nonhuman animals

the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?... The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes... "

Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)

Today, there is perhaps no animal we are more unmoored from than ourselves. ‘The world is now dominated by an animal that doesn’t think it’s an animal,’ writes the natural philosopher Melanie Challenger in How to Be Animal (2021) . ‘ And the future is being imagined by an animal that doesn’t want to be an animal.’

If we can learn about human cognition, behaviour and pathology by studying insects, how does this blur the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’?

The anthropocentrism of humanity’s

predominant relationship to the environment is so extreme that this gratuitous violence against

other animals (both domesticated and free-living) goes largely unnoticed in everyday society.

Meanwhile, environmental justice, the very field established to champion public awareness

and policy in the service of margin... See more

Whatever action I take, walking, eating and excreting, incurs a cost to other lives, whether by killing and eating them directly, or by eating foods that they could otherwise have lived on. The most extreme impact my life has on other species is extinction, not just of their physical presence, but also of their memories, both those acquired within ... See more

At its most basic interpretation, then,

the concept of rights for other animals entails a right to bodily integrity, autonomy, and life.

Do animals experience mental illness?

Modern science shows animals and humans may experience fear-based anxiety in similar ways.

One of the most honest accounts I’ve encountered of humanity’s relationship with nonhuman animals comes from political theorist Dinesh Wadiwel, who describes it as a state of war — not a metaphorical war, but a literal one, in which we are the aggressors. If you were an alien who knew nothing about our species, you might expect a civilization that ... See more

“It seems like there’s a dog paper every day,” says Alan McElligott, a zoologist at the City University of Hong Kong who has studied the minds of goats and other farm animals. “It’s almost impossible to keep up with it.” What’s worse, others say, most money for livestock research still goes to studies aimed at improving milk or meat yields, not to ... See more