Lies, damn lies, and LOLcats

One interesting point made in Temple Grandin's Animals Make Us Human is that cats don't express emotions on their faces the way people and dogs do. If one reflects on this fact in light of the way people address and treat cats, it highlights the tendency of people to anthropomorphize inappropriately. The prime example of this on the Interwebs is LOLcats.

Funny/heartbreaking as this photo is, it is entirely conjured. It is hard not to think that people like Claire Berlinksi base their vegetarianism on entirely false premises. Not only sentimentality, but mistaken and self-generated sentimentality.