Animal Rights

"The bias against small beings seems closely related to another bias we have, namely the bias to believe what is most convenient. For it would no doubt be much more convenient if small beings such as insects are not sentient. If they are, and if they can feel pain, the world suddenly becomes very complex and messy, and not least full of suffering beyond what we have imagined thus far. Therefore, it seems reasonable to suspect that our reasoning is somewhat motivated to jump to the conclusion that insects are not sentient."

"The spider was so contrived that she would not eat grass, but must catch flies, and such things, and inflict a slow and horrible death upon them, unaware that her turn would come next. The wasp was so contrived that he also would decline grass and stab the spider, not conferring upon her a swift and merciful death, but merely half paralysing her, then ramming her down into the wasp den, there to live and suffer for days, while the wasp babies should chew her legs off at their leisure. In turn, there was a murderer provided for the wasp, and another murderer for the wasp’s murderer, and so on throughout the whole scheme of living creatures in the earth. There isn’t one of them that was not designed and appointed to inflict misery and murder on some fellow creature and suffer the same, in turn, from some other murderous fellow creature. In flying into the web the fly is merely guilty of an indiscretion—not a breach of any law—yet the fly’s punishment is ten-thousandfold out of proportion to that little indiscretion."

"Among insects, most of the pieces of the evidence required to say that insects feel pain appear in some groups to some extent. However, they do not appear in all groups to the extent which would result in a definitive answer. It would not surprise me to learn that some insects, particularly some of the social insects, would posses [sic] all the pieces of evidence."

"I'll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,—I'll not hurt a hair of thy head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?—This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me."

"The question of pain in invertebrates will be extremely difficult to resolve—if, indeed, it is resolvable. In the meantime, perhaps it can be agreed that it is most appropriate to concentrate efforts on maintaining and improving the general well-being of invertebrates used in research, that is, to ensure that these animals are kept in the best and most appropriate conditions during their lives in the laboratory; given the benefit of the doubt in procedures which have the potential to cause pain and distress; and, when the time comes, killed in the most humane manner possible."

"If I save an insect from a puddle, life has devoted itself to life, and the division of life against itself is ended."

"That does not mean that we should launch a campaign for insect rights. We still do not know enough about insect subjective experiences to do that; and, in any case, the world is far from being ready to take such a campaign seriously. We need first to complete the extension of serious consideration to the interests of vertebrate animals, about whose capacity for suffering there is much less doubt."

"In conclusion, recent results from neurophysiological, neuroanatomical and behavioral sciences prompt caution when denying consciousness, and therefore the likelihood of presence of pain and suffering or something closely related to it, to insects. This strongly underlines earlier statements that while awaiting results of further research one should consider the possibility that at least some insect species might suffer pain and, as a precaution, always ensure humane handling of these animals, including the application of anesthesia and analgesia for painful procedures and humane killing techniques."

"Be kind and compassionate to all creatures that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in this world. Never beat nor inflict pain on any animal, beast bird or insect. Do not throw stones at a dog or a cat, nor kill flies or wasps."

"The ant is the most pugnacious of all animals, and the most muscular compared with its size. It will boldly attack the biggest creature that walks if this creature invades its home. It will fasten its mandibles into an enemy, and allow itself to be torn to pieces without relaxing its hold. Among some savage tribes, certain species of ants are said to be used as surgeons. Infuriated ants are allowed to fasten their mandibles on the opposite edges of a gash, and in this way the wound is closed. The ants are decapitated, and their bodiless heads with their relentless jaws serve as stitches to the wound."

"[W]e propose that at least one invertebrate clade, the insects, has a capacity for the most basic aspect of consciousness: subjective experience. In vertebrates the capacity for subjective experience is supported by integrated structures in the midbrain that create a neural simulation of the state of the mobile animal in space. This integrated and egocentric representation of the world from the animal's perspective is sufficient for subjective experience. Structures in the insect brain perform analogous functions. Therefore, we argue the insect brain also supports a capacity for subjective experience. In both vertebrates and insects this form of behavioral control system evolved as an efficient solution to basic problems of sensory reafference and true navigation. The brain structures that support subjective experience in vertebrates and insects are very different from each other, but in both cases they are basal to each clade."

