Jan. 3 2014
We Americans have a funny relationship with food. We may not be apex
predators, scientifically speaking, since we augment our meat with
grains and plants, but we are predators all the same. But most of us
haven't the slightest idea about the magical transformation by which cow
becomes beef. The modern supermarket provides us with something called
"psychological distance" between ourselves and our food, allowing us to
abstract away the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish, and all the other
critters at the other end of the meat industry. Few of us know how to
butcher a chicken, feathers and feet and all, let alone how to
ethically, safely slaughter it.
That psychological distancing has crept into the way we feed our
animals as well. Cats, for example, are obligate carnivores, meaning
that they need meat to survive. Their domestication began because it was
handy to keep them around for their natural rodent-hunting abilities.
And yet we'd rather our housecats eat processed food from a can than go
hunting. We might think it's gross and unseemly when the cat drags in a
dead pigeon or lizard, but cats are predators. So why not provision the
housecat with the occasional humanely slaughtered sparrow carcass? Why
not let the dog eat an ethically dispatched squirrel?
Setting aside the environmental damage our pets can wreak on local
wildlife, maybe our discomfort arises because we don’t want to know all
that much about what our carnivorous pets are eating, either.
Our moral condemnation and visceral disgust over animals acting like
animals even extends to cats at the zoo. We love seeing the lions and
tigers. But do we necessarily want to see them act like lions and
tigers?
The big cats are not kept on a vegetarian diet. But, as with our
housecats, the meat they usually get is unrecognizable as such. They're
being fed with the animal equivalent of TV dinners. Pre-packaged and
heavily processed, it might be described in the scientific literature as
"formulated foodstuffs." One common commercial feline diet consists of
ground whole-carcass horsemeat along with an array of vitamins and
minerals. Think of the meat you might find in a fast food taco, except
made of horse. It arrives to the zoo frozen, where it gets defrosted and
served to a hungry cat. The preparation completes everything from
slaughtering the horse to chewing it up. All that's left for the cat is
to open wide and swallow.
What happens to big cats when they're given this sort of cat food? In
1986, researchers at what was then called the San Diego Wild Animal
Park (now the San Diego Zoo Safari Park) assessed
the oral health and psychological well being of five captive cheetahs.
The commercial diets for zoo-dwelling carnivores are nutritionally
balanced, but practitioners of animal management and husbandry were
starting to realize that eating is about more than nutrition.
Two cheetahs were fed conventional zoo chow and three were provisioned
with "either a whole, thawed bovine fetus of small to medium size or
half of a larger carcass." Mmmm. Veal.
The researchers found that the cheetahs given carcasses to eat spent
more time feeding and smelling their food, chewed their food more, and
used their teeth to slice their food more than did those given the
commercial diet. In other words, they were eating like normal cheetahs.
Those given the processed product still approached their meals and ate,
but they did so with less interest and were less possessive of their
food. You, too, probably wouldn't mind all that much if someone stole
the last few bites of your fast-food hot dog. But anyone who tried to
make off with your perfectly cooked porterhouse might wind up with
fork-shaped scars on their hands.
According to the researchers, the processed foods lacked a "hassle
factor," which reduced the need for cheetahs to use their teeth the way
evolution intended. One of the cats given that diet was actually able to
"tongue" her food, no chewing required. It turns out that the so-called
hassle factor is critical for maintaining good dental hygiene in big
cats like cheetahs. Insufficient wear on the teeth and gums could lead
to focal palatine erosion, a disorder that occurs when an underused molar chips away at the upper palate, eventually boring a hole
through the bone, which can then become infected. Cheetah fangs are
supposed to grow dull over time as they get used to rip into prey
animals. But for those cats who eat by lapping up preprocessed
horsemeat, their teeth remain sharp enough to carve holes into the bone
that lines the top of their mouths.
Another study
of carcass feeding in four types of big cats at three different zoos
focused on the possible function of carcasses as enrichment items. Zoos
go to great lengths to prevent boredom in animals by providing
environmental enrichment (such as games or puzzle boxes) and social enrichment.
Enrichment can decrease the frequency of repetitive, or "stereotypic,"
behaviors such as pacing or excessive self-grooming. It turned out that
carcass feeding reduced the amount of time the cats spent on such
behaviors while off-exhibit (but not while on-exhibit, for some reason).
The Toledo Zoo
has experimented with letting visitors watch the zoo's carnivores dig
into hunks of actual animal flesh, an event called the "Big Feed."
Siberian tigers feasted on cow parts complete with hair, ears, bones,
and all, as Nell Boyce reported for Radiolab in 2007. Other times visitors have watched komodo dragons nibble on a horse limb. (Zoo animals eat a lot of horse, it seems.)
Beth Stark, the zoo's curator of behavioral husbandry and research
told Boyce that visitors were enthusiastic: "They'll say 'oh god, that's
really gross' but then move in closer for a better view." One woman
wasn't necessarily put off by the idea that the tigers were eating
actual animal-shaped animals. Instead, she was disturbed by the
possibility that the cow might have been alive when the tiger was first
set free in its enclosure, like that scene in Jurassic Park where the
goat is put out as a lure for the Tyrannosaurus.
Yet another study of Sumatran tigers and African lions at Zoo Atlanta
actually tried feeding live animals—fish—to the cats. The live fish
increased the frequency of feeding behaviors and increased their
variety. And they decreased stereotypical behaviors by an impressive 50
percent. "Providing live food may also be more educational for the
public," the researchers write, "who would get an opportunity to see
carnivores engaged in the hunting and consumption of prey."
That might work for fish, but I suspect that the public might react
differently if the tigers were hunting, say, cute furry floppy-eared
bunnies. In fact, Stark told Boyce that visitors didn't even want to see
zoo animals snacking on dead rabbits. "Around Easter, parents were
worrying that their kid was thinking that the Easter bunny was being
eaten."
Our moral dilemma is obviously not about meat eating per se, but
about the predatory nature of carnivory. Meat is tasty, but most of us
would prefer not to know too much about how chickens become nuggets.
We're meat-eating, animal-loving hypocrites who are simultaneously in
love with dogs and in love with bacon. We are predators, to be sure, but
we sure don't like to think of ourselves as predators. Buying an
eight-pack of turkey thighs or a two-pound cylinder of 80 percent lean
ground pork allows us the luxury of eating meat without knowing a whole
lot about the animals that wind up in our stewpots. We know their
taxonomic classification (cow: Bos taurus; chicken: Gallus gallus; turkey: Meleagris gallopavo; pig: Sus scrofa), perhaps what they were fed (corn? grass? growth hormones?) and that’s about it.
It doesn't have to be that way. It would be great if everybody had to
learn how to humanely slaughter and eat at least one animal in their
lives, but I know that's asking a lot. It bristles with cognitive dissonance.
For now, why don't we simply let animals be animals? Responsible,
ethical, accredited zoos already inspire us to be better stewards of our
planet and more thoughtful allies in wildlife conservation. By putting
us face-to-face with a tiger tearing into the flesh of a whole cow with
its face still attached, perhaps zoos can also teach us something about
the animals that we shove down our own throats. Perhaps they can help us
remember that we, too, are predators.
No comments:
Post a Comment