“The Best-of Human traits” Guide – Companion Animal Edition
- Form: video
- Guide: https://vimeo.com/760956352
Intention For the Guide
Documentation Link: https://guttural-nyala-05f.notion.site/Breeding-and-Animal-Ethics-7401b13400bd4549a91acfb7a4d37a34
(note: details and documentation within the link
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- The guide is to replace viewers’ first-person perspectives with animals’ and discuss the ethics of animal companionship and the questionable protocols for optimizing and achieving the “ideal characteristics” on companion animals.
- My intention in using the video format is to replicate some of the practices in the contemporary scenario where we get information from social media platforms which hugely affects our preference for pets. From some of the research, I put out a question: what practice produces the norm in ___ which ___ is valued? Some consumer practices might guarantee artificial traits on animals are valued and unethical breeding markets become naturalized
- Stakeholders included in my research: breeder, researcher, pet owner, and pets
I thought this was such a fun project. I loved the idea of pets screening the humans — it makes so much sense. I think it would be cool to see you lean into this even more. I’d love to see more about the different traits that pets would screen for. You definitely talked about some that really stuck out to me, and what to look for (kids who are 12, etc). I also liked the video format. I think that is really effective, because it really did feel like a social media post. I wonder if there is a way to lean into the specific voice of the pets. What would their social media be like? What other things would they reference or talk about?
Hi Ada, After watching your guide and your documentation, I learned a lot and your guide form was really impressive for me. Form your guide, pets personate human and we you switch their status. By standing on the pets’ view, it is really helpful for us to think about what human brings to companion animal and are our behaviours moral? We, human always think that we are superior than other species, which is a selfish and stupid idea. Your guide makes me think what if other species treat us just like we treat them? We should have sympathy for all other species on our earth. After thinking about companion animal-human relationship, your guide really let me have a deep thinking about human and human relationship. We also need to stand on other people’s position when we deal with interpersonal relationship.