His emotional distance from the animals also allows him to make his work sometimes sickeningly funny. In This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed Home, each half of a bisected pig in tanks of formaldehyde, slide past one another on an automated track, separating and putting themselves back to together over and over again. He says, "I hope that it makes people think about things that they take for granted. Like smoking, like sex, like love, like life, like advertising, like death... I want to make people frightened of what they know. I want to make them question." He achieves this by incorporating common objects into his work. "Ordinary things are frightening. It's like, a shoe is intended to get you from one place to another. The moment you beat your girlfriend's head in with it, it becomes something insane. The change of function is what's frightening... That's what art is."

Not everyone, though, is so emotionally distant from the animals in Damien's art. Many people either can't stomach it, or have some moral objection to it. Damien has received many letters of protest, and even some threats. While the negative reaction to his work is perhaps understandable, it is not necessarily warranted, as the animals he uses are purchased from slaughterhouses, and many have died of natural causes.