Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind- Katie Lamp

In her book "Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind", Eileen Crist looks at how humans have tried to apply our characteristics to animals over time in order to establish some sort of relationship with them because after all, we do share the planet and oftentimes physical territory with them. With the development of the field of ethology, it comes as no surprise that while ethologists may try to approach non-human animals as natural subjects, there will be many people who want to explain animal behavior through human constructs such as emotions. I think one of the most important things to remember when studying animal behavior is that they are, in fact, not people, and that they should be studied as such. When examining the relationship between humans and nature as we have done in this class, the consideration of the relationship between humans and non-human animals is unavoidable, and I think Crist does a good job of looking at how humans can falsely attribute their own characteristics to animals when trying to establish some sort of relationship to them.