Pets, Pests And Food: Our Complex, Contradictory Attitudes Toward Animals

By Shankar Vedantam,

Published June 17, 2019 at 6:30 PM EDT

Hal Herzog, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University, says the more we attribute humanlike qualities to animals, the more ethically problematic it may be to keep them as pets.

When psychologist 's son Adam was young, he had a pet mouse named Willie. One day, Willie died.

"When he died, we thought it would be a good lesson for the kids in terms of understanding death to have a funeral for him. After all, you know, he was a pet."

But a couple of days later, Hal's wife found some mouse droppings in the kitchen and asked him to do something about it.

"She asked me to kill the mouse, and I did," Hal recalls. "I went out, and I bought a mousetrap. I put a little dab of peanut butter on it and put it [in] the kitchen. And, the next morning I got up, and the mouse was dead."

Why did Willie the pet mouse get a funeral, while the other mouse received an early end? This week on Hidden Brain, we explore the contradictions and quandaries embedded in our relationships with animals.

Additional Resources:

, by Hal Herzog, 2010

"," by Hal Herzog, Psychology Today

Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, Parth Shah, Thomas Lu and Laura Kwerel. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain.

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Shankar Vedantam

Shankar Vedantam is the host and creator of Hidden Brain. The Hidden Brain podcast receives more than three million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is distributed by NPR and featured on nearly 400 public radio stations around the United States.

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Thomas Lu (he/him) is a producer for NPR's science podcast, Short Wave. The podcast is a perfect equation of curiosity, nerdiness and everyday discoveries.

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Tara Boyle is the supervising producer of NPR's Hidden Brain. In this role, Boyle oversees the production of both the Hidden Brain radio show and podcast, providing editorial guidance and support to host Shankar Vedantam and the shows' producers. Boyle also coordinates Shankar's Hidden Brain segments on Morning Edition and other NPR shows, and oversees collaborations with partners both internal and external to NPR. Previously, Boyle spent a decade at WAMU, the NPR station in Washington, D.C. She has reported for The Boston Globe, and began her career in public radio at WBUR in Boston.

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