“Evidences of Relationship" (1914)

AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard

“Evidences of Relationship: II. Monkeys.” Our Dumb Animals XLVII no. 4 (Sept 1914): 51-52.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435063612824&view=1up&seq=65

“Evidences of Relationship: III. Dogs.” Our Dumb Animals XLVII no. 5 (Oct 1914): 69-70.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435063612824&view=1up&seq=85

“Evidences of Relationship” is a series of four connected articles published in Our Dumb Animals between August and November 1914 that highlight the kinship of humans with certain nonhuman animals.

KEYWORDS: animals, animal welfare, evolution

In this four-part article, drawing on evolutionary theory, Moore explains the kinship of humans with the great apes, monkeys, dogs, and ants, respectively, advocating for animal welfare on the basis of this kinship. In the first paragraph of the first installment, Moore clarifies that “universal kinship means the blood-relationship of all the orders and species of animals,” “including our own species” (I 33). For Moore, this means that all animals, human and nonhuman, are related “physically, mentally and morally” (I 33). Nonhuman animals

eat and sleep, seek pleasure and try to avoid pain, cling vigorously to life, experience health and disease, get seasick, suffer hunger and thirst, cooperate with each other, build homes, reproduce themselves, love and provide for their children (feeding, defending, and educating them), contend against enemies, contract habits, remember and forget, learn from experience, have friends and favorites and pastimes, appreciate kindness, commit crimes, dream dreams, cry out in distress, are affected by alcohol, opium, strychnine, and other drugs, see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, are industrious, provident and cleanly, have languages, risk their lives for others, manifest ingenuity, individuality, fidelity, affection, gratitude, heroism, sorrow, sexuality, self-control, fear, love, hate, pride, suspicion, jealousy, joy, reason, resentment, selfishness, curiosity, memory, imagination, remorse – all of these things, and scores of others, as human beings do (I 33).

Moore then discusses similarities in the physical constitution and behavior of humans and great apes, monkeys, dogs, and ants. For example, he contends that “[s]ympathy and curiosity, the two most prominent traits in the monkey psychology, are, significantly, the two most important facts in the psychology of man. Sympathy and curiosity lie at the foundation of human civilization, sympathy at the foundation of morals, and curiosity of invention and science” (II 51). He also makes clear that “a man who kills a being like that is a murderer, just as much as a man who shoots a woman” (II 51). The dog, in turn, “has been a faithful friend, a tireless ally, and an enthusiastic slave of a thankless and inhuman master” ever since he was domesticated (III 70). Of ants, Moore says that they “educate their young, and practise the fundamental principles of human states and societies” (IV 87). In fact, Moore insists that “ants perform … about all the activities of civilized man, except mistreating the females and drinking gin” (IV 87).