We have recently talked about the idea of "mixed community." After reading this section in Mary Midgley's book, I began to realize that we do indeed live in a mixed community. We live with animals. Over time we made wild animals into domestic animals, which we call pets. We give these animals human traits so that we can relate to them better. Dogs are often considered to be loyal and cats are often considered aloof. As humans, we give animals human traits and act like there is someone in that body. A real person in that body. If a cat is stuck in a tree we don't just walk away, we try to help it down. On the other hand, if a plastic bag is stuck in a tree, we just keep walking. We do this because we don't feel like there is a living being inside that plastic bag. The bag is not alive.
We have a lot of contact with animals but maybe not as much as we used to. Kohak beleives that since the industrial revolution we have less contact with animals. I would have to agree with him. We have moved out of the rural areas and into urban and suburban areas where there is much less contact. You can't have cattle or other farm animals in the city, it doesn't work like that. That being said, they only people that really still have a lot of contact with animals are those that live on farms or maybe even those that work at zoos, but not those who live in the city. Those who live in the city may have a cat or dog or other house pet but not huge live stock. It may be a good thing because animals need to live in their natural habit with little contact from humans. From the human perpective, we are safer if we don't mess with wild animals. Though cattle and horses may not be considered wild animals anymore, they are still dangerous. They are very large animals that are strong and weigh a lot. They can cause a person a lot of harm if the human does something to bother them. These animals can also go crazy. I had an experience with this. We have cattle and one of our old cows was loving and always welcomed you to pet her. She was never seen as a threat until one night when she turned on us. She had just had a calf and was very protective of this calf. She started chasing after me and I had to jump the fence to get away from her. Later that week we found out she had a brain tumor which is why she did that. She forgot who we were and she knew she needed to protect her calf which is what she did.
