Several weeks ago, a reporter from The New York Times called me about the latest New York fad pet, the savannah cat, which is a domestic cat-wild serval cross. This led me to ponder the role novelty plays in the survival of nonhuman and human animal life. For example, those individuals who don’t recognize and properly respond to novel changes signaling the presence of predators won’t last very long. Those seeking mates will preferentially seek out those of the opposite sex who possess some quality that makes that individual stand out from the crowd. However, because pets often serve as a means of fulfilling human needs, they sometimes become the novelty we use to attract other peoples’ attention to ourselves.
We can readily see the benefit of this because using animals in this manner theoretically confers two advantages. The first is the aforementioned attention it gains us from others, and the second is all those positive benefits of the human-animal bond. Unfortunately and in spite of the fact that the conventional wisdom may suggest that such rewards are a given, many times mutually rewarding human-novelty animal bonds are the exception rather than the rule. The elegant savannah chosen to communicate our own elegant nature zips up a tree rather than walks demurely on a leash. Our cool elegance gives way to hot frustration when the animal refuses to come down and we attract snickers from by-passers rather than murmurs of awe. The wolf hybrid meant to evoke images of Jack London’s John Thornton and his faithful Buck instead evokes those of us as the village recluse (or even idiot) when we discover our novel pet is neither dog nor wolf, and meeting her special needs requires a lot more time and knowledge than we ever imagined.
The often overlooked aspect of these pets like no others is that they require owners like no others. Whether we speak of a rare breed, a hybrid species, or member of an exotic (nondomestic) species, all require owners willing to go the extra mile to ensure they can meet the animal’s needs before they add the animal to their household. Similarly, any unusual pet deserves owners willing to gain the necessary knowledge to determine beforehand if any human needs they desire to project on the animal are within the animal’s ability and won’t jeopardize the animal’s well-being in any way.
Granted, we should be doing this same kind of homework before we get any animal, but over the years we have bred, either by choice or subconsciously, our most common pet species—cats, dogs, horses—to withstand a certain amount of human projection. On the other hand, I think it’s safe to say that the average serval, Asian leopard cat (who contributes to the Bengal’s gene pool), wolf, reptile, amphibian, or nonhuman primate who finds him- or herself in a human household probably didn’t come with a standard “Understanding Human Peccadilloes” set of genes they can automatically turn on when they find themselves trying to fulfill our dreams for ourselves.
Another aspect of these novel pets is that they generate a paradox. At the same time as they may be attracting attention to themselves and their owners because of their novel appearance, their presence within the pet community concurrently communicates that there must be a lot of them (or their wild components in the case of wild-domestic crosses). Obviously, the thinking goes, if servals or Asian leopard cats or wolvesreally were endangered, people wouldn’t be manipulating them and selling the results as pets, would they? Nor would all those exotic birds, snakes, and amphibians show up in pet stores or other retail venues unless there was an endless supply of them somewhere. But, in fact, all of the small wildcats are endangered because of loss of habitat and their willingness to mate with domestic cats. Consequently, the willingness to buy wild creatures or their look-alikes may directly or indirectly support the destruction of their natural environments.
A final heart-breaking aspect of projecting our desire for novelty on animals takes the form of what happens to all those novel pets when the fad fades or people decide that the amount of positive attention the animal gains them isn’t worth all the effort necessary to ensure the animal’s well-being. Just ask the pot-bellied pig, ferret, or iguana rescue folks, or those who run sanctuaries for exotic animals who will live out their lives often under the most marginal conditions. Other times, the human desire for novelty may lead naive folks to adopt or even buy these animals from others who lacked the wherewithal to meet the animal’s needs, thereby subjecting these animals to the further stress of adapting to multiple homes. Even more tragic, within each household they may progress through a cycle that first sees the owners practically worshipping the animals (or what they think the animal communicates about them) and then demoting them to a cross to be passed on to someone else to bear.
The issue isn’t the use novel pets to enhance our self-images in one way or another; all pet owners do this to some extent at one time or another. The issue is whether we’re willing to gain the special knowledge and skills necessary to meet the needs of those novel pets to ensure that they benefit from our presence as much as we do from theirs.
