Animals

"I have come to view vegetarianism as a standing protest against predation, which is life's greatest evil. If there were no other argument in its favor, that would be sufficient."

"I oppose the ecologists because for them, the fox that eats the hare is good, as long as it "preserves the natural balance", while I see the suffering of the hare. You have to have a fairly closed mind to what it represents in reality to find it "good". Environmentalists see in nature only species; without human intervention, these species vary little, at least not visibly; the resulting impression of stability gives a vague feeling of rest and security; and they speak then of the harmony of nature."

"Torture is permanent in Latin America; is it harmonious? Environmentalists find it good that the fox kills the hare, because that preserves an order. Torture also preserves order."

"Similarly, some people have argued that the harms suffered by animals in the wild (e.g. disease, starvation and predation) should not concern us because they are natural. This sounds like a speciesist claim, given that such a view is rarely held when humans suffer those harms. Also, it seems that if the animals themselves could have a say on this, they would clearly prefer to be spared those harms, as we would in their situation."

"This means that the number of animals that come into existence only to die shortly after is extremely high. On average, if we consider a context in which populations remain stable at least in the mid term, for each animal that reproduces, only one of her or his offspring survives (otherwise animal populations would grow exponentially very fast, and would become massive with just one generation). This means that all the rest of the animals die. Many of them die shortly after coming into existence. These animals starve to death, are eaten by other animals, or die for other reasons that usually entail a great deal of suffering. This means that an enormous number of animals come into existence only to suffer. Their lives contain virtually no enjoyment, since they die shortly after they start to exist. However, their lives do contain significant suffering, because of the painful ways in which they die. They thus live lives in which disvalue outweighs value. Living their lives causes them more harm than good. In fact, in many cases it causes them great harm and no good at all."

"The whole earth, believe me ... is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: Weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and it is at last finished in agony and horror."

"Many people think we shouldn't worry about this. Some people hold speciesist views according to which we should only care about what happens to human beings. Others hold environmentalist positions that entail that we should just care about the conservation of ecosystems or species and disregard the interests of individual nonhuman animals. According to those holding these views, nonhuman animals can be sacrificed for the sake of environmental conservation (though, interestingly, they seldom maintain this view when human beings are affected). However, if we agree that the interests of all sentient animals must be taken into account we should reject these anthropocentric and environmentalist views as speciesist."

"It is easy to have an ethics that, instead of questioning things that are difficult to change, decides to call them "good". My ethics, I want to consider it built on real things; happiness and suffering are for me real things, like water or stones, even if current physics does not know them. I cannot then, by convention, baptize anything "good". And also, this implies living in uncertainty, in ethical insecurity. Is it good to kill a snake, to save a large number of frogs? While these eat so many insects? They eat each other or harm plants. I don't know if they suffer, the plants, if they hurt when they choke on each other, poison themselves, get sick shade each other. In many cases, I do not know what is right. Or, what is right is too hard to assume: with each step I risk crushing ants. Maybe I should delete myself, to save ants? I will not do it."

"What happens to all the other animals that come into existence? They die, often shortly after they start to be sentient. They starve, are killed by other animals or in other painful ways, and, because they die so soon, they do not have the chance to have many other experiences apart from the suffering of their death. This means that they may never have any positive experiences at all, or just have very few ones. Other animals may be able to survive a bit longer and have some more positive experiences, yet not enough to outweigh the suffering they endure because of the hardships of their existence which eventually lead them to their death. These animals experience more suffering than well-being in their lives."

"He was less interested in television. Every week, however, his heart in his mouth, he watched The Animal Kingdom. Graceful animals like gazelles and antelopes spent their days in abject terror while lions and panthers lived out their lives in listless imbecility punctuated by explosive bursts of cruelty. They slaughtered weaker animals, dismembered and devoured the sick and the old before falling back into a brutish sleep where the only activity was that of the parasites feeding on them from within. Some of these parasites were hosts to smaller parasites, which in turn were a breeding ground for viruses. Snakes moved among the trees, their fangs bared, ready to strike at bird or mammal, only to be ripped apart by hawks. The pompous, half-witted voice of Claude Darget, filled with awe and unjustifiable admiration, narrated these atrocities. Michel trembled with indignation. But as he watched, the unshakable conviction grew that nature, taken as a whole, was a repulsive cesspit. All in all, nature deserved to be wiped out in a holocaust--and man's mission on earth was probably to do just that."

