For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have been living with domesticated animals such as dogs and cats. However, the fact that humans have lived with pets for a long time does not imply that the pets are family memebers of humans because there are many negative perspetives on the issue: they may carry diseases, dogs are not pets in some cultures and pets do not have intelligence.
One negative aspect that pets have is that physically pets are different from humans, so they bring a lot of infectuus diseases into our homes. Although some argue that raising pets can be an alternative way to cure human psychological diseases, in most cases many do not like pets because it is widely known that pets bring many diseases into our homes. For example, although I like pets a lot, I was not able to raise pets because my daughter was very sensitive to dog's hair and its smell, so it was impossibe for me to adopt a my friend's dog. In addition, I have heard that dog's hair can be one of the serious causes of skin allegy and other respiratory diseases. Consequently, it is natural that such people or family should avoid living with pets.
In addition to the diseases that pet carry into humans, the definition of a pet itself is very controversial and varies depending on culture to culture. For example, dogs have been some kinds of dometic or tamed livestock for food for hundreds of thousands of years in Korea. A few years ago, when I did a research on dog meat issue in Korea, 80% of Koreans regarded dogs as one kind of traditional foods, rather than pets. If that is the case, what is a pet and what is not a pet? It is difficult to define. In some other cases, some raise spiders and insects, or snakes as pets. However, some may feel against raising such pets. In that case, the same question arises as to whether such animals are pets or not. As such, according to personal definition of pets, some pets can be real pets and others cannot.
Last but not least, pets are pets, not humans. I admit that pets are benificial to human psychology and mental heath. However, the fact that they are helpful to humans does not mean that they can be our family members. They can not talk, speak, think, and share emotions like humans. In addition, they can not help you when you are depressed or in trouble. Some pet owners may argue that their pets do, However, their such behaviors are based on their basic instincts, not based on intellectual brain processing, so their behaviors are not the affection that pet owners think of, but the mere instinctive behavior that come from their desire to survive and take a good care from their owners.
All things considered, it is hard to accept pets as family memebers because they can spead unwanted dieseases, some pets are againt our natural feelings, and they are not intellectual creatures. I want to emphasize that pets are beneficial and personally I like pets. However, when you accept the pets as humans, it may goes beyond our rational control, resulting in obsession with your pets and overprotection of your pets. Therefore, it is necessary to think of pets as one of valualble creatures like many wild animals, not human beings since human beings are special in many ways and do not share many features with animals. |