I can relate this to the ethics of the police dogs that sniff bombs out. This is because, whilst some animals can be harmed during the process of animal testing, and some dogs can be injured during an attempt to deactivate a bomb, more animals and humans can be saved because of this risk or sacrifice. For instance, animals in the past were tested on for cosmetics- which is thought to be unethical, but because of this previous experiment more companies in the future do not have to test on animals and can benefit by this being completed already.
An additional theory is that the questionnaire will show that the activities that dogs have to participate that are un-ethical are most likely to be the racing and gambling. I believe this because none of this benefits a human. For instance, a sniffer dog would help by saving lives from an activated bomb but a racing dog would only entertain the race watchers but tire out the dog. I think that this is cruel and psychologically wrong to the dog, because from a dog’s perspective, it is being forced to run and tire itself out for entertainment purposes.
A dog will also believe that it is the sole reason for it to live and will not receive proper unconditional love from the owner. This can also lead to a conditioned dog; this is because a dog will believe that by pushing itself to race well and win the race- that is the way to receive love from its owner or boss.
Also, if it loses the race it will associate the stimulus of losing the race to being physically and verbally abused by its owner/boss and automatically associating the losing- to being sad and disappointed (which is now the conditioned response) even before the dog is abused by its owner. So this is damaging for the dog and is completely unethical in my opinion because it makes the dog feel ‘neglected’ and ‘used’ and nothing helpful has came out of this action. Another way racing dogs are sometimes abused is because they have their stomachs emptied before a race, so that they are lighter. This is very un-ethical because it is intentionally damaging the dog’s health for the benefit of the race. It is also un-ethical because the dog doesn’t have a say or an opinion when a lot of the nutrition is taken out of its body. So basically a dog that is racing and used for gambling is being abused for other people’s pleasure and that is why I think the Questionnaire will come with this response.
Now my final theory is that for the questions about dogs sharing similar behaviours and characteristics as humans (also known as ‘anthropomorphism’), I think that most people would say that they do. I think that they would because we both have emotions and the same emotions. For instance, a dog wagging its tail and jumping around means that it is exited, and humans also show when we are excited by smiling and moving more then necessary. Another example is that dogs cry when they are unhappy- the same reaction from humans when we are unhappy. An example for same characteristics is that sometimes the owner’s personality is reflected onto their dog. This might be the case because the dog might have been conditioned to act a certain way- which can be called ‘manners’. I believe that if the owner taught their dog (when a puppy) to work hard for treats, it would grow up to be an appreciative dog and would be good in order to get treats/rewards. In my opinion dogs sometimes look like their owners because a clean and nicely groomed dog would usually have an owner who is clean and nicely groomed. Also, a messy looking dog would usually have an owner which is less organized and messy. So people reflect their personality or how they look onto their pets.
Examples of Dogs looking like their owners
Conditioning
The meaning of ‘conditioned’ is a response that is triggered by a stimulus- or a ‘learned’ behaviour. Conditioning is a form of behaviourism, which is based on the idea that any behaviour can be measured, changed & trained. In a way I believe that we all believe in the idea of behaviourism, this is because (like I briefly mentioned in my introduction) a lot of our behaviour is controlled by conditioning and we don’t realise it.
A conditioned behaviour is like a habit, this is because a habit is a behaviour that we are used to and cannot help repeating it. For instance, some people scream and cover their eyes when a ball is thrown towards them. This could be because of a habit that they got used to at a young age after a bad experience of a ball being thrown at them.
So the natural response in the future would be to protect yourself. At the beginning of the conditioning someone throws a ball at someone else- originally an unconditioned stimulus. The ball heads toward the other person making them scream before it hits them. First, the ball heading towards them is an unconditioned stimulus, now it is a conditioned stimulus. The next time a ball is thrown at them they relate it to the screaming and being hit by it- which was once a neutral stimulus and now a conditioned stimulus. So every time a ball is thrown at them they naturally relate it to the screaming and being hit- so they scream and protect themselves- because that is their conditioned response following the stimulus.
