The case for an Animal Kingdom Bill of Rights

Tanja Askani image via www.animalintelligence.org

There is a mountain of evidence that humans are far from alone in the animal kingdom in possessing complex emotions such as compassion and the ability to form intricate social bonds such as friendships. The video above that was released by PBS' Nature program in November provides several compelling examples of this evidence in species including canines, goats, monkeys, horses and felines.

I first became interested in this topic many years ago, when I saw a video on elephants. Early studies of these massive animals demonstrated highly complex social structures built around a dominant female elephant and the ability to communicate vocally over long distances. The evidence of emotions in elephants that I have found most convincing is their behavior when encountering elephant remains. There are several examples of these encounters available on YouTube. In these encounters, elephants exhibit a set of behaviors that demonstrates what can only be described as deeply felt emotion, from members of an elephant group falling unusually silent as they gather around elephant bones to ritualistic interactions with the remains.

This mountain of evidence begs the question: How should this knowledge of emotion and even consciousness in other animals affect humanity's interactions with other members of the animal kingdom?

Many countries, including the United States, have already granted protected status to several species that have demonstrated human-like intellectual capacities such as chimpanzees and marine mammals. But whether humans like it or not, we must eat to survive, and even a corn muffin was at one point a living thing. After an exhaustive and global examination of this dilemma is conducted, I suggest the creation of an Animal Kingdom Bill of Rights.

The first article of this international treaty could be a prohibition against animal species genocide. The decimation of the elephant population, which once stretched in contiguous territory from the Horn of Africa to Southeast Asia, is clearly genocidal. Recent studies of marauding elephant males indicate a breakdown in elephant society similar to the strains in human societies that have been subject to genocide.

The second article of an Animal Kingdom Bill of Rights could abolish cruel treatment of non-human animal species. Most of my ancestors were New England farmers. It broke my grandfather's heart when he saw the man who bought his farm beating an ox with a chain. Ethical farmers treat their animals humanely. Most of the cattle raised to produce beef and dairy products in the United States live in feedlots, enclosures prone to knee-deep mud that are so prone to disease that anti-biotics have become a staple of the food given to U.S. cattle. Feedlots are clearly an example of cruelty and should be reformed or banned.

A dairy cow stands knee-deep in a muddy feedlot. /USDA image