"Life is life's greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life's scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than the largest."

"Even if the probability of arthropods being sentient is considered much lower (e.g. less than 10%), the precautionary principle should be applied, because there are huge numbers of arthropods. At this moment, there are about 1018 terrestrial arthropods (mostly ants) and 1020 marine arthropods (mostly very small copepods as zooplankton). This can be compared with about 1010 humans. So if arthropods happen to be sentient and we erroneously believe they are not, we are neglecting huge amounts of welfare and suffering. When a lot is at stake, the precautionary principle is reasonable."

"[A] lot of insects are parasites or predators that kill other insects. So if we (accidentally, intentionally or indirectly) kill some insects, especially predators, we might save the lives of many other insects. Or stated differently: saving one ladybird might mean killing hundreds of aphids. Second, insects in the wild can have net-negative lives, i.e. short lives with more negative than positive experiences. These are lives not worth living. This is due to their reproductive strategy: a fertile adult insect can lay thousands of eggs. If the insect population does not explode at an extreme exponential rate, it is logically required that almost all of the newborn insects will have to die prematurely. The ways of dying are often extremely negative experiences: coldness, starvation, predation, parasitism,…. If an insect is killed, it prevents the birth of many insects with net-negative lives. So, if most insects face very short lives anyway and die horrible deaths anyway, it is far from clear whether killing insects increases overall future insect suffering. We need much more scientific research to estimate the overall effect of killing insects on global welfare."

"Thanks that I can say I have never killed a bird. I would not crush the meanest insect which crawls upon the ground. They have the same right to life that I have, they received it from the same Father, and I will not mar the works of God by wanton cruelty."

"Bees also display optimistic and pessimistic emotional states. In such tests, bees first learned that one stimulus (such as the colour blue) is linked to a sugar reward, while another (such as green) is not. They were then faced with an intermediate stimulus (in this case, turquoise). Intriguingly, they responded to this ambiguous stimulus in a 'glass half full', optimistic manner, if they had encountered a surprise reward (a tiny droplet of sucrose solution) on the way to the experiment. But if they had to suffer through an unexpected, adverse stimulus, they responded in a 'glass half empty' (pessimistic) manner."

"There is much debate as to whether invertebrates can feel pain, although most species show responses to adverse stimuli."

"I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live."

"Mental Qualities.—There is little to be said on this head. We have seen that worms are timid. It may be doubted whether they suffer as much pain when injured, as they seem to express by their contortions. Judging by their eagerness for certain kinds of food, they must enjoy the pleasure of eating. Their sexual passion is strong enough to overcome for a time their dread of light. They perhaps have a trace of social feeling, for they are not disturbed by crawling over each other's bodies, and they sometimes lie in contact. According to Hoffmeister they pass the winter either singly or rolled up with others into a ball at the bottom of their burrows.* Although worms are so remarkably deficient in the several sense-organs, this does not necessarily preclude intelligence, as we know from such cases as those of Laura Bridgman; and we have seen that when their attention is engaged, they neglect impressions to which they would otherwise have attended; and attention indicates the presence of a mind of some kind. They are also much more easily excited at certain times than at others."

"The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng. The cruel larva mines its silky course, And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse. While fierce Libellula with jaws of steel Ingulfs an insect-province at a meal; Contending bee-swarms rise on rustling wings And slay their thousands with envenom'd stings."

"[I]f all sentient beings have equal moral status and insects are sentient, it would seem that we would be obliged to take insects quite seriously indeed. This is highly counterintuitive. Moreover, if all who have moral status have it equally, then we should right now be very invested in the question of whether insects are sentient. If they are, then we are routinely harming trillions of beings with full, equal moral status—a very serious matter. The commonsense reaction that we need not be so concerned with the question of whether insects are sentient suggests that, if they are, their moral status is less than ours, implying that not all who have moral status have it equally."

"Do insects experience pain? Yes. Well actually, this concept has been disputed, but I think recent evidence suggests that they do experience what is defined as pain."