"Then, I claim that if we abandon a speciesist viewpoint we should change completely the way in which we should intervene in nature. Rather than intervening for environmental or anthropocentric reasons, we should do it in order to reduce the harms that nonhuman animals suffer. This conflicts significantly with some fundamental environmental ideals whose defence is not compatible with the consideration of the interests of nonhuman animals."

"Faced with the massive destruction of the environment by humans, environmentalists cling to the myth of Mother Nature to be preserved. I am revolted by the extermination of the foxes; this may seem contradictory to my revolt against what hare foxes do. I have a problem there that I cannot solve. And I have others, even more difficult. Why should I, in order to call a problem a problem, be able to suggest a solution, if possible within an hour? No one knows how to beat AIDS, but that does not prevent us from being aware that AIDS is a problem. And above all to seek solutions."

"The killing of natural prey for daily food is not murder.A starving wolf on the desolate barren grounds may even kill and devour a wounded pack-mate without becoming a criminal by that act alone. True, such a manifestation of hard-hearted-ness and bad taste is very reprehensible; but its cause is hunger, not sheer blackness of heart."

"It is commonly believed that animal ethics entails respect for natural processes, because nonhuman animals are able to live relatively easy and happy lives in the wild. However, this assumption is wrong. Due to the most widespread reproductive strategy in nature, r-selection, the overwhelming majority of nonhuman animals die shortly after they come into existence. They starve or are eaten alive, which means their suffering vastly outweighs their happiness. Hence, concern for nonhuman animals entails that we should try to intervene in nature to reduce the enormous amount of harm they suffer. Even if this conclusion may seem extremely counter-intuitive at first, it can only be rejected from a speciesist viewpoint."

"The antlers of the common white-tailed deer seem peculiarly liable to become interlocked so tightly that it is well-nigh impossible to separate them. And whenever this happens, the doom of both deer is sealed. Unless found speedily and killed, they must die of starvation."

"But [the human treatment of nonhuman animals is] nothing compared to the suffering doled out by Nature. It boggles the mind to consider the billions upon billions of animals stalked and killed or eaten alive by predators or who died slowly and painfully, decimated by disease, famine, or drought. So it is that we must face a sobering fact: the history of our planet is a history stuffed with undeserved, horrific evil and suffering."

"If we were asked, "Which one may be called the ruling passion of the wild animal?" we would without hesitation answer,—it is fear."

"From the cradle to the grave, every strictly wild animal lives, day and night, in a state of fear of bodily harm, and dread of hunger and famine."

"In the temperate and frigid zones, life was a seasonal battle with bitter cold, torrents of cold rain in early winter or spring, devastating sleet, and deep snow and ice that left no room for argument. At the same time, the species that were not predatory found themselves surrounded by fangs and claws, and the never-ending hunger of their owners."

"The idea that all captive wild animals are necessarily "miserable" is erroneous, because some captive animals are better fed, better protected and are more happy in captivity than similar animals are in a wild state, beset by dangers and harassed by hunger and thirst."

"In their greatest hunger they attack the ranchmen's haystacks, just as far as the stout and high log fences will permit them to go, and many a kind-hearted ranchman has robbed his own haystacks to save the lives of starving and despairing elk."

"And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food."

"Now the 'free, wild life' is a round of strife, And of ceaseless hunger and fear; And the life in the wild of the animal child 'Is not all skittles and beer."

"Why acts nature thus? and why does she thus crowd her creatures one upon another? Because she would produce the greatest number and variety of living beings in the least space, so that one crushes another, and an equilibrium of powers can alone produce peace in the creation. Every species cares for itself, as if it were the only one in existence: but by its side stands another, which confines it within due bounds: and in this adjustment of opposing species creative nature found the only mean of maintaining the whole. She weighed the powers, she numbered the limbs, she determined the instincts of the species toward each other; and left the earth to produce what it was capable of producing."

"The jungle, existing exclusively in the present, is certainly subject to time, but remains forever ageless. Any concept of justice would be antithetical to all this. But is there justice in the desert, either? Or in the oceans? And in the depths? Life in the sea must be pure hell, an infinite hell of constant and ever-present danger, so unbearable that in the course of evolution some species – including Homo Sapiens – crawled, fled, onto some clods of firm land, the future continents."

"Each strives with each, as each is pressed upon; each must provide for his own subsistence, and defend his own life."

"Next to the plainly expressed desire to quench their thirst the dominant thought in the minds of those animals, one and all, was the fear of being attacked. In some species this ever-present and harassing dread was a pitiful spectacle. I wish it might be witnessed by all those ultra-humane persons who think and say that the free wild animals are the only happy ones!"

