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How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s...

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Autores principales: Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith, Monsó, Susana, Huber, Ludwig
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7772310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33391102
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584037
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author Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith
Monsó, Susana
Huber, Ludwig
author_facet Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith
Monsó, Susana
Huber, Ludwig
author_sort Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith
collection PubMed
description Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far.
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spelling pubmed-77723102020-12-31 How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith Monsó, Susana Huber, Ludwig Front Psychol Psychology Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7772310/ /pubmed/33391102 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584037 Text en Copyright © 2020 Benz-Schwarzburg, Monsó and Huber. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith
Monsó, Susana
Huber, Ludwig
How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics
title How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics
title_full How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics
title_fullStr How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics
title_full_unstemmed How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics
title_short How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics
title_sort how dogs perceive humans and how humans should treat their pet dogs: linking cognition with ethics
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7772310/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33391102
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584037
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