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On "Pets" and "Its"

Animal Person

All animals except the dog are called "it" (I did a little experiment to see what would happen). We need language that doesn't support a divide between "pet" animals and everyone else. Tags: Books Ethics Language parenting publishing speciesism veganism. Meanwhile, the lizard has a male name so you'd think he'd be called "he."

Gorillas 100
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Dogs as Smart as 2-yr-old Kids

Animal Person

When I saw the Live Science article about dogs being as smart as 2-year-old kids I knew that if there were any talk of ranking, my beloved greyhounds would be at the less-desirable end of the list (not from personal experience, but from reputation), and I also knew that there would be a whiff of speciesism.

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Deconstructing Slate's "Pepper" Series

Animal Person

Beloved family pet Dalmatian, Pepper, is stolen, and after several weeks of searching is discovered to have been experimented on at a hospital and died on the table when researchers tried to implant her with an experimental cardiac pacemaker. By the end of my time as researcher, I was performing behavioral experiments on humans.