Zoos And Animal Rights

Front 1

Why Anti-Zoo?

Back 1

• Against Captivity

- Lack of freedom

- Animal welfare

• Against certain species in captivity

- Apes

- Cetaceans

- Elephants

• Against certain housing conditions

• Prefer in-situ conservation

• Activist- likes a cause

Front 2

Ethics

Back 2

• Ethics is the branch of philosophy, which deals with norms of human contact

• Certain types of conduct are good in themselves

• Other conduct is good because it conforms to a particular moral standard

Front 3

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Back 3

• German philosopher

• The morality of an act can only be judged by its motivations not by its consequences

• “Act as if the principle on which your action is based were to become, by your will, a universal law”

Front 4

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Back 4

• English philosopher

• Founder of modern utilitarianism - Cost-Benefit Analysis

• The morality of actions must be judged by their consequences not motivation

• “The question is not can they reason? Nor can they talk?, but can they suffer?”

Front 5

Peter Singer (1945- present)

Back 5

“Equality is a moral idea, not a statement of fact”

Front 6

The rights of species

Back 6

• So a species may have rights if we decide it should

• Peter Singer is preoccupied with suffering

• He believes that animals should be included in our ethical system

Front 7

Aldo Leopold

Back 7

• American- father of wildlife management

• Wrote ‘A sand County Almanac’ (1949)

• Had enormous effect on ecologists of the time

• “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.”

Front 8

New Zealand river granted same legal rights as human being

Back 8

• The Guardian 16th March 2017

• After 140 years of negotiation, Māori tribe wins recognition for Whanganui river, meaning it must be treated as a living entity

• The new status of the river means if someone abused or harmed it the law now sees no differentiation between harming the tribe or harming the river because they are one of the same

Front 9

Tim Regan

Back 9

• Philosophical leader of animal rights movement

• Regan rejects this view as environmental fascism

• He claims that ecosystems cannot have moral rights

Front 10

Legal Representation

Back 10

How is a small child represented in court?

• In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to an and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party’s participation in the case

Front 11

NY court asked to give chimpanzee ’legal person’ status

Back 11

• 4th December 2013

• Case brought by a group called the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP)

• Want a chimp called Tommy (who lived in the shed) to be granted legal personhood

• Same lawsuit filed for 3 other chimps in New York

• They want them to be sent to a sanctuary

• Lawsuit invokes the common law habeas corpus

• Latin- means ‘you have the body’

• The right to challenge unlawful detention

Front 12

SeaWorld and Orcas

Back 12

• In 2012 PETA brought a lawsuit in California against SeaWorld

• Acting on behalf of 5 wild caught Orcas

• Claimed they were held in violation of s.1 of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the US

• Prohibits slavery

• Case was dismissed

Front 13

Morgan

Back 13

• In 2011 an Orca was trapped in shallow waters in Waddenzee - named Morgan

• Free Morgan support group established

• Attented to use a Dutch court to prevent Morgan from being sent to Lori Parque, Tenerife

• Argued it breached EU wildlife trade laws - Failed

Front 14

North Sea Seals

Back 14

• In 1988 approx. 15,000 seals washed up on beaches of Adriatic and North Seas

• A group of German environmental lawyers attempted to sue the West German government

• It had issued permits responsible for heavy metal pollution

• The seals were named as principal plaintiffs

• Lawyers planned to appear as guardians

• Courts did not recognise the seals my standing as they were not persons

Front 15

One Victory: Sandra

Back 15

• Sandra a hybrid Orangutan was granted legal person status in 2014 (Argentina)

• Her caretaker a zoo in Buenos Aires was ordered to send her to a sanctuary in Brazil

• In 2016 and 2017 the same judge said it was not good Sandras well-being to be moved

- Beuthe sanctuary does not have specialists in great ape care, but nor does the zoo

• In November 2019 Sandra was moved to a Sanctuary in Florida ( Centre for Great Apes in Wauchula)

Front 16

Elephant Rights

Back 16

• 13th November 2017- New York Post

• Pachyderms are people too

• That’s the argument being made by the NhRP, which filed the first ever animal rights lawsuit on behalf of captive elephants in Connecticut- claiming they are legal “persons” who deserve to be in sanctuaries, not zoos

• Lawyers for the group are specifically requesting that their “elephant clients” - Beulah, Karen and Minnie - be released and sent the performing animal welfare society’s ARK 2000 natural habitat sanctuary in California, “where their right to bodily liberty will be respected”