The way to condition animals is by rewarding them. A dog being conditioned to sniff drugs is rewarded every time they find the drugs that are hidden. Every time they find the drugs they must be rewarded and the task to sniff out the drugs will gradually be harder. For example, the first time the dog has to find the drugs it would be exposed to the drugs and then has to find the same substance in a room. The drugs would be wrapped in something thin at first, and every time the dog finds it, the drugs would be wrapped in something thicker. Eventually the Dog would be able to sniff out drugs in a bag containing lots of other bags with drugs inside. I believe that it is important that dogs are rewarded after finding the drugs because psychologically being rewarded means that you are doing right. It is crucial that the dog is rewarded every time it finds the drugs, this is so the dog can relate the smell of drugs- the stimulus, to the finding of the drugs and then being rewarded- the conditioned response.
There are many other examples of tasks that Dogs are conditioned to do:
- Sniff drugs for police (1)
- Sniff blood for detectives (1)
- Learn commands for dog show (example: sit, roll, beg) (2)
- Hunt foxes (3)
- Fight (3)
- Race (3)
- Help life-guards to rescue (1)
- Speak (2)
- Guard dogs (1)
- Therapy dogs (entertainment for those people who cannot move freely) (1)
- Tracking dogs (find lost people) (1)
I believe that not all of these tasks are ethical because some of them are harmful for the animal, and there is no benefit to human health. I wrote the number ‘1’ on tasks or jobs I believe are most ethical, and benefit the human health & lifestyle. I wrote ‘3’ on the tasks/jobs I believe are the least ethical and do not help living things and they are the tasks/jobs that exploit dogs for human enjoyment. I wrote ‘2’ on the tasks/jobs that don’t harm or benefit any living thing, they are the tasks/jobs that I believe are neutral. Choosing the number for ‘Guard dogs’ was a hard decision because although dogs can get injured, they prevent other people from getting injured. For instance, a dog might have been guarding a house that a burglar was approaching, and because the dog was there, the burglar was scared off. So, I put it Guard dog on 1 because they prevent living things from getting hurt and protect areas that need protection.
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist who was born in 1849. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904. This was because of his deep research of the digestive system in mammals. As Ivan Pavlov studied the secrets behind the digestive system, he was also interested to find out the signals that cause animals to salivate. Humans and animals salivate to break up food that we are eating, that is why Ivan was so interested when the dogs in the lab kept drooling when there was no food in sight. He later discovered that when the food was served to the dogs, the person serving it was always wearing a lab coat. So when a lab coat was in sight the dog salivated automatically. This is because the dog was conditioned to salivate every time(salivating being the dog’s conditioned response) he saw a lab coat- which was the conditioned stimulus; the dog related the lab coat to the bringing of food. Ivan Pavlov tested his theory in his own experiment; the experiment was just like the diagram below.
Before the experiment had started, the food was an unconditioned stimulus and the salivation was an unconditioned response. Then before conditioning Ivan got a tuning fork- which was a neutral stimulus and made a loud noise next to the dogs. The dogs did not respond (no conditioned response) and did not salivate. During the conditioning, every time Ivan fed the dogs he made a noise with the tuning fork just before, the dogs salivated only because of the food- but still the response was unconditioned. Ivan repeated this process several times. After the conditioning he made a noise with the tuning fork (which was now the conditioned stimulus) and didn't show the dogs any food, but remarkably the dogs salivated and that was its new conditioned response. The dog salivated without the food being presented to it because it related the noise of the tuning fork to the food being brought. As if the dogs thought that because they were fed straight after the noise several times they would continue to be fed like that (now a normal way to be fed according to the dogs). The noise was almost like a signal that food was to come and therefore they were prepared to eat.
