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Animals do not have rights, at least not in the same sense that humans have rights. In the Western world the concept of human rights is central to our morality. This stems from the prevailing liberal belief in the sovereignty of the individual as a free agent in human society. Human society.

Our closest extant relative is the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee, which shares 99.4% of our genes. Bonobos live in egalitarian societies dominated by the females in which sexual contact is substituted for aggression. There is no similar society in the human world. If our closest relatives lead a social life so different from our own, imagine the differences that exist between us and other species.

Many people today consider it wrong for a powerful nation such as the USA to impose its own culture and values on another nation. If imposing your views on another nation is morally wrong, then imposing a human concept of morality on another species is surely abhorrent.

However, many animals are sentient beings. And all vertebrates feel pain. We know that pain is meant to be unpleasant, and that all creatures capable of feeling pain would find it unpleasant (otherwise it would pose no evolutionary advantage). We should, therefore, go out of our way to minimise the amount of pain an animal in our care receives.

The other side of this coin is that we have no moral obligation to creatures that do not feel pain, such as insects. And insects are certainly not sentient. It is therefore arguably impossible to be cruel to an insect. We find the idea of pulling a crane fly's legs off one by one as repugnant simply because we would not like that done to us. It's unlikely the crane fly notices.

The more intelligent animals, particularly mammals and birds, are almost certainly capable of various degrees of self-awareness and reflection on there own situation. They can therefore suffer, so we should give them greater consideration. It is wrong, for example, to confine a highly intelligent, social animal such as a chimpanzee to a small cage with no company. Or to restrict a crow's movement by tying it to a post.

But my point is these are not rights. They are responsibilities on our part as the most intelligent of the animals. We cannot grant other species rights' any more than a fox can respect a mouse's right' to not be killed by it. We must also remember that we are animals too. We are part of the food chain. If lions ran the world I doubt they'd grant us rights.

Learn more about this author, Fremcet McCorrigan.
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