Of Fish, Dogs, and Men

In some C.S. Lewis book I read in high school, Mr. Lewis commented that the emotions we believe our domestic pets to have are merely projections of our own, a psychological transposition that shows how incredibly self-involved we are.

Mr. Lewis likes to make sweeping, unsubstantiated statements and this one, like many of his, would be more truthful if it were qualified by words such as “sometimes” or “one of the reasons we have pets is to….”

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my dog, a very emotionally-ridden Jack Russell terrier, and wondering how many of the things I assume he is experiencing are my own projected thoughts. I’ve decided that this statement has an even higher percentage of hogwash than most of Mr. Lewis’.

Certainly people project their own emotions onto their pets, and use pets to fill a range of human needs: loneliness, a way to communicate indirectly with one’s spouse when one is arguing, etc.

But Mr. Lewis’ statement ignores both the genuine emotions that dogs and other domestic pets certainly experience and evidence—hurt, fear, love, excitement, desire to name a few—and the level to which domestic pets such as dogs have adapted their communication methods to suit human interpretation. Dogs are pack animals; in living with humans instead of a pack they suit communication to their adopted “pack”.

The real reason I was ruminating on this recently is that my husband and I just bought a fish tank from my brother. We have one algae eater, whom I call Mr. Plec, a frog, and 13 small tropical fish (tetra, dwarf platy, and danios). It is clear that, as much as I love watching the fish, their emotional worlds are completely obscure to me.

For instance, our frog has a tendency to hoard the algae wafers intended for Mr. Plec. The frog does a belly flop on top of the algae wafer and swats away the various members of the Gang of 13 who try to nibble a piece. That is interpretable: the frog wants the wafer for himself. However, Mr. Plec’s communication with the frog over the algae wafer is inscrutable. It ends up with Mr. Plec getting the wafer, but the way in which this transfer of ownership is negotiated and effected (a series of wiggles that mean nothing to me but apparently do to the frog) is bizarre. The frog and Mr. Plec also have a range of other communication signals between them that mean something—I have no idea what and cannot imagine—but they appear simultaneously at various times from their hiding spots within rocks and it is obvious that both have received the same signal or are giving each other a signal and responding.

In any case, the transfer of my emotions to the 14 fish and 1 frog is still pending.