August 20, 1999
We the People (and Other Animals) ...
By FRANS B. M. DE WAAL
TLANTA -- After a narrow escape, the
Thompson gazelle
calls her lawyer,
complaining that her
freedom to graze
wherever she wants
has once again been violated. Should
she sue the cheetah, or does the lawyer perhaps feel that predators have
rights, too?
Absurd, of course, and I certainly
applaud efforts to prevent animal
abuse, but I do have serious questions
about the approach that now has led
law schools in this country to start
offering courses in "animal law."
What they mean is not the law of the
jungle, but the extension of principles
of justice to animals. Animals are not
mere property, according to some,
like Steven M. Wise, the lawyer who is
to teach the course this spring at
Harvard. They deserve rights as solid
and uncontestable as the constitutional rights of people. Some animal-rights lawyers have even argued, for
example, that chimpanzees deserve
rights to bodily integrity and liberty.
This view has gained some currency. For instance, the Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia last year
gave a human zoo visitor the right to
sue to get companionship for chimpanzees. And over the last five years,
state legislatures have upgraded animal cruelty crimes to felonies from
misdemeanors.
The debate over animal rights is
not new. I still remember some surrealistic debates among scientists in the
1970's that dismissed animal suffering as a bleeding-heart issue. Amid
stern warnings against anthropomorphism, the then-prevailing view was
that animals were mere robots, devoid of feelings, thoughts or emotions.
With straight faces, scientists
would argue that animals cannot suffer, at least not the way we do. A fish
is pulled out of the water with a big
hook in its mouth, it thrashes around
on dry land, but how could we possibly
know what it feels? Isn't all of this
pure projection?
This thinking changed in the 1980's
with the advent of cognitive approaches to animal behavior. We now
use terms like "planning" and
"awareness" in relation to animals.
They are believed to understand the
effects of their own actions, to communicate emotions and make decisions. Some animals, like chimpanzees, are even considered to have
rudimentary politics and culture.
In my own experience, chimpanzees pursue power as relentlessly as
some people in Washington and keep
track of given and received services
in a marketplace of exchange. Their
feelings may range from gratitude
for political support to outrage if one
of them violates a social rule. All of
this goes far beyond simple fear, pain
and anger: the emotional life of these
animals is much closer to ours than
once held possible.
This new understanding may
change our attitude toward chimpanzees and, by extension, other animals,
but it remains a big leap to say that
the only way to insure their decent
treatment is to give them rights and
lawyers.
Doing so is the American way, I
guess, but rights are part of a social
contract that makes no sense without
responsibilities. This is the reason
that the animal rights movement's
outrageous parallel with the abolition of slavery -- apart from being
insulting -- is morally flawed: slaves
can and should become full members
of society; animals cannot and will
not.
Indeed, giving animals rights relies entirely upon our good will. Consequently, animals will have only
those rights that we can handle. One
won't hear much about the rights of
rodents to take over our homes, of
starlings to raid cherry trees or of
dogs to decide their master's walking route. Rights selectively granted
are, in my book, no rights at all.
What if we drop all this talk of
rights and instead advocate a sense
of obligation? In the same way we
teach children to respect a tree by
mentioning its age, we should use the
new insights into animals' mental
life to foster in humans an ethic of
caring in which our interests are not
the only ones in the balance.
Even though many social animals
have evolved affectionate and altruistic tendencies, they rarely if ever
direct these to other species. The
way the cheetah treats the gazelle is
typical. We are the first to apply
tendencies that evolved within the
group to a wider circle of humanity,
and could do the same to other animals, making care, not rights, the
centerpiece of our attitude.
Frans B. M. de Waal, a scientist at Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University, is the author of "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals."