Ivan Pavlov proved that animals can be conditioned and this made it easier for people to recognize the conditioned behaviour that animals were already showing. It was also easier to make comparisons between humans and animals as we both can be conditioned.
How are human beings similar to dogs?
The way dogs and humans are similar is because we have the same instinctive behaviour. I believe that we both know what is right and wrong and that is why a lot of the tasks that dogs have to do are unethical. A dog knows what wrong things are done to it, and that is why a dog whines when it’s sad. An instinctive behaviour is a natural behaviour to a certain thing. That is why people are told not to run away from dogs, because a dog’s instinctive behaviour is to run after prey. So if a dog saw someone running away from it, just like how prey run away, then it would automatically run after them. Similar instinctive behaviours between dogs and humans include: wanting to reproduce and wanting freedom. A dog wouldn’t want to be forced into doing things that it doesn’t want to do because dogs want freedom and because some people exploit dogs, the dogs don’t have a freedom of speech or an opinion.
Imprinting and habituation
The definition of imprinting is when young animals bond with animals (including humans) or also a moving objects that are not necessarily their parents. When some animals are born, the first animal it sees or even a moving object is its parent. Ducks attempt to mate with the same specie as its mother, this can end in a bad result as that specie might not be interested. Even though dogs don’t regard humans as they’re parent, they still bond with them when they are young. I believe that some dogs are born into ‘a human family’, they grow up surrounded by humans and therefore they adopt a part of the human lifestyle and behaviour. I believe that dogs can also be habituated. The definition of habituation is where an animal no longer reacts to a stimulus that made a reaction to begin with. I believe that they are habituated because some dogs grow into a family of humans and then the family of humans might decide to buy a different specie of pet. The dog would be aggressive at first- because of its instinctive behaviour, but then gradually feels more comfortable around the other animal. This is also another reason how a dog is similar to humans, we also take time to feel comfortable around new people.
Method
I collected the information using a questionnaire. I believe that a questionnaire would have been the best possible way to do an experiment based on a dog's behaviour because ethics is based on psychology. Behaviour is linked to psychology because the way we control behaviour is by the brain, and ethics mean something is psychologically right- and the only way to determine if something is right is by opinion and reason. According to a science page on the BBC website 'the human mind is the most complex machine on Earth'. So the only way to determine the ethics of various activities that Dog's are involved in is to see what a lot of people think about it and average the responses to determine the answer.
The way that I made the experiment valid is by making it fair. A way I made it fair is that in my questionnaire I had to ask everyone the same questions. It was important that I asked everyone the same questions because I was able to compare several different answers to the same question and choose the average response to it. Another way I made it fair is by only changing one factor in the experiment- and the factor that I changed was the people that I questioned. It was important to question more than one person so I can get more than one answer- so that I know what most people would think about the ethics.
The way that I made the experiment reliable is by averaging the results from the questionnaire. It was best to average the results because I could then find out what the average response to the questionnaire is and then analyse the results to find out why the response had turned out like that. I could also find an anomalous result- in case someone who is questioned has a different idea then everyone else, and then I can use empathy to find out why that person thinks like that.
In the questionnaire I wanted to use questions that work around the idea of behaviourism in Dogs, the characteristics & the ethics from the Human and the Dog point of view so that I had a variety of questions to make my experiment more interesting and have a variety of answers.
Data
Dog Questionnaire with results:
Do you have a dog as a pet?
1.No 2.No 3.No 4.Yes 5.Yes
If yes- what made you buy one?
1- 2- 3- 4. They are fun 5. I love animals
If no – would you ever buy one?
1.Not at the moment- my house is small 2.Yes-because they are cool 3.No- my previous Dog died and hard work taking care of it. 4- 5-
Do you think that people should condition dogs to do jobs in the workforce?
1. Yes 2.Yes-as long as respected 3.Yes- to help people 4.They get treated well and help police 5. Not sure because it is good for humans but can harm the Dog.
