人類的寵物情結:爲什麼狗是寵物 豬是食物

Recently, an almost literal case of lifeboat ethics occurred. On Aug. 4, Graham and Sheryl Anley, while yachting off the coast of South Africa, hit a reef, capsizing their boat. As the boat threatened to sink and they scrambled to get off, Sheryl's safety line snagged on something, trapping her there. Instead of freeing his wife and getting her to shore, Graham grabbed Rosie, their Jack Russell terrier. (One media account reported that Sheryl had insisted that the dog go first). With Rosie safe and sound, Graham returned for Sheryl. All are doing fine.
最近發生了一個關乎救生艇倫理(lifeboat ethics)的真實案例。8月4日，格雷厄姆・安萊(Graham Anley)和謝里爾・安萊(Sheryl Anley)夫婦在南非海岸附近乘快艇時撞到了暗礁，船被撞翻了。眼看遊艇就要下沉，他們掙扎着想要下船，這時謝里爾的安全索被什麼東西絆住了，她被困在了那裏。格雷厄姆沒有去解開安全索把妻子送上岸，而是抓住了他們的傑克羅素小獵犬羅西(Rosie)。（一家媒體報道稱謝里爾當時堅持讓狗先上岸。）羅西安全後，格雷厄姆纔回去救謝里爾。目前夫婦二人和他們的狗都安然無恙。

It's a great story, but it doesn't strike me as especially newsworthy. News is supposed to be about something fairly unique, and recent research suggests that, in the right circumstances, lots of people also would have grabbed their Rosie first.
故事不錯，但我沒覺得有多大的報道價值。新聞素材應該是比較獨特的東西，而最近的研究顯示，如果形勢允許的話，很多人也都會先救他們的羅西。

We have strange relationships with our pets, something examined in a wonderful book by the psychologist Hal Herzog, 'Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals.' We lavish our pets with adoration and better health care than billions of people receive. We speak to pets with the same high-pitched voices that we use for babies (though when addressing pets, we typically don't repeat and emphasize key words as we do with babies, in the hope of boosting their language acquisition). As a grotesque example of our feelings about pets, the Nazis had strict laws that guaranteed the humane treatment of the pets of Jews being shipped to death camps.
我們和自己養的寵物有着奇怪的關係，心理學家哈爾・赫爾佐格(Hal Herzog)所寫《爲什麼狗是寵物？豬是食物？人類與動物之間的道德難題》(Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals)這本精彩的書對此進行了研究。我們會給予寵物很多愛，會給它們比世界上數十億人都要好的醫療保健。我們用和對嬰兒說話一樣的高調門聲音跟寵物說話（不過對寵物說話時一般不會像和對嬰兒一樣重複和強調關鍵字以加強孩子的語言學習）。有一個荒唐例子可以看出我們對寵物的情感，即納粹有嚴格的法律規定要仁慈對待被運到死亡集中營的猶太人的寵物。

These are unique ways for one species to interact with another. On occasion, a predatory cat, after killing an adult prey, adopts the prey's offspring for a few days; these cats are usually confused adolescent females, swirling with the start of those strange maternal urges. But there is certainly no other animal that puts costumes on members of another species on Halloween.
不同物種之間會有特殊的互動方式。有時貓在獵殺掉成年獵物時會把獵物的後代養育幾天；這些貓通常是處在困惑時期的未成熟雌性，奇怪的母性衝動正處於萌芽狀態。但絕對沒有其他哪種動物會在萬 節扮成其他物種。

A recent paper by Richard Topolski at George Regents University and colleagues, published in the journal Anthrozoos, demonstrates this human involvement with pets to a startling extent. Participants in the study were told a hypothetical scenario in which a bus is hurtling out of control, bearing down on a dog and a human. Which do you save? With responses from more than 500 people, the answer was that it depended: What kind of human and what kind of dog?
佐治亞攝政大學(George Regents)的理查德・託波爾斯基(Richard Topolski)及其同事最近在《人與動物》期刊(Anthrozoos)上發表的論文指出，人類與寵物的這種關係到了令人吃驚的程度。參與研究者被告知一種假設的情形：一輛巴士橫衝直撞失去了控制，馬上要壓到一隻狗和一個人，你會救哪個？在超過500多人的迴應中，答案都是看情況而定：什麼樣的人和什麼樣的狗？

Everyone would save a sibling, grandparent or close friend rather than a strange dog. But when people considered their own dog versus people less connected with them -- a distant cousin or a hometown stranger -- votes in favor of saving the dog came rolling in. And an astonishing 40% of respondents, including 46% of women, voted to save their dog over a foreign tourist. This makes Parisians' treatment of American tourists look good in comparison.
每個人都會救自己的兄弟姐妹、爺爺奶奶或親密好友，而不會救一隻陌生的狗。但在自己的寵物狗和關係不那麼緊密的人――比如遠房表親或陌生的同鄉人――之間，很多人都選擇了救狗。令人震驚的是，40%的參與者都選擇救自己的狗而不會救外國遊客，包括46%的女性。這樣一對比，巴黎人對待美國遊客還算是不錯的。

What does a finding like this mean? First, that your odds aren't so good if you find yourself in another country with a bus bearing down on you and a cute dog. But it also points to something deeper: our unprecedented attitude toward animals, which got its start with the birth of humane societies in the 19th century.
這樣的研究結果說明什麼？首先，如果你在另一個國家發現自己和一隻可愛的狗快要被一輛巴士壓到，你被救的機率不會太大。但同時也表明一個更深層次的問題：我們對動物前所未有的態度，這種態度始於19世紀動物保護組織的誕生。

We jail people who abuse animals, put ourselves in harm's way in boats between whales and whalers, carry our childhood traumas of what happened to Bambi's mother. We can extend empathy to another organism and feel its pain like no other species. But let's not be too proud of ourselves. As this study and too much of our history show, we're pretty selective about how we extend our humaneness to other human beings.
我們把虐待動物的人關進監獄，我們不顧危險在四周佈滿鯨魚和捕鯨船的船上游玩，我們帶着童年時期關於小鹿斑比(Bambi)媽媽的悲慘遭遇的痛苦回憶。沒有哪個物種可以像我們這樣對另一個有機體感同身受和感受到它的痛苦。不過我們還是不要太自傲。上述研究以及太多歷史都表明，我們對給予他人慈悲和情感是相當有選擇性的。