Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Other Anthropology
Why “Good Welfare” Isn’T “Good Enough”: Minding Animals And Increasing Our Compassionate Footprint, Marc Bekoff
Why “Good Welfare” Isn’T “Good Enough”: Minding Animals And Increasing Our Compassionate Footprint, Marc Bekoff
Marc Bekoff, PhD
In this brief essay I take a broad perspective on the notion of unraveling welfare and consider animals living in different conditions ranging from caged individuals in laboratories and zoos to free-living or almost free-living wildlife. I’ll step outside of the laboratory because billions of animals are slaughtered for food in an industry that tortures them on the way to their reprehensible deaths and at the places at which they are slaughtered. Furthermore, government agencies around the world kill millions of free-living and wild animals because they’re supposedly “pests”. This is a different sort of essay but I hope it …
Forty-Two Thousand And One Dalmatians: Fads, Social Contagion, And Dog Breed Popularity, Harold A. Herzog
Forty-Two Thousand And One Dalmatians: Fads, Social Contagion, And Dog Breed Popularity, Harold A. Herzog
Harold Herzog, PhD
Like other cultural variants, tastes in companion animals (pets) can shift rapidly. An analysis of American Kennel Club puppy registrations from 1946 through 2003 (N = 48,598,233 puppy registrations) identified rapid but transient large-scale increases in the popularity of specific dog breeds. Nine breeds of dogs showed particularly pronounced booms and busts in popularity. On average, the increase (boom) phase in these breeds lasted 14 years, during which time annual new registrations increased 3,200%. Equally steep decreases in registrations for the breeds immediately followed these jumps in popularity. The existence of extreme fluctuations in preferences for dog breeds has implications …