Update on 2019: only Minnie survives and case goes on

Front 17

Uk Law 2017

Back 17

• The government promises to protect sentient animals

• But states that this is done by current animal welfare laws

• Thus, the government states that there is no need for new laws to protect sentient beings

• Animal well-being to be protected by animal welfare laws

Front 18

Sophia 2017

Back 18

• Al Robot

- Developed in Hong Kong

• Granted citizenships in Saudi Arabia 2017

- Legal personhood

• UN Innovation Champion 2017

• Learning all the time

- Intelligence increasing

• Limited emotional understanding

Front 19

DeGrazia (2002) - Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction

Back 19

• Says there should be a strong presumption against taking animals from the wild

• Some species live longer in zoos that in the wild

• This must be a benefit as death is clearly a harm

Front 20

Peter Singer

Back 20

To avoid speciesism we must allow that being who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life ...

Front 21

Richard Ryder

Back 21

• Writer & Psychologist

• Coined the term speciesism in 1970

• Prejudice against the interests of other species

Front 22

Painism

Back 22

• In the 1990s Ryder suggested ‘painism’

• Painism claims that capacity to feel pain is the only morally relevant interest. Not

- Consciousness

- Intelligence

- Rationality

• The right moral action should be based on abating the pain of individuals who suffer the most

Front 23

Peter Singer

Back 23

• The life of an animal that is

- Self-aware

- Capable of abstract thought,

- of planning for the future and

- Complex acts of communication,

• Is more valuable than the life of an animal without these capabilities

Front 24

Equal Consideration

Back 24

• He argues for a basic moral principle of ‘equal consideration of interests’ to apply to members of other species as well as our own

• What sort of species deserve special consideration?

• These arguments are particularly powerful in relation to species such as:

- Great Apes

- Cetaceans

- Elephants

Front 25

Carnivore rights

Back 25

• A recent study suggests that some carnivores should not be in zoos

- Those with large home-ranges in the wild

• Clubb and Mason (2007) examined carnivore welfare in relation to enclosure size

- Large home-range = abnormal behaviour in captivity

Front 26

Autonoetic consciousness

Back 26

• Ther term ‘autonoetic consciousness’ is used by some psychologists

• It is synonymous with what philosophers call ‘phenomenal consciousness’ of the past, present and future

• This idea supports a moral hierarchy of persons, near- persons and merely sentient animals

• Members if each level within the hierarchy deserve some form of special respect vis-à-vis members of the lower levels

Front 27

A question of respect?

Back 27

• Persons deserve the highest level of respect

• They have a full-blown biographical sense of their own lives

• This category, probably, only contains humans

• Some animals are undoubtedly near-persons in the sense that they have a less expansive form of autonoetic consciousness

• This involves at least their non-immediate past and non-immediate future

Front 28

Only Sentient

Back 28

• At the other end of the hierarchy, some animals are merely sentient:

- They are conscious of pain and pleasure,

- But live in the present with no meaningful sense of their own past or future

Front 29

The mirror test - self-recognition

Back 29

• When chimpanzees or Orangutans see themselves in a mirror they appear to be able to recognise themselves

• However, when monkeys see themselves on a mirror they react to their own image as if it were another monkey

Front 30

And Elephants?

Back 30

• One study has suggested that elephants cannot recognise themselves in a mirror

• A recent study suggests that they can

• Video of an elephant touching a mark on its body while looking in a mirror were posted on the internet

• One problem in studying this ability in elephants is that their eyes are on the side of their head

• In another study, Winky failed to remove a feather taped to her head in the presence or absence of mirrors. However, she did remove a feather from the head of another elephant

Front 31

Is extinction a harm?

Back 31

• If a species becomes extinct there is no meaningful sense in which that species is harmed because the concept of a species is a human creation

• A species is merely a group of genetically similar individuals

Front 32

Species survival and harm

Back 32

• Only individuals can have interests and only individuals can suffer harm

• It is, therefore, important to consider whether species preservation is desirable if it conflicts with individual welfare needs of individual animals

• The keeping of a rare species in captivity as part of a breeding programme may serve the interests of the humans who don’t wish to see it disappear

Front 33

Harm

Back 33

• But if this involves suffering for the individual animals concerned

- Such breeding programmes clearly do not serve the interests of the animals themselves,

- Unless they would have faced a certain death or considerably more suffering in the wild

Front 34

What do animals think?

Back 34

• Animals- even intelligent animals like chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants- do not care if their species becomes extinct

• They may care about the fate of individual friends and relatives,

- and be psychologically affected by their loss,

- but this is clearly not the same thing

• Ultimately, species conservation serves human interests of the interests of the species we seek to conserve