The pains of supposedly 'smarter' animals are not morally more significant than the pains of 'dumber' animals. Solid science supports this view. Claiming lab rats, mice, and other animals are not animals as the United States Federal Animal Welfare Act does is absurd.
MARC BEKOFF: In an email a few weeks ago, 13-year-old Marta asked me: Are chimps and dogs more sentient than rats and hamsters? Is my dog Harry more sentient than my hamster Millie? Do mammals suffer more than birds, fishes, and other vertebrates and invertebrates?…
Asking if a dog is smarter than a cat or a cat is smarter than a mouse isn’t meaningful. Likewise, asking if dogs suffer more than mice ignores who these animals are and what they must do to survive and thrive in their own worlds, not in ours or the of other nonhumans. All in all, what we know about the cognitive lives of other animals—how smart they are–doesn’t lead to any meaningful claims that there are shades or sentience…
When comparing different animals, we need to focus on individuals rather than on species. The treatment of other animals is often linked to how humans perceive their ability to think—to have beliefs and desires and to make plans and form expectations about the future.
An individual’s joy or pain is their joy or pain. There are important moral implications of doing away with the notion that there are species-wide degrees of sentience and that intelligence is morally relevant. It could be argued that although some individuals’ cognitive lives don’t appear as rich as those of other “more cognitive” animals, the limited number of memories and expectations that “less cognitive” individuals have are each more important to them…
Whatever connections between an individual’s cognitive abilities and what treatments are permissible can be overridden by that individual’s ability to feel pain and suffering. When we are uncertain, even slightly, about their ability to experience pain or to suffer, individual animals should be given the benefit of the doubt. While there is uncertainty about the phylogenetic distribution of pain and suffering, there is no doubt that individuals suffer.
The pains of supposedly “smarter” animals are not morally more significant than the pains of “dumber” animals. Solid science supports this view. Claiming lab rats, mice, and other animals are not animals as the United States Federal Animal Welfare Act does is absurd. In addition, rats and mice display empathy for the suffering of other rats and mice…
There are numerous practical implications of viewing sentience on the individual level, including how we treat other animals — what’s permissible and what’s not — and debates about granting personhood to nonhumans.
The idea that “higher” animals are more sentient than “lower animals” is speciesism. Speciesism informs decisions about how humans are permitted to treat other animals based on an individual’s species membership rather than on that animal’s unique characteristics…
Drawing lines in a hierarchical way is highly misleading. As the renowned philosopher Tom Regan once quipped, if you’re going to draw moral lines to separate species, use a pencil…
It’s time to stop drawing lines that portray misguided taxonomic hierarchies and purported degrees of sentience, do away with species-wide misleading generalizations about animal sentience, focus on what individuals are feeling, and expand the community of equals. SOURCE…
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