IN HUMAN TERMS

Dear Spike:

You call him “Brother Cole.”

There’s a reason for that: We never wanted you to think of our cat, Coltrane, as a possession, but rather as a member of our family.

Not everyone would approve. There’s an ancient and still rather widespread resistance to anthropomorphication of animals. Some believe such ideas are representative of a limited sort of homocentric thought that doesn’t allow for animals to just be animals — and doesn’t keep us homo sapiens in our rightful place atop the taxonomical hierarchy.

I tend to see things in a different way. I believe that if we spent a little more time looking for human qualities upon our animal brethren, we might just become a bit more human in the process.

As it turns out, I’m not alone. This afternoon, while reporting on the death of a long-ailing gorilla, named Muke, at our local zoo, I spoke to a zookeeper named Andy Henderson, who said that he’s also prone to think of his animal charges in human terms.

"We do tend to anthropomorphize a little," he told me. “We try not to, but especially with an animal like the gorilla, they're so close to humans, it's hard not to."

That’s especially true on a day like today, when Andy and his colleagues were trying to figure out the best way to help Muke’s longtime companion, Tino, understand what had happened to her. Ultimately, they decided that it would be best if Tino could visit Muke one last time, and so they all left the room and let the big silverback in.

At first, Andy told me, Tino just sat and stared. He seemed confused about why Muke wasn’t moving. He walked around the room, sniffed at her a few times.

At then, very gently, he reached out and stroked her leg.

Could anyone look upon such a scene and not relate in human terms?

Later in the afternoon, I spoke to Penny Patterson, best known for her work with Koko the gorilla, who communicates in sign language. Penny told me that I shouldn’t feel guilty about assigning human emotions to animals.

“Darwin spoke of the emotions of man and other animals,” she said. “We don’t tend to think along those lines, that humans are just another line of animal that evolved alongside other primates, but that’s how we evolved — and that’s how our emotions evolved.”

And if that’s true, she said, all of those things that make us human — all the joy, all the anger, all the grief, all the pride, all the compassion — must be found in our animal relatives, too.

I don’t think that means we have to give voting rights to chickens, freedom of speech to dogs or Geneva Convention protections to guinea pigs. I don’t think we need to give Coltrane a place at the dinner table.

But he’s a part of our family. He makes us happy. And I hope we make him happy, too.

Love,
dad