Shreeya Sharma Week #9: Power Dynamics Between Humans and Animals
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Humans are arguably the most powerful creatures on the planet. As we’ve learned in school, humans have evolved and have been set aside from our primitive animal ancestors. Our rich history of civilizations, languages, and cultures has changed our world from a wilderness to a metropolis of humanity. However, with all of our progress, have we given these beings the care they deserve?
Psychologist Harry Harlow is a prominent example of a human who carelessly mistreated animals. Harlow is known for his experiments using rhesus macaques, a type of monkey, and one such experiment involved a device that Harlow named the “pit of despair.” In this experiment, Harlow, alongside research assistant Stephen Suomi, was testing whether there could be an animal model of depression to improve their understanding of the condition and maybe even look for possible treatments.
The pit of despair was a vertical chamber that was built to replicate the human emotions felt by people with severe depression. In Harlow’s eyes, this instrument was a direct reflection of the pit that depressed humans felt like they were in, so it would be an ideal object to use to try to induce depression in monkeys. The pit was a hard, cold stainless steel structure shaped like a cone. The wire mesh at the bottom allowed the monkeys’ waste to leave the pit, and the monkeys were fed food and water. Nevertheless, these monkeys were left alone for weeks at a time.
The experiment, like Harlow’s others, involved infant monkeys in their first year of life. During their first few days in the chamber, many monkeys often fell into a still, huddled state. After thirty days of being in the pit, the monkeys would not play, participate in social interactions, or show signs of curiosity. Most remained stuck in that huddled position, and their behavioral changes stayed months after being removed from the pit. Somehow, Harlow had produced detrimental psychological effects, perhaps depression, in those monkeys.
Why did Harlow conduct this experiment in the first place? As mentioned before, his main goal with these experiments was to find a cure for depression. Harlow himself suffered from severe depression and even stayed at a mental hospital in 1968. He thought that experiments with animals would have findings that could be matched to humans, so he was willing to try to give the rhesus monkeys depression so he could learn how to cure them.
Obviously, there’s a serious issue here. Despite Harlow’s mental illness, his ability to use unethical methods in his research displays the ease with which humans can abuse animals. The monkeys used in this experiment were primarily babies, as Harlow seemed to focus on experimenting on them in the first year after their birth. Thankfully, there are more guidelines now regarding animal treatment. Due to the stronger focus on ethics and animal rights today, we can see improvements in animal treatment, as these improvements prevent humans from abusing the power they have over many animals.
Hello Shreeya! You bring up an interesting point of how humans abuse power frequently and in a variety of ways too. A clear indication of human abuse of power is animal abuse; your use of a rhetorical question to illustrate human neglect of other creatures is especially powerful. This idea is conclusive in a manner, as it ends a paragraph that is meant to discuss the human ascension in civilization. You immediately introduce a real-world example of a psychologist who employs animals in his experiments and subsequently causes permanent mental damage.
ReplyDeleteIt is noteworthy to mention examples of the detrimental effects that humans have inspired in animals in the past with a visible superiority complex. Creatively, you have defined this phenomenon as a power dynamic between humans and animals. The image of a vertical chamber that you have included as part of your blog is powerful enough to cause the audience to gauge a sense of retribution in their actions. As humans ourselves, we have all been bystanders to such cruelty in some way or another; therefore, it is instructive to construct guidelines to discourage further animal experimentation and limit the liberty that some scientists may currently possess. The blog is descriptive and vivid, conclusively portraying the issue at hand of animal abuse and exemplifying the issue to put it into perspective for the audience of high school students who may be inclined to take action against future instances of animal abuse.
Hello Shreeya, you raise a good point about how humans despite all the power in the animal kingdom having choose to abuse it instead of helping out others. You paper is packed with in text resources which I had a great time taking looking at. This really allows for the reader to explore and have their own stand on the subject. The description of how the experiment was conducted provides context to how poorly humans treat other species. This reminds me of one my sister's friends who is traumatized by his experience with chimpanzees because they were bolted down to study the eye movements of the monkeys. The blog highlights the power dynamic between humans and the animal world.
ReplyDeleteHey Shreeya, your topic on how humans abuse the power given to them instead of using it to help people was very interesting. Some of the experiments run by people in the name of science have turned out to have harmful after effects on the animal itself. While to Harlow, he may have believed that the experiment was humane since he was providing the basic necessities for the monkey to live, he did not realize the potential after effects that were inflicted upon it afterwards. The unethical methods are hard to justify, if possible. Fortunately as we go forward in life as humans the experiments we conduct are more ethical and have little to no permanent harm on the animals being used in the experiment. As humans evolve, we should realize that there are a lot of factors that exist when we consider what type of power we have in this world. The power we hold may seem balanced but when we compare with the rest of the world. We may not be at the top of the hierarchy but we do exist near there.
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