Pets, Pests And Food: Our Complex, Contradictory Attitudes Toward Animals

Enlarge this image toggle caption Angela Hsieh/NPR Angela Hsieh/NPR

When psychologist Hal Herzog's son Adam was young, he had a pet mouse named Willie. One day, Willie died.

"When he died, we thought it would be a good lesson for the kids in terms of understanding death to have a funeral for him. After all, you know, he was a pet."

But a couple of days later, Hal's wife found some mouse droppings in the kitchen and asked him to do something about it.

"She asked me to kill the mouse, and I did," Hal recalls. "I went out, and I bought a mousetrap. I put a little dab of peanut butter on it and put it [in] the kitchen. And, the next morning I got up, and the mouse was dead."

Why did Willie the pet mouse get a funeral, while the other mouse received an early end? This week on Hidden Brain, we explore the contradictions and quandaries embedded in our relationships with animals.

Additional Resources:

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals, by Hal Herzog, 2010

"Animals and Us," by Hal Herzog, Psychology Today

Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, Parth Shah, Thomas Lu and Laura Kwerel. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain.