"Observing or studying animals" - how to find some standpoints on a topic?

Hello, I don't mean to disturb you but I really need the help.

I am a student who will go to take Toefl test in few days and I would like to ask this question. Hopefully you can help me.

The topic is "Observing or studying animals can teach us a lot about human nature. Agree or Disagree?"

Well, I do not know what I can say about this topic. I mean I really don't understand this topic, and I cannot find any standpoints even though I want to get this topic done.

Could you tell me what aspects I can talk about on this topic?

Do you have a pet?
You've learned about Pavlov right? Classical conditioning. It's when a guy named Ivan Pavlov made his dog think food would come everytime he rang a bell. Anyway you can talk about how humans can be classically conditioned. For example, in the book "Brave New World" baby's are trained to dislike books and flowers because everytime they get near these two things they get shocked by the electric grid underneath them.

If animals get punished for bad things they will stop engaging in such activities. Human's are the same way.
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Anyway read up on Pavlov's experiment, I didn't do a good job of explaining it.

You can relate an animal's sense of property to a human's. Human's like the company of other humans. Stuff like that. I hope it's helpful.

The question is whether studying animals can teach us about human nature. The most common answer is "yes." We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and our brain structures are similar not only to other mammals but also to birds and other kinds of animals. Therefore, observing their behavior might be able to help us understand ourselves. Watching how our closest relatives -- the pacific bonobos -- keep the peace might help us to mediate our own disputes without so much warfare.

From the opposite viewpoint, human beings are so different from other animals that observing them cannot teach us about ourselves. Can observing squirrels help us understand fish? If not, then maybe observing elephants cannot help us understand people. If you are going to argue that we can learn about people by studying animals, then you may want to address the ethical questions associated with doing so. Observing animals in their natural habitats hurts no one, but removing animals from their homes to study them in laboratories, even if the experiments themselves are not painful, does damage to them. If they are so like us that we can learn about our nature from them, is it fair to do to them what we would never do to other people?

Thank you guys sooooooooo much! I appriciate that. Anyhow, I hope this topic wouldn't appear in my test... I'm sure it will drive me crazy.

lol~