"Most of the 1300 millions of the earth's inhabitants have either a scanty nourishment, unsatisfying and prolonging life with difficulty, or they live for a time in superfluity, from which they derive no preponderating enjoyment, and must for another period actually starve and suffer want, when they must accordingly endure the pains of hunger for long periods, whilst the pleasure of satiety, with perfect stilling of hunger, only occupies a few hours of the day. But now let any one compare the dull delight of satiety and digestion with the distinct gnawing of hunger or the hell-torments of thirst to which animals in deserts, steppes, and such regions, that in the hot season are perfectly dry, are not seldom exposed. How much more, however, must among many species of animals the pain of hunger exceed the pleasure of satiety in the course of life, which at certain seasons die of hunger from want of food, often in considerable numbers, or for weeks and months just on the brink of starvation, prolong their existence in slightly more favourable conditions of life! This happens both with graminivorous birds and birds in the winter of the polar and temperate zones and in the arid tropics, as also with carnivora and beasts of prey, which often for weeks wander about vainly in search of booty until they perish of inanition."

"This discussion may seem purely abstract; neither the lions' vegan diet nor the fight against their predation is still on the agenda. It is undoubtedly preferable, strategically, to concentrate our efforts on the predation committed by the humans, i.e. on their consumption of meat. However, the way we see predation and the solutions we allow ourselves to imagine are not without consequences. There is a strong symbolic value, it seems to me, to affirm that it would be right to prevent predation, even at the cost of the life of the predator. It can also help us to feel more comfortable with the limited interventions that we can now practice in the wild, for example to protect a mouse from an owl. We may feel uncomfortable asking ourselves in Kant's way if we can want the maxim of our act to be a universal law, which would imply that the owl is starving. Accepting that indeed we may want to universalize this maxim can allow us to act more serenely."

"As for the other spring of Nature, Love, ... In the animal kingdom one can hardly speak of an active sexual selection on the part of the male, even among the highest birds and mammals; of a passive selection through the struggle of the males in which the strongest remains victor, only among a small part of the higher animals, or the rest, the sexual impulse is not individual, but is purely general. But now in the infinitely larger part of the animal kingdom there do not exist organs of sexual pleasure acting as stimulants to coition; without such accordingly coition is an office indifferent to the egoism of the individual which is carried on by the impelling constraint of instinct, as the spinning of the web of the spider or the building of the bird's nest for the eggs hereafter to be laid. To the absence of enjoyment in the office of fecundation in the case of most animals also the frequently indirect form of this function deviating from direct copulation points. When in the vertebrates a personal physical enjoyment appears to occur, it is at first certainly as flat and insignificant as possible; but soon there is also added the contest of the males for the female, which in many species of animals is waged with the greatest bitterness, and has for its consequence often painful injuries, not seldom also the killing of one of the rivals. Add to that, among those animals which at the time of rut form herds led by the victorious male, the involuntary continence of the younger members, whether they separate into smaller detachments or remain with the main herd, when an invasion of the rights of the head of the family is punished in the cruellest fashion. This involuntary continence of the largest part of the males, and the pains and vexation caused the defeated by the contests, seem to me a hundredfold to exceed the pleasures accruing to the prosperous males from the sexual pleasure. As for the females, in the first place, among most animals they far more rarely couple than the privileged males; and, secondly, the pains of child-bearing in their case far outweigh the pleasure derived from copulation."

"I just think it may be, in fact, the case that nature is just a horror show. It is bad almost any place you could be born in the natural world, you're unlucky to be a rabbit and you're unlucky to be a fox. We're lucky to be humans, sort of, and we can dimly imagine how much luckier we might get in the future if we don't screw up."

"Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing, they just screech in pain."

"The rescue of individual animals—a couple of whales, a bison, a few deer—is humane enough and does not seem to have any detrimental effects, but that may not be the end of moral considerations, which ought to act on principles that can be universalized. Perhaps it brings these duties into clearer focus to consider populations, herds with hundreds of animals."

