People and Pets

I haven't been paying too much attention to the story about the pet chimpanzee that mauled its owner's friend. This morning, however, there was a segment on Good Morning America that really got me thinking. I wasn't paying too much attention to the specific details about what happened, although I was glad to hear that the woman who was attacked is apparently holding her own in the hospital. It was the part about the pros and cons of keeping chimpanzees as pets that caught my attention, specifically the comments of some pet owners and the degree to which they treat their pet chimps as children.

Lots of people who have traditional house pets, i.e., dogs and cats, consider their animals to be "part of the family," and I totally understand that. So why was I so creeped out to see chimp owners doing the same thing? A lot of it had to do with the clothes - not on the people, but on the chimps. There was a shot of a small monkey dressed in a green satin dress, with a voice-over of an adult woman's voice cooing "that's a pretty girl" as if she were talking to a baby. Another woman was shown in a clothing store, picking out outfits for her chimp. A third woman described the "onesies" a chimp owner bought for her pet.

It was the shot of a chimp dressed in a diaper that helped me to clarify my thinking on this. Dog and cat owners do indeed sometimes treat their pets like children. They talk to them, give them "people food," let them sleep on the bed and sometimes even kiss them. But dogs and cats are different enough from people (they walk on four legs, they go outside/use the litter box to pee, they don't have hands that can grasp things, etc.) that we're less likely to forget that they're not actually human. Dressing a chimp in diapers and a green satin dress is way beyond treating a pet like a member of the family. Treating an animal as if it's actually a human being is the part that gave me the creeps.

Added Friday, February 20, at 2:50 p.m.
Even Chimps In Tutus Can Be Vicious