Several weeks ago, a reporter from The New York Times called me about the latest New York fad pet, the savannah cat, which is a domestic cat-wild serval cross. This led me to ponder the role novelty plays in the survival of nonhuman and human animal life. For example, those individuals who don’t recognize and properly respond to novel changes signaling the presence of predators won’t last very long. Those seeking mates will preferentially seek out those of the opposite sex who possess some quality that makes that individual stand out from the crowd. However, because pets often serve as a means of fulfilling human needs, they sometimes become the novelty we use to attract other peoples’ attention to ourselves.
We can readily see the benefit of this because using animals in this manner theoretically confers two advantages. The first is the aforementioned attention it gains us from others, and the second is all those positive benefits of the human-animal bond. Unfortunately and in spite of the fact that the conventional wisdom may suggest that such rewards are a given, many times mutually rewarding human-novelty animal bonds are the exception rather than the rule. The elegant savannah chosen to communicate our own elegant nature zips up a tree rather than walks demurely on a leash. Our cool elegance gives way to hot frustration when the animal refuses to come down and we attract snickers from by-passers rather than murmurs of awe. The wolf hybrid meant to evoke images of Jack London’s John Thornton and his faithful Buck instead evokes those of us as the village recluse (or even idiot) when we discover our novel pet is neither dog nor wolf, and meeting her special needs requires a lot more time and knowledge than we ever imagined.
The often overlooked aspect of these pets like no others is that they require owners like no others. Whether we speak of a rare breed, a hybrid species, or member of an exotic (nondomestic) species, all require owners willing to go the extra mile to ensure they can meet the animal’s needs before they add the animal to their household. Similarly, any unusual pet deserves owners willing to gain the necessary knowledge to determine beforehand if any human needs they desire to project on the animal are within the animal’s ability and won’t jeopardize the animal’s well-being in any way.
Granted, we should be doing this same kind of homework before we get any animal, but over the years we have bred, either by choice or subconsciously, our most common pet species—cats, dogs, horses—to withstand a certain amount of human projection. On the other hand, I think it’s safe to say that the average serval, Asian leopard cat (who contributes to the Bengal’s gene pool), wolf, reptile, amphibian, or nonhuman primate who finds him- or herself in a human household probably didn’t come with a standard “Understanding Human Peccadilloes” set of genes they can automatically turn on when they find themselves trying to fulfill our dreams for ourselves.
Another aspect of these novel pets is that they generate a paradox. At the same time as they may be attracting attention to themselves and their owners because of their novel appearance, their presence within the pet community concurrently communicates that there must be a lot of them (or their wild components in the case of wild-domestic crosses). Obviously, the thinking goes, if servals or Asian leopard cats or wolvesreally were endangered, people wouldn’t be manipulating them and selling the results as pets, would they? Nor would all those exotic birds, snakes, and amphibians show up in pet stores or other retail venues unless there was an endless supply of them somewhere. But, in fact, all of the small wildcats are endangered because of loss of habitat and their willingness to mate with domestic cats. Consequently, the willingness to buy wild creatures or their look-alikes may directly or indirectly support the destruction of their natural environments.
A final heart-breaking aspect of projecting our desire for novelty on animals takes the form of what happens to all those novel pets when the fad fades or people decide that the amount of positive attention the animal gains them isn’t worth all the effort necessary to ensure the animal’s well-being. Just ask the pot-bellied pig, ferret, or iguana rescue folks, or those who run sanctuaries for exotic animals who will live out their lives often under the most marginal conditions. Other times, the human desire for novelty may lead naive folks to adopt or even buy these animals from others who lacked the wherewithal to meet the animal’s needs, thereby subjecting these animals to the further stress of adapting to multiple homes. Even more tragic, within each household they may progress through a cycle that first sees the owners practically worshipping the animals (or what they think the animal communicates about them) and then demoting them to a cross to be passed on to someone else to bear.
The issue isn’t the use novel pets to enhance our self-images in one way or another; all pet owners do this to some extent at one time or another. The issue is whether we’re willing to gain the special knowledge and skills necessary to meet the needs of those novel pets to ensure that they benefit from our presence as much as we do from theirs.