"[I]n other parts of the African continent, when the fierceness of the summer has dried up the rivers, the amphibia, great and small, collect in uncongenial crowds in the pools left along the deeper parts of the channel; and the land animals, the deer, the apes, the birds, stoop hastily and furtively to snatch insufficient draughts from the depths where lurk so many ravenous foes. Then, in colder lands, what wretchedness does winter bring—when the snow puts an end to the livelihood of all the tribes which seek sustenance on the earth, and the frost mocks the misery of those whose food is in the marsh or the pool. The frozen-out woodcock taps in vain for a soft spot in which to insert his slender bill—his larder is locked up and the key gone. Now and then comes a winter so sharp that the naturalist misses, next summer, whole species from their accustomed haunts. In one long frost all the snipe perished in parts of Scotland, and have never been plentiful since."

"What we ought to do depends on what is. The is of nature differs significantly from the is of culture, even when similar suffering is present. A human being in a frozen river would be rescued at once; a human attacked by a wolverine would be flown by helicopter to the hospital. Bison and deer are not humans and we cannot give them identical treatment; still, if suffering is a bad thing for humans, who seek to eliminate it, why is suffering not also a bad thing for bison? We cannot give medical treatment to all wild animals; we should not interrupt a predator killing its prey. But when we happen upon an opportunity to rescue an animal with the pull of a rope, or mercy-kill it lest it suffer, why not? If we can treat a herd of blinded sheep, why not? If we can feed the deer, starving in the winter, why not? That seems to be what human nature urges, and why not let human nature take its course? That seems to be what Jesus urges, doing to others as you would have them do to you, and why not follow the golden rule?"

"How mournful for these poor starvelings the fact, apparently so insignificant, that the temperature has fallen below freezing-point! What misery is approaching them in the leaden gloom of the northeast! And in those circles of the earth where the reign of winter is prolonged, hunger is the inseparable associate of life, lying down with it in its shivering sleep, rising with it in its gloomy waking, and tracking its footsteps always along the ice-bound circuit of its weary quest."

"We now know that the whole of organic nature on our planet exists only by a relentless war of all against all. Thousands of animals and plants must daily perish in every part of the earth, in order that a few chosen individuals may continue to subsist and to enjoy life. But even the existence of these favoured few is a continual conflict with threatening dangers of every kind. Thousands of hopeful germs perish uselessly every minute. The raging war of interests in human society is only a feeble picture of the unceasing and terrible war of existence which reigns throughout the whole of the living world. The beautiful dream of God's goodness and wisdom in nature, to which as children we listened so devoutly fifty years ago, no longer finds credit now – at least among educated people who think."

"The national park ethic has concluded that a simple extension of compassion from human, and Christian, ethics to wildlife does not appreciate their wildness. Perhaps we are beginning to see the trouble with rescuing those whales. Or maybe we are carrying this let-nature take-its-course ethic to extremes. We are beginning to worship nature. Has ethics here somehow gone wild in the bad sense, blinded by a philosophy of false respect for cruel nature? Can this indifference be the right ethics for wild animals? Can it be godly to say, "Let them suffer!"?"

"[W]hether we look to animal pleasures or to animal pains, the result is alike just what we should expect to find on the supposition of these pleasures and pains having been due to necessary and physical, as distinguished from intelligent and moral, antecedents; for how different is that which is from that which might have been! Not only might beneficent selection have eliminated the countless species of parasites which now destroy the health and happiness of all the higher organisms; not only might survival of the fittest, in a moral sense, have determined that rapacious and carnivorous animals should yield their places in the world to harmless and gentle ones; not only might life have been without sickness and death without pain;—but how might the exigences and the welfare of species have been consulted by the structures and the habits of one another! But no! Amid all the millions of mechanisms and habits in organic nature, all of which are so beautifully adapted to the needs of the species presenting them, there is no single instance of any mechanism or habit occurring in one species for the exclusive benefit of another species—although, as we should expect on the non-theistic theory, there are some comparatively few cases of a mechanism or a habit which is of benefit to its possessor being also utilised by other species. Yet, on the beneficent-design theory, it is impossible to understand why, when all mechanisms and habits in the same species are invariably correlated for the benefit of that species, there should never be any such correlation between mechanisms and habits of different species. For how magnificent, how sublime a display of supreme beneficence would nature have afforded if all her sentient animals had been so inter-related as to minister to each other's happiness! Organic species might then have been likened to a countless multitude of voices, all singing to their Creator in one harmonious psalm of praise. But, as it is, we see no vestige of such correlation; every species is for itself, and for itself alone—an outcome of the always and everywhere fiercely raging struggle for life."

"A drowning human would have been saved at once, a child with pinkeye given medical treatment. A simple ethics by extension seems too nondiscriminating; we cannot separate an ethics for humans from an ethics for wildlife."

