Pets even more crucial during virus lockdown

I struggled with my message this week. For both my congregations, this Sunday is the blessing of the animals. We’re doing it virtually, of course.

But my mind keeps circling back to the crises unfolding all around us. I thought for a while about how pets provide, among other things, validation, and how important validation is when our hearts are heavy.

It felt awkward to speak of something as trite as the warm and fuzzy when our world is suffering so.

Of course, there are genuine things about our world’s animal life that deserve our respect, honor and attention. Time should always be set aside for something as significant to humanity as that. Domesticated animals are our human responsibility for creating them in the first place. They’ve been bred by us to seek our approval and validation for their hard work while also providing love, validation and companionship to us. We have played God with these creatures. There are responsibilities to that.

Far too many humans have taken on the responsibility of pet ownership only to fail at it horribly. So we honor those who take in our loving life forms that have been neglected, abused or abandoned. Please support your local animal shelters. They are doing good work.

Humanity has grown up alongside domesticated animals from the beginning. There are records of animals bred to be workers and companions dating back thousands of years, selectively bred to enhance our preferred characteristics. Such as friendliness, for one.

I remember reading once about a domestication experiment of silver foxes in the 1950s. Though illegal to study genetics in Russia at that time, it was conducted under the guise of fur manufacture by geneticist Dimitri Belyaev. He observed that by selectively choosing the friendlier animals to mate and create potentially friendlier offspring, while leaving the hostile ones to become fur coats, after a few generations, their ears started to flop over and their sharp teeth began to round off. As they genetically perceived the safety and support in their environment, their defense mechanisms began to switch off.

While some of Belyaev’s conclusions from that experiment have come under fire lately, what still emerges from it, to me, is that as a species evolves generation after generation under safer circumstances where their ability to relate with humans is prized, even their physical characteristics become friendlier over time.

I find it very interesting to imagine that as circumstances favor an evolution toward friendliness, an animal’s bodily defense structures, such as sharper teeth, keener ears or deadlier claws, become more dormant within the genes until perhaps needed again in some future generation. But that genetic adaptability to circumstance and desire raises a flag to me about our own ability to relate with one another.

Because human beings are a domesticated species. We are domesticating ourselves right at this moment.

We have selectively bred ourselves through our choice of mate for security, procreative ability and resourcefulness, of course, but also we tend to choose our partners for their relatability, creativity, intellect and ingenuity. One could argue that we often choose our sexual partners based on how naturally compassionate or empathetic they are as well. In other words, how friendly they are.

Are these traits being handed down in our genes? Is there any evidence that our physical bodies have altered over time to accommodate our species’ perception of whether or not we are safe or in danger? Perhaps our brain wiring has shifted to value friendliness differently? Has it altered as a result of the fact that even though we exist in a difficult moment, over the course of human history we have only become more peaceful and loving to one another? I know some will argue with that last point. But a little research will show that it’s statistically correct.

We have increasingly begun to demand the equal rights of all life and all humans. Is that a product of our self-domestication? Are we choosing to be more loving even on a genetic level?

We should be more like dogs. Dogs don’t discriminate against each other. They sniff each other’s butts equally.

Which makes the subject of a fluffy kitten purring on our lap all the more relevant right now. Remember when the shutdown from the pandemic started back in late

March? The first thing to go was toilet paper and the second thing was all of the animals in the shelters.

Humanity has begun to notice the plight of the animal world and their environments more and more over the past several decades. Videos of animals being cute or loving literally built the internet. Does that say anything favorable about our overall capacity to love?

For those of us who have house pets, cherish them. Give yourself permission to be comforted by them now. They are the companions of humanity, and they exist in our lives for a reason. They perceive our fear, our sadness, and our despair. Allow them to put you at ease. They wish for nothing more.