I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.
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'It's not that humans and non-humans are identical... but the lack of understanding that led to the slave trade is the same lack of understanding many people have about animals today. When slaves were brought over from Africa, many people believed they were not humans, that they didn't have feelings. Many people believe that primates and other animals don't have feelings, too, but they do.'
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Recent research has revealed that birds are capable of complex cognition . . . it is now clear that birds have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals, even primates . . . it should be realized that even vastly improved intensive systems are unlikely to meet the cognitive demands of the hitherto underestimated chicken brain. . . . With the increased knowledge of the behaviour and cognitive abilities of the chicken has come the realization that the chicken is not an inferior species to be treated merely as a food source.
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Why the dog was ever considered as an appropriate animal for carcinogenicity testing is also not entirely clear... Despite the obvious problems of study design and interpretation, carcinogenicity tests in the dog, lasting 7 years, were requested by regulatory authorities from the late 1960s...One of the best known examples of the inappropriate use of the dog was the carcinogenicity testing of hormonal contraceptives. It is now understood that mammogenesis in the dog is very different from that in primates; quantitative and qualitative differences exist in the feedback control mechanisms, receptor content and behaviour, and target sensitivity and responsivity. As a result of this biological difference there was a high incidence of mammary tumours in long-term studies in dogs treated with progestagens/contraceptive steroids such as lynestrol. Ultimately pressure from the scientific community led, relatively recently, to the requirement for carcinogenicity studies in dogs being dropped.
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The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of 'Ten Best'.
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