"But as the multiplication of animals exceeds the vegetable food, it is true that by killing some of the animals not any the less live, as they are only killed instead of starved. This, we are sorry to confess, is the system of nature, but this is no justification of a partial destruction of lives. It is generally, tritely enough said, that animals most be destroyed by every means they now are,—that destruction is the general law of nature, and otherwise overstock would result; let us for a moment admit it, we must then on the same plea massacre human beings, namely, to prevent overstock; and we ask the advocates of this principle just to point out what crime consists of, as it seems to us that most crimes can be defended on the same ground."

"The Yellowstone ethicists let the bison drown, callous to its suffering; they let the blinded bighorns die. But in the spring of 1984 a sow grizzly and her three cubs walked across the ice of Yellowstone Lake to Frank Island, two miles from shore. They stayed several days to feast on two elk carcasses, when the ice bridge melted. Soon afterward, they were starving on an island too small to support them. This time the Yellowstone ethicists promptly rescued the grizzlies and released them on the mainland, in order to protect an endangered species. They were not rescuing individual bears so much as saving the species."

"Much as animals suffer in a natural state, much more do they seem to suffer when under the dominion of the generality of men. What suffering in the former can be supposed to equal the constant torture of a hackney-coach horse?"

"Yet it must be confessed that whichever way we turn our eyes we see a system of aggression and destruction. In order for one animal to live, thousands must die: directly so if the one be carnivorous, and indirectly so if graminivorous. It has been calculated that some birds destroy thousands of butterflies during the rearing of a single brood; and if we take man, who is half carnivorous, and calculate how many lives are destroyed to maintain him in comfort during his life, even without sport, the number will appear enormous, no estimate of which can however be made without taking into account the size of the animals he feeds on."

"But if the vicissitudes of climate are fraught with suffering, so are the vicissitudes of age. The infancy of many animals is as helpless as babyhood. Few hired nurses, it is true, are so patient, so provident, so watchful, so untiring in care, as the dams, feathered or furred, who, in nest or lair, watch over their young. But then the lives of these guardians are terribly precarious, and innumerable are the orphans of the animal world."

"Letting nature take its ecosystemic course is why the Yellowstone ethic forbade rescuing the drowning bison, but rescued the sow grizzly with her cubs, the latter to insure that the big predators remain. After the bison drowned, coyotes and magpies, foxes and ravens fed on the carcass. Later, even a grizzly bear fed on it. All this is a good thing because the system cycles on, and the great bear, like the wolves, is a sparkling gem in the network. On that account rescuing the whales trapped in the winter ice seems less of a good thing, when we note that rescuers had to drive away polar bears that attempted to eat the dying whales."

"The great outer oceans teem with fish, reptiles, turtles, shellfish, worms and other creatures, as numerous as the grains of malt in the bottom of a beer-barrel. There are serpents and monsters so big that their bodies can wind many times around Mount Meru. Other creatures are as small as particles of dust or the tip of a needle. They all undergo immense sufferings. The bigger ones swallow up the smaller ones. The small ones burrow into the big ones and eat them alive in their turn. The big animals all have many tiny ones living inside them, feeding on their flesh. Some of these creatures are born between the continents, where the sun does not shine and where they cannot even see whether their limbs are bent in or stretched out. Stupid and ignorant, they have no comprehension of what to do and what not to do. They are reborn in places where suffering knows no bounds."

"Y: As you think it wrong for man to kill other animals for food, do you also think it wrong that animals should devour each other? As this is the general law of nature. Z: It appears wrong, according to the rules by which we govern our own actions to each other; and should I witness the attempt in any animal of destroying another, I would endeavour to frustrate it; though this might probably be wrong."

"The wild animals that share our human world, in particular, live in constant fear. They cannot eat a single mouthful of food without being on their guard. They have many mortal enemies, for all animals prey on each other and there are always hunters, beasts of prey and other threats to life. Hawks kill small birds, small birds kill insects, and so on, continually amassing evil actions in an endless round of killing and being killed."

"Y: But the whole species of the carnivorous kind would then become extinct. Were they created to be annihilated? Z: I do not see why the whole species of one animal is more important than an equal number of another, although that number might not comprise the whole species of the latter: and, besides, it is not proved that the whole species would perish; as some might feed on the bodies of those animals which they might find that were in a fit state; and also upon vegetables, which they will eat occasionally. It is known that wolves will live in the two ways mentioned, when deprived of other means."