Animals and their rights.

Stranger, I think your poll is a little vague. For instance, I would choose both one and three. I think we have a responsibility to protect animals and their habitats, but if I have to choose between saving a gorilla baby or a human baby, I'm going to choose the human 100% of the time.

Indeed. And the obligation to protects does not imply a belief in animal rights philosophies.

I'm with Jo, I could pick one and three. I do believe we have a responsibility to protect animals and their habitats, but human survival and rights come before animals' rights.

I'd go a little further. If it comes down to some silly snail darter or the livelihood of thousands of loggers, I'll go with the loggers.

I am very much for animal rights, protecting habitats, but as I said, if it comes down to saving the habitat for some obscure animal over jobs, I'll go jobs.

Still, I'm very concerned about the rain forest, which is a habitat for millions of animals, the American wetlands, and the American prairie.

I will sometimes side with the human animal and sometimes the non-human. But the basis is not always obvious. If a 1000 jobs drives a species extinct, what if that species contained an potent anticarcinogen that could be discovered and save 1000 lives? That opportinoty would be lost. There are selfish reasons to preserve biodiversity.

We have a responsibility to protect them from outright cruelty, from losing their habitat when there are other options, and from being driven to extinction if possible. But I personally see it less about their rights and more about our humanity. It's the right thing to do.

Ageless Stranger said:

...I believe that animals have a right to life that is equal to our own...

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They really don't. As you move up the food chain, the predator's existence far outweighs the importance of its prey's "right to life." That's part of the natural order of things. Humans are at the top of the chain. Can we do a better job of managing the environment so that other species can thrive without facing extinction? Of course we can. But were it not for the power of reasoning and evolution, and a good deal of farming and livestock management, humans would have wiped out most if not all edible creatures by now and faced extinction themselves.

So whatever animals are still around should be grateful to humans for not wiping them out sooner!

We have a responsibility to keep the food chain going so we have an adequate food supply.

HeaGrg said:

Human beings aren't the only species on the planet we just act like it.


And I refuse to believe we are the apex of evolution. Think about it we can't fly (planes etc don't count), can't swim fast, can't breath underwater, have a limited sense of smell, hearing and sight. And we don't have a prehensile tail so we can't swing from a tree by our butts.

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But we can think, create, imagine, invent. Our brains put us at the apex.

Ageless Stranger said:

But surely as we, the predator, slowly drive our prey to extinction, their right to life does indeed become more important?

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In the context of less numbers of a given species equals more importance for our concern for their survival, then yes, it does take on greater meaning. But it still doesn't equate to any animal's "right to life." That's a system of beliefs invented by humans to protect us from ourselves, and it was never meant to include other species.

What your argument proposes, I think, is to extend certain "rights" that have been developed to help humans flourish to also include some or all other animals.

If that's the case, who or what gives voice to other species? Us? You and I? PETA?

My T-shirt, bumper sticker for today: "You don't own the world, the World owns you." A young man once was talking to my mother (Google Mardy Murie if you want to meet her) about how we have to keep nature in balance. She said, "We don't have to balance nature, nature does that by itself. You may not like the way it balances." We are on a fragile planet, and everything we do has an effect on it. The more we chip away at the infrastructure, and that includes all the animals, plants and habitats, the closer we come to losing it all. We can make jobs for people without endangering habitats, we just need the nerve and the ingenuity to do it. We need the animals, they don't need us. Being top of the food chain applies only to predation, not civilization. It's not a question of rights, it's a question of survival. We have to think in terms of survival, and eliminating more habitats and more rain forests - think oxygen and medicine - is the wrong way to go. Each species as it goes extinct is like the canary in the mine, it is a warning that things are not good for survival. It's not the animal itself, it's the place. And I'm sorry, but creating jobs for a few people, even a few thousand people, for the present century should not depend on destroying more animals or more territory for life-giving plants and functioning ecosystems that could help support us in the future.

It's in my DNA, I make no apology.

HeaGrg said:

...I refuse to believe we are the apex of evolution. Think about it we can't fly (planes etc don't count), can't swim fast, can't breath underwater, have a limited sense of smell, hearing and sight. And we don't have a prehensile tail so we can't swing from a tree by our butts.

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That's true. But we've developed tools to compensate for all of the above, and then some. I'd say the "apex" was achieved about sixty years ago, technically, and the rest was a rapid progression leading up to the "space age" and who knows what the hell else awaits us next.

Ever stop to wonder that it's only been about one hundred years since humans learned to fly? It's astonishing when you consider the technological strives we've made since then. We're out in space now, exploring other planets and scanning the universe for signs of life elsewhere. One day soon, we'll learn where it all started by peering far enough into the past to glimpse the birth of our universe. Then maybe we'll see God's face up close, a mixture of super novas and black holes, infinite light mixed with never ending darkness, unlike any image we ever expected to see.

Hey Oberon? Yay, Mom!

As to the "apex" thing, I agree with SK's take on our place in the food chain, but I'd ask us to consider that it's more like we are "currently" at the apex. And we have to hope that nothing better comes along.

Considering how long evolution takes, I'm not holding my breath.

I agree with Oberon. As I've stated before, my signature line says how I feel.

We are animals too.

Williebee said:

As to the "apex" thing, I agree with SK's take on our place in the food chain, but I'd ask us to consider that it's more like we are "currently" at the apex. And we have to hope that nothing better comes along.

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I don't think we are. The better species are already here. Sure, we can force extinction of species that are adapted only to a specific environment and can't readapt quickly, but suppose we wanted to wipe out the most common species of fleas? Or cockroaches? Or flies? Or spiders? Or, for that matter, e. coli? Or any of the various viruses (if you count those as living) and bacteria that use us as hosts? We won the war with smallpox, but it's a neck-and-neck arms race between most other germs and our antibiotics. I think we'd have a lot of trouble making extinct even the most common species of rats and mice.

True, some of those co-exist with us without directly harming us, while others place us farther down on their food chain. But if the idea is that we have the power to kill or save all other species, I don't think we always do.

Shadow_Ferret said:

But we can think, create, imagine, invent. Our brains put us at the apex.

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It put us at One apex, and there are animals that beat us in many intelligence subcategories.

And for all the people that think we are so great for being smart, how many actually apply themselves?