"Bee-eating Wasps [...] feed their larvae on Hive-bees, whom they catch on the flowers while gathering pollen and honey. If the Wasp who has made a capture feels that her Bee is swollen with honey, she never fails, before stinging her, to squeeze her crop, either on the way or at the entrance of the dwelling, so as to make her disgorge the delicious syrup, which she drinks by licking the tongue which her unfortunate victim, in her death-agony, sticks out of her mouth at full length [...] At the moment of some such horrible banquet, I have seen the Wasp, with her prey, seized by the Mantis: the bandit was rifled by another bandit. And here is an awful detail: while the Mantis held her transfixed under the points of the double saw and was already munching her belly, the Wasp continued to lick the honey of her Bee."

"... we rarely think from first principles, even first principles we ourselves sincerely endorse, but rather from sentiments instilled in us by our culture. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of humanity’s moral attitudes toward non-human animals. Even most utilitarians, who by their own ideals ought to consider the suffering of all beings important, are still in fact exceptionally anthropocentric in their attitudes. The insights of Darwin have not yet trickled fully into our moral consciousness, not even among those whose moral views demand it. Such is the heavy momentum of culture, which is reflected in every facet of modern politics and political thought. The anthropocentrism of most political philosophy is, to put it mildly, a massive failure."

"We should give equal priority to equal interests in general, and to equal suffering in particular. Indeed, it is the rejection of the principle of equal consideration of equal interests that requires justification, since such a rejection faces the burden of identifying a morally relevant criterion that can justify this discrimination."

"The chimpanzee and the human share about 99.5 per cent of their evolutionary history, yet most human thinkers regard the chimp as a malformed, irrelevant oddity while seeing themselves as stepping-stones to the Almighty. To an evolutionist this cannot be so. There exists no objective basis on which to elevate one species above another. Chimp and human, lizard and fungus, we have all evolved over some three billion years by a process known as natural selection."

"In contrast with this approach, the view that I want to defend puts human and nonhuman animals, as such, on the same moral footing. That is the sense in which I argued, in Animal Liberation, that "all animals are equal." But to avoid common misunderstandings, I need to be careful to spell out exactly what I mean by this. Obviously nonhuman animals cannot have equal rights to vote and nor should they be held criminally responsible for what they do. That is not the kind of equality I want to extend to nonhuman animals. The fundamental form of equality is equal consideration of interests, and it is this that we should extend beyond the boundaries of our own species. Essentially this means that if an animal feels pain, the pain matters as much as it does when a human feels pain—if the pains hurt just as much. How bad pain and suffering are does not depend on the species of being that experiences it."

"In the case of hermit crabs, we find the relevant behavioral pattern. So, we may infer that, like us, they feel pain. To be sure, they have many fewer neurons. But why should we think that makes a difference to the presence of pain? It didn’t make any difference with respect to the complex pattern of behavior the crabs display in response to noxious stimuli. Why should it make any difference with respect to the cause of that behavior? It might, of course. There is no question of proof here. But that isn’t enough to overturn the inference."

"[The] notion of the life of an animal having 'no moral purpose,' belongs to a class of ideas which cannot possibly be accepted by the advanced humanitarian thought of the present day—it is a purely arbitrary assumption, at variance with our best instincts, at variance with our best science, and absolutely fatal (if the subject be clearly thought out) to any full realization of animals' rights. If we are ever going to do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated notion of a 'great gulf' fixed between them and mankind, and must recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood."

"Two slightly different, but not often clearly distinguished usages of "speciesism" should be noted. But more strictly, it is when the discrimination or exploitation [is defended by means of an appeal to] species that it is speciesist. This usage should perhaps be called strict speciesism."

"If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans for the same purpose?"

"The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a child. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because mice will suffer if they are treated in this way. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that the suffering be counted equally with the like suffering – in so far as rough comparisons can be made – of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience [...] is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others."

"It is clear that we have direct ethical obligations to sentient animals; but it is not at all clear that we have direct ethical obligations to entities such as species, or to biological diversity. The burden of proof should thus be on conservationists to show how killing the first to preserve the second can possibly be acceptable from an ethical point of view."

"So what is the alternative to traditional anthropocentric ethics? Antispeciesism is not the claim that "All Animals Are Equal", or that all species are of equal value, or that a human or a pig is equivalent to a mosquito. Rather the antispeciesist claims that, other things being equal, equally strong interests should count equally."