Any jobs/activities that you think exploit dogs too much?
1. Dog racing 2.Circus & Dog racing 3.Race & hunting 4.Dog fighting 5.Sleigh pulling
How do they exploit dogs?
1.Used for race & gambling 2. Not ethical for Dogs 3. Tires the Dog out 4. Gaming and gambling 5. Dogs have to pull a lot of weight & some owners don’t feed the Dogs afterwards
Do you think that sometimes dogs and their owners look alike?
1.Yes 2.Yes 3.No 4.Sometimes 5.Yes
Do dogs sometimes show human behaviours?
1.Yes- they are honest 2.Yes 3.Yes 4.Yes 5.Yes
Examples of dogs having human characteristics & behaviours:
1. A dog once died a few weeks after its owner died 2. Paris Hilton dresses up her Dog to look like her- and they have a conscience 3. They can love and they can be loyal and helpful to humans 4. They cry 5.They cry
Do you think that animal testing is appropriate?
1. Yes- without experiment we can’t research 2. Yes, we wouldn’t have medicine if it wasn’t for animal testing 3. Yes, because it benefits humans 4. Yes, but not on Dogs 5. No, they are suffering for Human purposes
Do you think that dogs should be used for entertainment- such as racing?
1.No 2. No 3.No 4. No 5. Not sure
Do you think that dogs believe that having a dog for a pet is ethical?
1.Maybe 2.Yes 3.Yes 4.Yes 5.Yes
Why?
1.Dogs can have a shelter, food and someone to play with 2.Owner gives Dog care, respect & are treated equally 3. Only if taken care of 4.They have names 5.They are well looked after
Graphs
This graph shows that 60% of the people that took my questionnaire did not have a dog and 40% of the people that took my questionnaire did have a dog.
The amount of people who don’t/have a dog that believe that animal testing is appropriate
The above graph shows that half of the people who had a dog believed that animal testing is appropriate and all of the people who don’t have a dog believe that it is appropriate.
Do dogs sometimes show human behaviours?
The above graph shows that all the people who took my questionnaire believe that dogs show human behaviours.
This above table shows the different opinions of the people who took my questionnaire about examples of dogs having human characteristic and behaviours.
Do you think that people should condition dogs to do jobs in the workforce?
The above graph shows that most people (4 out 5) believe that people should condition dogs to do jobs in the workforce, and the remaining one person is not sure.
Evaluation
This is a hard experiment to judge by the reliability and validity of it because of the type of method used. There isn’t really an incorrect way of making a questionnaire- as long as it reflected the subject. I couldn’t keep the test reliable because there isn’t a way to repeat the test, but I found out that I could average the response and pick out an anonymous result and write about why that person has thought differently.
This test was more about keeping it valid. I could have improved my experiment by making it more valid. A way I could improve it is by questioning the same amount of people with dogs as the people without dogs. This is because people with dogs might have a different perspective to the ethics related to animal testing than the people without dogs. So maybe people with dogs are more sensitive to ethics related to animals than people without dogs.
A way I could have extended my research is by questioning a group of people with dogs with the questionnaire, and then questioning another group with the same amount of people with the same questionnaire. Then I can compare the results from the two groups and see if the people who have dogs are more sensitive towards the ethics than the people without dogs. A further way of extending the research is by including a variety of different animals. For instance, I could research cat behaviour and compare cat behaviour to dog behaviour and figure out the similarities and differences between the behaviours.
Another way I could have improved this experiment is by writing about the two sides of the argument on one subject. For example, I could have written why racing animals is un- ethical but also written why it shouldn’t be banned. Another way I could have improved the experiment was by writing more examples of habituation and imprinting. An addition way of improving the experiment is to make the essay more interesting, it would have been more appealing to read if there were interesting facts about dogs.
Conclusion
Putting to mind the results from the questionnaire, I conclude that most of the jobs that animals are involved in today are for the good. Although make-up is tested on animals and dogs are forced to race, we cannot forget the benefits that animals and dogs have given us.
