On Animals

HEISE, URSULA K.
“The Android and the Animal.”
PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

Abstract:
The article discusses the relationships between androids and animals. Connections between robots and animals in science fiction are noted. The author notes how post humanism has focused on both animal-human relations and machine consciousness. She comments that androids do not address biological forms of otherness as depictions of aliens have. The juxtaposition of animals and robots in science fiction books such as "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick is noted.

Kahn, Peter H., Severson, Rachel L. , and Ruckert, Jolina H.
“The Human Relation with Nature and Technological Nature.”
Current Directions in Psychological Science

Abstract:
Two world trends are powerfully reshaping human existence: the degradation, if not destruction, of large parts of the natural world, and unprecedented technological development. At the nexus of these two trends lies technological nature—technologies that in various ways mediate, augment, or simulate the natural world. Current examples of technological nature include videos and live webcams of nature, robot animals, and immersive virtual environments. Does it matter for the physical and psychological well-being of the human species that actual nature is being replaced with technological nature? As the basis for our provisional answer (it is “yes”), we draw on evolutionary and cross-cultural developmental accounts of the human relation with nature and some recent psychological research on the effects of technological nature. Finally, we discuss the issue—and area for future research—of “environmental generational amnesia.” The concern is that, by adapting gradually to the loss of actual nature and to the increase of technological nature, humans will lower the baseline across generations for what counts as a full measure of the human experience and of human flourishing.

Varga, Donna
“Babes in the Woods: Wilderness Aesthetics in Children's Stories and Toys”
Society & Animals
Abstract:
Representations of nonhuman wild animals in children's stories and toys underwent dramatic transformation over the years 1830-1915. During the earlier part of that period, wild animals were presented to children as being savage and dangerous, and that it was necessary for them to be killed or brutally constrained. In the 1890s, an animal centric discourse emerged in Nature writing, along with an animal-human symbiosis in scientific child study that highlighted childhood innocence, resulting in a valuing of wild animals based upon their similarity to humans. This article will describe the aesthetic devices of children's stories and play materials in relation to the dominant, emerging, and residual ideas about the wild communicated by adults to children through these means.