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Why are humans so devoted to feeding animals? It’s a mystery with a few clues

Dinner at my house tonight was amazing: mango chutney chicken alongside crisp, garlicky green beans and rice with mustard seeds. Almost the whole family thought it was a perfect dinner.

The only holdout was Jack, our dog. The way he kept sniffing the air while my wife cooked, we could tell he agreed that the meal smelled great, but come dinnertime he had one major complaint: The family meal had, as usual, left out one member of the family.

And, as usual, he reminded me exactly who had been forgotten by resting his muzzle on my leg and staring up with his saddest puppy eyes while I did my best to ignore him and enjoy my food.

I failed in that attempt (also as usual) and ended up sharing a little from my plate with him. Then I got up from the table and fixed him his own dish of the leftover rice and chutney.

While Jack scarfed down his delayed share of the family dinner, I had time to consider a question that a group of British researchers are trying to get to the bottom of. As The New York Times reported recently, they’re setting aside four years to work out why, exactly, humans are so devoted to feeding animals.

For humans feeding some animals, that is a mystery. It’s been more than 30 years since I mentioned to a girlfriend that I always tossed a handful of chicken feed to the red ants in her backyard when I took care of the farm animals there during her family’s vacations, and I still can’t think of a good answer to her horrified “Why?”

The answer’s much simpler when it comes to animals we let through the front door: It’s rude to exclude a member of the family.

And as Jack so poignantly reminds me when he stares up at me every evening at the dinner table, that holds especially true for a pet. When our family opened the front door to Jack, it meant closing it on his chance to hang with his kind on his terms. If we’re going to keep a good dog like him cooped up with humans without giving him a say in the matter, we ought to treat him like one of us.

It’s mostly easy to make sure he feels included, especially since I’ve been working from home for the past 14 months. In fact, paying attention to his interests peppers the workday with moments of explosive excitement every time the mail shows up or the neighbor’s tuxedo cat dares to trot onto our porch.

And because it would be impolite not to show an interest in the things he cares about so deeply, I keep up my side of the relationship by shouting for Jack to come to the window if he’s off napping when I happen to spot some canine outrage like a rabbit nibbling on the lawn. I mean, if the rest of the family is going to call each other to the living room when something good comes on the TV, somebody should also make sure Jack doesn’t miss the sort of drama he finds so stirring.

Including him is tougher when it comes to setting aside part of a delicious meal. He’s got his own bowl full of kibble and all of us humans want to enjoy every bite that’s on our plates.

But Jack’s a master manipulator. Even though he must realize that he could snatch the meat off any of our plates and bolt with no more risk of being caught than when he jukes past us during a game of keep-away, he’s figured out that all he has to do is put on a forlorn expression that asks as clearly as words what he did to get left without a place at the table.

And in the short time it takes him to guilt us into remedying that situation, the question those researchers are trying to answer twists into something different. The mystery isn’t why people share our food with animals, but why any animal as good as Jack has to work so hard to get his share.

Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com. And follow him on Twitter at @respinozakc.