Jeremy Rifkin A Change Of Heart About Animals Summary

Thank you Jeremey Rifkin for strongly supporting the animal rights cause, Rifkin proves that animals indeed act much like humans and deserve to be treated more humanly. By providing proven scientific facts, Rifkin was able to take one into the mind and inner emotions of an animal. For example, as he was talking about elephants mourning for their loss, one was really able to connect to such negative feelings even if not having experienced a tremendous loss in life.

In the article “A Change of Heart about Animals” (1 September 2003), published by Los Angeles Times, author Jeremy Rifkin discusses how “... researchers are finding [is] that many of our fellow creatures are more like us than we imagined.” (Rifkin 61). Using academic diction, Rifkin develops his main idea with evidence such as “They [animals] feel pain, suffer, and experience stress, affection, excitement, and even love -- and these findings are changing how we view animals. ”(Rifkin 61). This suggests a pathos and logos persuasive appeal that broadens the reader’s understanding and knowledge in changing our perspective of the inhumane and inequality treatment that non domestic animals receive. Rifkin’s use of pathos and logos appeals is to

Pets Have Feelings Too Don’t you just love your pet? If you don’t have one, what about your neighbor's pet? Or the animal you see in the pet store in the mall. Do you ever stop to think about animals without homes, not having people to love and care for them?

“What these researchers are finding is that many our creatures are more like us than we ever imagined. They feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love -- and these findings are changing how we view animals,” said by Rifkin. In Rifkin’s article, A Change of Heart about Animals, highlights the fact we should have empathy of the way we treat our creatures that we share the earth with. He supports his argument with examples of animals having adroitness such as human do. Rifkin also addressesthe brain anatomy and chemisty similar to us.

Many things do have feelings when you think they don't have feelings. Many things are not exactly what it seems. Animals have many similarities and differences to humans. Starting with the story the pod.

In Memoir, Saying Farewell to a Faithful Pal by John Grogan describes the time their pet dog was helpful. The quote in the story that their dog is helpful to them is ‘’When i bought my wife home from the doctor after a miscarriage, that wild beast gently rested his blocky head in her lap and just whimpered (Grogan, pg 155, pp 11).’’ The quotes from the story prove that their dog is trying to comfort the owner because dogs sometimes can smell someone’s emotion or they know if their owner is sad. This animal impact change the person in the story because comforting someone is helpful to them and can make them feel happy. Although dogs helping someone is very hardworking. It’s like trying their best to make their owner happy so that’s why they are working hard.

In Change of Heart about Animals, Jeremy Rifkin says “we should empathize with animals”. I completely disagree with his statement. I am a pet owner and although I love my pet I don't think I would view him on the same level as me. If I were to see him on the same level as me it would defeat the purpose of having a pet. I mean you don’t keep other humans as pets.

Furthermore, Rifkin discusses the cognitive abilities of animals, by informing us that learning is passed on from parent to offspring. Rifkin says that most animals engaged all kind of learning, Rifkin in paragraph 15 wants to make us get in our emotions and he says, “So what does all of this portend for the way we treat our fellow creatures?” Rifkin believes that a lot of animals are in the most inhumane

Based on Jeremy Rifkin’s article “A Change of Heart about Animals” I totally agree with what he has to say. As humans we are born with empathy. As we grow older we learn how to develop more empathy. One of our journeys while on this planet is to appeal to humans empathy. We learn how to have more empathy to those who we care about the most.

In the article “A Change of Heart About Animals”, Rifkin asserts that humans are treating animals in the most atrocious way, and he claims that in order for their lives to improve, we need to definitely adjust ours. He uses great amount of logos, and several experiments done with different animals and tries his best to closely relate animals to us, humans. Rifkin although, never inserts a call for action to this problem throughout his article. Instead, he puts the emphasis on the pathos of the argument. In the world we are living in today, there is about 8.7 million different living species. Whether they are land or marine animals, they do play a big role in our community such as being apart of the food pyramid, assisting handicapped people wherever they go, or being a transportation for people living on farms and fields. With this being said, the ranking of animals in our community has brought up a heated argument in connection to their rights and welfare. Eight legged, four legged, or two legged land or sea animals do not comprehend the concept of rights. If we, humans, give animals “rights”, we are basically inferring the fact that we are like animals, and they have the entitlement to share our rights. Although they don’t understand rights, the fact that many of these animals are being treated inhumanely is wrong and animal welfare should be ingrained into this community rather than the massive inhumane treatment.

When it comes to animals, everyone seems to have an opinion. Some love them, some hate them. Some believe that animals feel and experience authentic emotions, while others believe that they do not have the capability to do so. A lack of belief in the existence of emotions in animals is often used to justify wrongful treatment. Are some animals more aware of feelings than others? These questions and more demand answers. Animals definitely have emotions, and because of this we must rethink many of our modern practices.

Studies have shown that the children who grow up in homes with animals have a better ability to show empathy later and as adults. Pets are easy to communicate with, and their body language is much simpler than a human’s. This simple body language allows children to learn to empathize with them, a skill they can carry with them as they go through life (Holistic Online, 2007).

Animal emotion is a difficult and controversial subject. Scientific research is confirming what humans intuitively know: that animals have feelings and able to experience diverse types of emotions. Skeptics believe there are no possible ways animals can have emotions. They refuse the idea animals experience happiness or any other type of emotions as anthropomorphism; which occurs when humans project their own characteristics or behaviors to animals. Josh Clark offers an example of this phenomenon: the story of Hachiko, a dog that lived in Japan. Every day, this dog and his owner went to the train station. The dog was there every afternoon waiting for his owner to come back, but when his

Significance: B. Animals live and have emotions just as humans and deserve the right to a happy life the constitution states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”. We know from having pets that our

In life we all have something that has changed the way we perceive things. Most things that change a person’s perception happens to be an experience that they have gone thru and learned from. In my case it wasn’t necessarily an experience, it was a dog that changed my perception on life. My mind and heart was opened in a whole new way. I never thought I could love an animal just as much as I loved the people in my life. I always thought it was strange that pet owners loved and treated their pets the same way they treated their children. My perception on dogs or pets in general definitely changed. Throughout this paper you will see why I am a totally different person because of a dog that entered my life.