Making Machines Of Animals

How the Chicago International Livestock Exposition leveraged the eugenics movement to transform animals into machines and industrialize American agriculture. In 1900, the Chicago International Livestock Exposition became the epicenter of agricultural reform that focused on reinventing animals' bodies to fit a modern, industrial design. Chicago meatpackers partnered with land-grant university professors to create the International—a spectacle on the scale of a world's fair—with the intention of setting the standard for animal quality and, in doing so, transformed American agriculture. In Making Machines of Animals, Neal A. Knapp explains the motivations of both the meatpackers and the professors, describing how they deployed the International to redefine animality itself. Both professors and packers hoped to replace so-called scrub livestock with "improved" animals and created a new taxonomy of animal quality based on the burgeoning eugenics movement. The International created novel definitions of animal superiority and codified new norms, resulting in a dramatic shift in animal weight, body size, and market age. These changes transformed the animals from multipurpose to single-purpose products. These standardized animals and their dependence on off-the-farm inputs and exchanges limited farmers' choices regarding husbandry and marketing, ultimately undermining any goals for balanced farming or the maintenance and regeneration of soil fertility. Drawing on land-grant university research and publications, meatpacker records and propaganda, and newspaper and agricultural journal articles, Knapp critiques the supposed market-oriented, efficiency-driven industrial reforms proffered by the International, which were underpinned by irrational, racist ideologies. The livestock reform movement not only resulted in cruel and violent outcomes for animals but also led to twentieth-century crops and animal husbandry that were rife with inefficiencies and agricultural vulnerabilities.

An expert on mind considers how animals and smart machines measure up to human intelligence. Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines really have intelligence comparable to that of humans? In Bots and Beasts, Paul Thagard looks at how computers ("bots") and animals measure up to the minds of people, offering the first systematic comparison of intelligence across machines, animals, and humans. Thagard explains that human intelligence is more than IQ and encompasses such features as problem solving, decision making, and creativity. He uses a checklist of twenty characteristics of human intelligence to evaluate the smartest machines--including Watson, AlphaZero, virtual assistants, and self-driving cars--and the most intelligent animals--including octopuses, dogs, dolphins, bees, and chimpanzees. Neither a romantic enthusiast for nonhuman intelligence nor a skeptical killjoy, Thagard offers a clear assessment. He discusses hotly debated issues about animal intelligence concerning bacterial consciousness, fish pain, and dog jealousy. He evaluates the plausibility of achieving human-level artificial intelligence and considers ethical and policy issues. A full appreciation of human minds reveals that current bots and beasts fall far short of human capabilities.

Examines the overlap and blurring of boundaries among humans, animals, and machines.

First published in 1964, Ruth Harrison's book Animal Machines had a profound and lasting impact on world agriculture, public opinion and the quality of life of millions of farmed animals. Concerned with welfare standards at a time when animal production was increasing in scale and mechanization, Ruth Harrison set about investigating the situation in a fair and even-handed way. Reporting her findings in this book, Harrison alerted the public to the undeniable suffering of calves living in veal crates and birds in battery cages. Written at the beginning of the intensive farming movement, which promised progress but in reality worsened conditions for domesticated animals, Animal Machines provides a fascinating insight into the system we are living with today and must continue with as the global population increases. Harrison's work brought about legal reforms, a greater understanding of farm conditions for animals and increased public awareness. Animal Machines is reprinted here in its entirety, accompanied by new chapters by world-renowned experts in animal welfare discussing the legacy and impact of Animal Machines 50 years on.

A reprint of a book originally published in 1964, with new contributions setting a modern context. The original book is comprised of 10 chapters covering and describing the methods of intensive farming of poultry and livestock during the 1960s. It was aimed at creating awareness regarding the production of animals under artificial and damaging conditions that prevail in factory-like installations. Focus is given on broiler chickens, poultry packing stations, battery birds, veal calves, basis of quality, quantity versus quality and animal cruelty and legislation.

Engineering Applications in Livestock Production covers the recent advancements and technological developments in the field of livestock production engineering in great detail. The major advances covered in this book include the use of artificial intelligence, image processing, Internet of Things, novel animal product processing technologies, farm automation systems, sensor technology, bioengineering practices and even engineered housing systems among others. The book includes applications of emerging sensor based and intelligent techniques/systems in the field of livestock production and management The book will have separate chapters dedicated to innovative approaches in the livestock sector such as artificial intelligence, micro and nano sensors, IoT, image processing and farm automation Specialists contribution of chapters provide comprehensive details while assisting the understanding of the concepts

• Motivation It is our dream to understand the principles of animals’ remarkable ability for adaptive motion and to transfer such abilities to a robot. Up to now, mechanisms for generation and control of stereotyped motions and adaptive motions in well-known simple environments have been formulated to some extentandsuccessfullyappliedtorobots.However,principlesofadaptationto variousenvironmentshavenotyetbeenclari?ed,andautonomousadaptation remains unsolved as a seriously di?cult problem in robotics. Apparently, the ability of animals and robots to adapt in a real world cannot be explained or realized by one single function in a control system and mechanism. That is, adaptation in motion is induced at every level from thecentralnervoussystemtothemusculoskeletalsystem.Thus,weorganized the International Symposium on Adaptive Motion in Animals and Machines(AMAM)forscientistsandengineersconcernedwithadaptation onvariouslevelstobebroughttogethertodiscussprinciplesateachleveland to investigate principles governing total systems. • History AMAM started in Montreal (Canada) in August 2000. It was organized by H. Kimura (Japan), H. Witte (Germany), G. Taga (Japan), and K. Osuka (Japan), who had agreed that having a small symposium on motion control, with people from several ?elds coming together to discuss speci?c issues, was worthwhile. Those four organizing committee members determined the scope of AMAM as follows.