What Is Karen Davis 'Thinking Like A Chicken'

What qualities make our life worth value? This question usually arises in any discussion regarding animal ethics. It is impossible to answer this question, however, because no one other then God will definitively even know the exact qualities that make our lives valuable. All we can do is guess what parts of us give us higher value over other creatures that inhabit our planet. So we let our perceptions and pre-conceived notions about animals dictate how we treat them. Everyone consciously or subconsciously ranks living creatures and attributes value to them. The way we often do this is we set ourselves as a benchmark. Then we compare ourselves to them and look for similarities. The more similar they are to us the more value the must have.
How we treat animals, however, has much more to say about who we are as a species, rather than it has to say about our furry neighbors. And it is time to look into the mirror and see if we are proud of what is looking back at us.
This topic of preconceived notions dictating how we treat animals is the theme of Karen Davis's “Thinking Like a Chicken.” One of the many interesting sub-topics of animal ethics addressed in this paper is the topic of domestication. If we created and formed domesticated animals through selective breeding do they deserve rights? Karen Davis and I would argue that they do (Davise, 1995). This is a case however when our preconceived notions about animals are right. Domesticated animals in our absence would die. They are no longer adapted to their local environment; they are adapted to the specific commodity we bred them for. So in many ways, they are our own creation. But who owns life? Not us and not amount of genetic engineering will ever change that. And even if we do own their life how is it not a sin to treat them so cruelly. In her paper, Karen Davis gives specific
That being said wild animals that are captured for zoos are in desperate need of our empathy as well. I personally growing up have had a somewhat positive view of zoos. As I got older and learned more about them my option of them has drastically changed. In our age of smartphones and laptops, we are in desperate need of a positive influence to get kids interested in animals and the natural world. Growing up I always believed that zoo’s played a big role in this. This changed however after I read “Thought To Exist In the Wild” By Derek Johnson. Derek Johnson systematically tears apart the argument that zoos are educational when he equates zoos to pornography; they are just a superficial representation of the real thing. The whole idea of keeping animals in an enclosure teaches children that animals are inferior beings in need of our support. Which leads to believe that it is ok to treat them cruelly. Children do not even have the desired learning outcomes that we would expect. Derrick Johnson points out that when you go to a zoo you don’t see any awe or wonder. You just see children making faces at the animals and poking on the glass (Jensen, 2007). Anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time at a zoo would have a hard time arguing with him. If children are not even learning more about animals the only reason we have zoos is purely for entertainment. Now some people