Everyone has their own depiction of
what they feel would be the perfect pet. Maybe a big animal or a small one, quiet
or energetic; whatever would fit with you.
In the Story Oryx and Crake, you
could see something related to this when Jimmy receives a creature from his
father to keep as a pet. This creature is called a rakunk which you soon learn
is a type of hybrid between a skunk and a raccoon. This animal is described as a cute, clean,
placid and calm.
This defines a pretty cool pet to
have as it has multiple pleasant qualities. As it was Jimmy’s first pet, these attributes
seem like pretty good ones to have as it wouldn’t require too much special
attention to take care of it.
The rakunk was created only as
pure entertainment to the scientists in the labs. It was something they worked
on during their free time. As it says in the book, “[it makes] you feel like
God” (59). Dangerous animals that they created, they got rid of. The rakunk, the
cute and adorable one, stayed.
In the real world, things like this
or related are happening all around. Wild animals are attempted at being
domesticated in hopes of finding a new type of companion in the household. One
example of this would be foxes. There are currently facilities and types of
farms that could be found in Russia that house foxes. There they observe the
changes their animals would do through as they expose them to more human
contact and treat them like you would a normal pet. All of this is explained in
an article from National Geographic, Issue of March 2011.
This could even be seen in things
as simple as pet owners interbreeding different breeds of certain animals such
as dogs and cats to get what they call “the perfect pet”, bred for reasons such
as personality and looks.
This all shows how selfish human
beings can be, with their need to control everything around them. They cannot
be satisfied with what they have already and instead decide to meddle further
into affairs that just sometimes shouldn’t be touched and just left alone. Sure
having this “perfect pet” would be awesome, which I think so too. Who wouldn’t think
that having a fox running around your house amusing? But is it really worth going
through all this trouble to create something that wasn’t meant to be created in
the first place?
I have to agree with you there, we as human beings always desire more, its a result of our consumerism attitude that has been implanted on us since we were little. At this rate space won't be enough and we'll want to travel through time and alternate dimensions (a little extreme of an example, but it certainly proves the point.)
ReplyDelete