4 out of 5 people in my questionnaire believe that animal testing is appropriate, whilst the other does not. I believe that most of the people I questioned said that animal testing was appropriate because of the medicines we have now- they wouldn’t have been established if it wasn’t for animal testing. The question was a yes or no question, so there had to be one answer. The 4 out of the 5 people who said that it was appropriate probably knew that cosmetics (something that doesn’t improve the human health) were also tested on animals, but said ‘yes’ because animal testing had done more good than bad.
The remaining one person who said it was not appropriate also justified their answer by saying that animals are suffering for human purposes. This person probably thought that animal testing was doing more bad than good and referred their answer to the cosmetics side of animal testing.
What was interesting was that half of the people who have dogs (1 out of the 2 people) said it was appropriate whereas the 3 people who I questioned that didn’t have dogs all thought it was appropriate. This is interesting because as I wrote in my conclusion, I should have questioned more people who have dogs, to see if the people who have dogs are more sensitive towards ethics towards animals.
However, my opinion is that animal testing is appropriate because of the same reason as the people I questioned stated: The medicines we have now wouldn’t have been there without experimenting on animals and we cannot research without experimenting.
After the experiment I believe that animals and humans do sometimes show human behaviours or anthropomorphism. All the people (5 out of 5 people) that took my questionnaire also believed that. They sometimes show human behaviours because they have similar instinctive behaviour (reproducing & wanting freedom), and they also have the same emotions. Dogs can cry just like humans when they are sad. All/both of the people who had a dog said that they cried. This is reliable evidence because they had both witnessed it and both took the questionnaire separately, without knowing each others answers to the question. I also believe that dogs sometimes show human behaviours and that is why it is disturbing to know that dogs are being abused.
The question: ‘Do you think that people should condition Dogs to do jobs in the workforce?’ Showed that most people believed that dogs should be conditioned to do jobs in the workforce. With no-one saying that they shouldn’t and one person that is not sure. I believe that this question received this response because dogs benefit the workforce greatly and they are respected whilst they proceed in saving lives. The one person who said that they weren’t sure was most likely because there was a possibility that the dogs can get injured whilst undertaking the jobs in the workforce. My opinion is that dogs should be conditioned to do jobs in the workforce. This is because they have more sensitive scent receptors than humans and can sniff out things from hundreds of metres away than we would 20 centimetres away and we rely on them to make the world more safer.
The most interesting question I asked was: if dogs believe that having a dog as a pet is ethical? I believe that it was the most interesting question because It is the question that can not really be answered. We would never really know what a dog believes and that is why I wanted to get peoples opinions. Most of the people believed that dogs do believe that it is ethical, with one person saying answering ‘maybe’. This was because they believe that dogs have shelter, food, a name and we take care of them. I also believe that dogs do think it is ethical for themselves because of the reasons that the people I questioned believed too.
Dogs are taken care of by us, and most of the time that we put animals and dogs at risk is for the good of it. But, like every other specie there is a majority that are abused, maybe for the enjoyment of it or maybe for punishment. I could conclude however, that animals have helped humans, more than humans have helped them. We give animals shelter, food and a name. But they have saved many of us. They saved us by putting up with the experimenting on them- to help us with medicines. They helped us by making our airports safer by sniffing out drugs and maybe even bombs. They helped us by protecting our buildings and some of our homes by guarding them. They also helped the blind people walk and gave the disabled a friend that can entertain them when feeling low. So without animals the world would be a completely different place than today. A far worse place.
Bibliography
These are the sources that I gathered some of my information from
- companies that test products on animals
- Ivan Pavlov
- Dogs and their noses
- Dog behaviour
- Animal testing- cosmetics
- 100 years ago did people die of a cold?
- a dog’s instinctive behavior
- diagram of Ivan Pavlov’s dog
