences are given in accordance to this most of them showing how different animals react upon losing another animal that was close to it. In addition to this, the article focuses on the reaction of other animals that are related to the loss such as the pack of giraffes which are close to the grieving mother who has lost her young one. The essay focuses on the reaction that the animals have on such losses and how they demonstrate their grief. This is great opposition to the conventional scientific theories that animals cannot experience love and pain like humans do (King & Barbara, 2013). Their acts prove that they can feel a loss of fellow animals that were close to them. The several listings in which the animals have shown this are listed below.

The first incidence is that of a dolphin that has a dead young one. The dolphin tries to nudge the dead young one continually and does not mind that she is in the shallow waters. This could be dangerous for it as it spends most of the time around the dead young one and does not eat. The dolphin also tends to take away some of the decaying skin on the young one. This is a sign of grief that the mother expresses due to the death of her young. The second incidence that shows grief is when an elephant, Eleanor dies and the other elephants come and try to nudge it. It is also evident when one of the elephants, Grace supports it back to standing posture before it dies. Grace stays in the site of Eleanor's death for about four hours. The other elephants then come and move around the body and appear severely upset by the condition of death.

Moreover, a giraffe in Soysambu Conservancy in Kenya shows grief after giving birth to a disabled young one. The young one dies on one spot, and fellow giraffes come and surround the body and appear restless. The mother deviates from her usual pattern of life such as following the rest of her herd after the incidence. After the death of the young one, the mother is seen at a nearby bush where hyenas had taken the body. The scientific principles argue that it is not possible for animals to show their grief since they are not like humans who have a very well developed mind and emotional senses. This incidences, however, indicate that the animals have these aspects too.

The second case study is about a man who has been dramatically affected by a cat that he adopted by feeding. The man becomes very close to the cat and sleeps with the cat on his bed and even gives it water with his glass he uses also. The cat gets used to him, and he even claims that the cat according to the law was like his wife (Tim). The cat seeks the personas attention and wants to get more than the girlfriend of the persona. He plays with it and even speaks to it as if it is a human being. This is the common misinterpretation that the community has on the way men take in pet cats. The character is not common as most men do not prefer cats and having a very close attachment to a cat is a girlish act. The man, however, finds the cat interesting from the beginning. The claim that the author is a cat person is confirmed when he was asked how he would feel if he went home and found the cat missing. This is against the norm that men are not supposed to be cat people (Barnett)

The man also spends money on the cat's needs such as periodic blood tests, cat food, and kidney medication. The man paid about $300 on the blood tests alone due to his love for the cat. The man tries to argue that he was not like the other people who kept posting pictures about their pets online, so he was not as addicted as they were to his pet. However, upon critical evaluation, it is clear that his relationship with the cat was far more that of the average person. For the first days, the man even denied having a cat. However, as he got fonder with the cat, he lifted most of the expected boundaries to accommodate the liking of the animal. He describes how he felt about having the cat and how pleasant it was to him to play with it. He even sniffs the cat's fur when it comes from a winter day. In addition to that, he gives the cat names such as The Quetzal, Quetzal Marie, Mrs. Quetzal Marie the Cat, The Inquetzulous Q'ang Marie. His love for the cat had even grown noticeable by the author's girlfriend. He claims that a person in the room with a cat is not alone. Naming an animal is an act of showing how close a person is to the animal (Walsh, 470).

It is normal for a person to go against the norms of treating animals and grow excessively close to an animal or a pet that they have. This is seen in the second article about a man and his great love for a cat. This is widely against the common beliefs about specific characteristics that the people are supposed to display. Also, it is possible for individual animals to respond to grief which is in contrast with most of the scientific theories that argue that animals cannot show emotion (Gardiner, 3). The article How Animals Mourn highlights incidences in which animals grief upon the loss of close relatives or other animals that were close to them. The examples indicate a change in behavior into a sad and irregular pattern upon the loss of the close relative. These two case studies serve to show the contrast that exists between the scientific or the common beliefs that the people have about animals and the behavior of people around their pets.

Works Cited

Barnett, Nick. "Why Some Men Don't Like Cats". Stuff, 2018, http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/four-legs-good/12315358/Why-some-men-don-t-like-cats. Accessed 29 Oct 2018.

Gardiner, Martin. "Modulation of behavior in communicating emotion." Animal Sentience: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling 1.4 (2016): 4.

King, Barbara J. How animals grieve. University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Kreider, Tim. "A Man and His Cat." New York Times, 1 Aug. 2014, p. 1(L). Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A377074289/OVIC?u=lom_schoolcraft&sid=OVIC&xid=87ccf38e. Accessed 28 Oct. 2018.

Walsh, Froma. "Humananimal bonds I: The relational significance of companion animals." Family process 48.4 (2009): 462-480.