Artist Performance Raises Awareness to Animal Testing in Cosmetics

VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

Lush Cosmetics is known for its natural ingredients that do not commission testing products on animal or humans.  In order to further promote their fight against animal testing, Jacqueline Traide put on a disturbing performance that gives its viewers a wake up call they won't forget.  In her performance she plays the role of an animal and is treated as one would be that is undergoing cosmetic testing.  I found this video hard to watch as imagining this happening to helpless animals makes me cringe.  The harsh realities of animal testing need to be exposed to the public and I believe if more of these performances were seen in more locations it would make a significant difference.

  If you would like to learn more about the fight against animal testing please visit http://www.fightinganimaltesting.com for more information.

Animals as Beings

I found this article from The Boston Globe and thought it was interesting. The author states that at one time animals were suspected to have thoughts and feelings, they were even committed for crimes. Since then though, times have changed and people feel like that statement has become false. Humans also stopped using words like "who" and "whom" to describe an animal, instead words like "it" are more common. Animals, I believe, are smarter than most people think. The author gives a great example with a lioness she had an experience with. I believe animals have feelings and thoughts and can control those thoughts and feelings as well.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2015/05/03/petscolumn/cq6UM3nnnaeruJgVqcN7yJ/story.html

Animals Rights

Today's lecture got me thinking about the documentary 'Blackfish'. If you haven't seen it I highly recommend watching it. (For those of you who uncomfortable with watching films about animal mistreatment this is not the worst in the world. It's much easier to stomach than something like Food Inc. but it comes with the territory.) The documentary confronts issues of animals mistreatment, abuse, and the consequences of captivity. Specifically, it focuses on Killer Whales and Sea World. I'm not sure if any of you have noticed but Sea World has been facing a lot of backlash recently around their treatment of animals, some of which I think stemmed from the film's critiques. Here's a link to the trailer, the full documentary should be on Netflix but I haven't checked recently to see if it's still there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLOeH-Oq_1Y

A must see

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HFodb9Ezyw

Water Cooler

Does anyone remember the goldfish and water cooler commercial? There was a water cooler with a large amount of goldfish in it and the water was slowly being poured out and the fish were all swimming toward the bottom?

Animals and Robotics

I was doing some research about animals and robotics and discovered that NYU created a robotic fish and placed it into an environment with real fish. They real fish not only accepted the robotic one but the robotic fish became the leader of the group! What do you guys think about that?

Feminism and Animal Rights

The more this class progresses, the more I have found ties between feminism and animal rights. Women, like animals, are treated as subsidiaries by men. They are demeaned to be lesser, and are often portrayed as objects, only there for a man's gaze and consumption (whether it be physical or sexual consumption). Both women and animals are subject to that penetrating male gaze and made subsequently into objects, only there for a male's visceral pleasure.

I found this video online (linked below) which I think highlights how the media treats women and how women are objectified. In the following video, How the Media Failed Women in 2013, it includes elements such as a severed female torso being used to advertise a video game, the women's breasts clearly the highlight of the ad. This video also includes a Carl's Junior advertisement, again bringing about the parallels between women and animals and women and meat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NswJ4kO9uHc

Do animals have morals?

This is one of my favorite TED talks. It not only shows  how intelligent animals are, but that they express 'human emotions.' They display behaviors such as cooperation, reciprocity, empathy, and cooperation.

 http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals?language=en

Cosmetic Animal Testing

I have always been aware of the terrible practice of animal testing, but only after reading this article that I realized some countries actually have laws making cosmetics have to be tested on animals to be certified. I think this is absolutely ridiculous and sad that a government would MAKE animals be tested on. Also the amount of companies that do test on animals is absolutely absurd.

http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2013/11/china-to-phase-out-animal-testing-110713.html?credit=web_id85537485

Animal Intelligence

I have attached the video "Smart Pigs vs Kids- Extraordinary Animals- Series 2- Earth" and it is a study based on the intelligence of a six week old pig. The pig is being tested on whether or not it can determine how to find a bowl of food that can only be seen through the reflection of a mirror. It only took the pig a few hours to finally figure out that to get to the bowl of food, it needed to walk around a barrier to the other side to get the food.

Another pig was tested by seeing how long it would take in order for it to score a soccer ball into a goal. It did so very easily compared to the children who were tested. The pig was 18 months old and performed the task with relative ease, while the 2 and 3-year-old children could not succeed in doing the task.

I thought that these tests that the scientists were performing on the piglets and children were related to the Descartes and Montaigne discussion we had in Section today. The pigs are being tested on their levels of intelligence and being compared to the children. I believe that in this study, the pigs are being posed more to side with Montaigne's view because they are being argued to have very high levels of intelligence for being so young.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mza1EQ6aLdg