"Given our anthropocentric bias, thinking of non-human vertebrates not just as equivalent in moral status to toddlers or infants, but as though they were toddlers or infants, is a useful exercise. Such reconceptualisation helps correct our lack of empathy for sentient beings whose physical appearance is different from "us". Ethically, the practice of intelligent "anthropomorphism" shouldn't be shunned as unscientific, but embraced insofar as it augments our stunted capacity for empathy. Such anthropomorphism can be a valuable corrective to our cognitive and moral limitations."

"It is the human earthling who tends to dominate the earth, oftentimes treating other fellow earthlings and living beings as mere objects. This is what is meant by 'speciesism'. By analogy with racism and sexism, speciesism is a prejudice or attitude or bias in favor of the interests of the members of one's own species and against those of members of other species."

"Killing your family dog by smashing her head against a concrete floor would be unequivocally condemned. In many countries, it would be illegal. Yet pigs and chickens, as sentient and intelligent as our beloved pets, have been disregarded in the shadow of our tastes, traditions and economies. Killing them with brute force, blunt objects, or decapitation is deemed acceptable and legal. This discrimination based on species is called speciesism, the prevailing ideology that perpetuates it, carnism."

"Since we all inhabit the earth, we are all considered earthlings. There is no sexism, racism, or speciesism in the term 'earthling'. It encompasses each and every one of us: warm or cold-blooded, mammal, vertebrate or invertebrate, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish and human alike."

"The animal liberation movement is fighting what is arguably the most entrenched and widespread form of exploitation in human history: speciesism."

"There is speciesism and that is about as cruel as it gets because it sets the stage and practice for cruelty amongst human beings [...] Discrimination is discrimination—as abuse is abuse [...] regardless of an animals human or nonhuman form, gender, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation or level of intelligence/knowledge it should be our birthright to LIVE our lives peacefully and harmoniously without inflicting pain on others. People who inflict intentional pain without moral or ethical regard for other human or nonhuman animals are just reminders of how much further we have to go until oppression is completely eradicated."

"The terms animal protection and species protection are constantly confused and mixed up with one another. Animal protection is the protection of individuals; it is about the individual, suffering creature. Species protection is the conservation of the species; it is about preventing species from becoming extinct or rare. From an ethical standpoint, animal protection is quite different from species protection."

"Ethics, in our part of the world, may be considered to have advanced, at least in its pretensions, to the anthropocentric stage of evolution. Aggregation has advanced from individual to tribe, and from tribe to race, and from race to sex, and from sex to species, until to-day the ethical conception of many minds includes, with greater or less vividness and sincerity, all sexes, colors, and conditions of men. The fact that an animal is a human, that is, that he belongs to the hominine species of beings, entitles him, regardless of his imperfections, to some sort of consideration."

"Part of society still confuses two movements that differ markedly: environmentalism and anti-speciesism. These facts highlight the clear differences between these two different movements. The ecologist defends the maintenance of natural spaces and species and consider animals as part of the environment that surrounds us humans. Antispeciesism, however, does not see animals as simply a part of our environment. On the contrary, it sees them as part of our own group: that of individuals, beings that can suffer and enjoy and therefore, defend the animals as such. Environmentalism defends killing animals when it benefits the conservation of an ecosystem or a species, a position that does not hold in the case of human beings. Why? Because it does not consider that animals of species other than ours have interests that we have to respect. Antispeciesism considers that such a position is a discrimination, a discrimination of those who do not belong to our species. Therefore, it advocates to respect non-human animals, as we advocate respect for human beings."

"When it comes to respecting someone, it is completely irrelevant whether that being can speak, whether she can think in the same way we do, or whether we have some kind of special relation with her. Because that isn't what determines whether she can be harmed or benefited by our actions. The relevant point is whether she can feel suffering or/and joy. Furthermore, if that was the case, many humans should be discriminated against too. Because there are many humans who can't talk or can't think as other humans do, and many have no one who cares for them. So if the arguments that are used to discriminate against animals were accepted, we should also discriminate against humans. These are some general arguments that are seldom used. I don't understand why not. Because debating these points, debating these issues is what will eventually lead society to a change. Of course there are other arguments involved and there are many other ways to question speciesism. My main point is we should be focused on challenging it."

"What do we consider disvaluable and valuable in our own lives? Some people say negative and positive experiences, others say thwarted and satisfied preferences, others say a list of things such as ignorance and knowledge, meaningless or meaningful relations, pain and pleasure, etc. All these different things require that we're sentient. We don't consider that what is valuable in our lives is just being the members of a certain species or living in some ecosystem as such. Abstract entities such as species and ecosystems cannot feel pain and other affections, and therefore don't have interests, while sentient beings do. This is why we should be concerned with what happens to sentient individuals, rather than abstract groups."

"Nowadays, there is very little we can do about [wild animal suffering]. But it is critical to start questioning the idea that we should not do anything. This is crucial so that in the future, some day, the problem can be addressed. If a community of human beings is stricken by a flood, a famine, violence, or is stricken by an epidemic, we think that if there is something we can do to help them, we should do it. Why not in the case of nonhuman animals? Normally we think that this is the way life in the wild. However, few of us who state this would be willing to let other humans die of disease, starvation or cannibalism. What is the reason for this different consideration of humans and other animals? Many reasons can be given, but all of them are merely excuses. The real motive of this dissimilar attitude is speciesism. Moreover, none of us would like to be left to die suffering in conditions such as the ones described above. In this way, if we are neither egotistical nor speciesist, and we therefore assume that we are willing to treat other animals as we would like to be treated, then we must conclude two things: not only should we care about the animals that are exploited by human beings, but we also must care about the animals that live in freedom. We must reflect on what we can do for them. This is the consequence of antispeciesism that is the most difficult to accept, and it is, in fact, a reason why many animal rights advocates are not really capable of taking a antispeciesist stance. Only those who are truly capable of leaving their most deeply rooted speciesist prejudices behind can manage to address this question. But if - as I have said above - speciesism is an unjustifiable position, we must have enough courage and responsibility to not look the other way."

"Evolution too, like embryonic development, is gradual. Every one of our ancestors, back to the common root we share with chimpanzees and beyond, belonged to the same species as its own parents and its own children. And likewise for the ancestors of a chimpanzee, back to the same shared progenitor. We are linked to modern chimpanzees by a V-shaped chain of individuals who once lived and breathed and reproduced, each link in the chain being a member of the same species as its neighbours in the chain, no matter that taxonomists insist on dividing them at convenient points and thrusting discontinuous labels upon them. If all the intermediates, down both forks of the V from the shared ancestor, had happened to survive, moralists would have to abandon their essentialist, "speciesist" habit of placing Homo sapiens on a sacred plinth, infinitely separate from all other species. Abortion would no more be "murder" than killing a chimpanzee—or, by extension, any animal. Indeed an early-stage human embryo, with no nervous system and presumably lacking pain and fear, might defensibly be afforded less moral protection than an adult pig, which is clearly well equipped to suffer. Our essentialist urge toward rigid definitions of "human" (in debates over abortion and animal rights) and "alive" (in debates over euthanasia and end-of-life decisions) makes no sense in the light of evolution and other gradualistic phenomena."

"Antispeciesism is the opposition (or the struggle against) the discrimination of those who don't belong to a certain species. Antispeciesism opposes all discrimination of nonhuman animals, even if it's carried out while respecting their rights. I think we should reject speciesism, and I think speciesism is the key term to understand the current relation between humans and other animals."

"Speciesism is not suffered by species as such, but by their individual members. There is a common confusion regarding this point. In most cases, this is probably due only to linguistic expression. But sometimes it may also be due to the fact that nonhuman animals are usually considered not as individuals but as mere live exemplifications of a species (because of widespread speciesist attitudes). Hence individuals are frequently identified with the species they belong to. But just as the group of all triangles does not have the properties that triangles themselves have, the interests of an individual cannot be said to be the interests of his or her species."

"Zoocentricism, that stage of solidarity in which the entire sentient universe is contemplated, universal consideration and love, is as yet too difficult for human consciousness. Human philosophy, which has been so slow in discovering the solidarity of the human species, is to-day, except in its Oriental manifestations, as reluctant to recognize other species in its ethical contemplations as were dominant human groups in less advanced stages of aggregation reluctant to recognize the solidarity of the hominine species."