Volume XII · The Essentials of Animal Ethics · chapter 6
The Situation of Wild Animals and the Proposal to Help Them
Before you read study layer, not part of the original text
The proposal to help wild animals rests on the idea that the strength of our reasons depends on the magnitude of the harm, not its origin; and it answers the objections that wild animals live well, that destroyed eggs reduce the number of victims, and that newborns barely suffer.
Animals in the wild suffer a lot from hunger, cold, and disease, and most of them die as babies. If we care about animals, it does not matter whether the suffering is caused by a person or by nature.
For someone who is drowning, it makes no difference whether they were pushed or slipped into the water: they need help just the same.
- P1 Our reasons to prevent harm depend on its magnitude, not on whether its origin is human or natural.
- P2 Animals in the wild suffer enormous harms, and most are born only to die young.
- P3 Even discounting destroyed eggs, the number of victims is gigantic.
- C So the situation of wild animals is as important as it would be if the harms were caused by humans.
The chapter’s central argument in logical form. If the premises are true, the conclusion follows. To disagree, you have to show which premise is false.
They say “Wild animals live well if we leave them alone.”
Answer Malnutrition, disease, parasites, weather, and predation are the norm. With litters in the thousands, almost all the young die early.
More objections and answers in Debunking objections.
Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume XII, p. 21 of the PDF edition · English translation
As we saw in the previous section, most programs dealing with are driven by ideals. In these programs animals are not valued in themselves, but only as a means to preserve species and ecosystems. In recent decades, however, several authors22 have argued that programs dealing with wild animals should have as their goal the good of the animals themselves, seeking to prevent and minimize their suffering and deaths.
Since the emergence of animal ethics, whether with respect to domesticated or wild animals, the focus has generally been on animals harmed by human practices. However, a growing number of authors23 have drawn attention to the way animals are harmed by , especially animals living in the wild, and have proposed researching ways to reduce these harms. The central argument of this proposal is that, if we really care about animals, we will not limit our concern to harms caused by humans, since for the animals it makes no difference whether what harms them is a human or, say, hunger or disease. In more detail, the central argument is as follows24: if what gives us reasons to avoid harms is the fact that they are something negative, and if what gives us reasons to pursue benefits is the fact that they are something positive, then the strength of these reasons depends on the magnitude of the harms and benefits at stake, and not on whether their origin is anthropogenic or natural. In other words, we have reasons to give priority to avoiding the greater harm and to pursuing the greater benefit, regardless of whether they originate in human practices or in natural processes. Thus, the situation of wild animals who are victims of natural processes is just as important as it would be if these were equivalent anthropogenic harms.
In this section and the next two we will look at the debate on the proposal to reduce the suffering and deaths of wild animals25. In this section we will discuss the objections26 claiming that there is no need to help them, and the answers that have been given to these objections.
| Objection | How the objection has been answered |
|---|---|
| There is no need to help animals in the wild: it is enough to stop harming them, since, if we let nature take its course, animals will generally have predominantly positive lives. (VII, ch. 3). | Animals in the wild are greatly harmed by natural processes. Malnutrition, hunger, thirst, disease, physical injuries, psychological stress, hostile weather events, natural disasters, and various kinds of conflict between animals are the norm in nature. In addition, the vast majority of animal species reproduce by maximizing offspring (in broods ranging from thousands to many millions, depending on the species). In periods of approximately stable population, it can be deduced that, on average, in each generation a single offspring per adult survives (that is, only two per brood). All the rest of the brood are generally born only to experience extreme suffering and die very 27 prematurely. Because of these factors, the number of animals who suffer and die as a result of natural processes is so enormous that it makes even the numbers of animal exploitation look small by comparison28. |
| Many eggs are destroyed before they develop into sentient beings. Thus, few animals are harmed. (VII, ch. 3). | Even if this happened to the vast majority of eggs, there would still be an enormous number of individuals born to live a life in which suffering greatly predominates. For example, even if 90% of the 2 million eggs laid by a cod were destroyed before developing into sentient beings, the remaining 10% would still be 200,000 individuals. |
| Most animals die very young, and at that stage they are still barely capable of suffering. Therefore, they are only slightly harmed by what happens to them. (VII, ch. 3). | There is no evidence that, because they are very young, they are barely capable of suffering. On the contrary, given that most of these animals are precocial, it is quite likely that their capacity to feel is very acute at this stage, since otherwise 29 such species would probably no longer exist. And even if they were barely capable of suffering, this does not mean they were only slightly unfortunate, since premature death aggravates the harm of death (they lived short lives full of suffering). |
Practice
Study layer. The answers are based on the chapter’s text.
Why, in stable populations, do almost all the offspring in a litter die young?
Are very young animals barely capable of suffering?
Food for thought
How many young do you think are born for every adult animal you see in the wild?
Author’s notes 8
- 22 See, for example, (1984), (1996), (2003), (2010, 2017), (2015), (2015), (2015), (2016), (2020), and (2022). ↩
- 23 See previous note. ↩
- 24 For the argument in detail, see chapter 5 of Volume VII of this collection. ↩
- 25 This was the subject of Volume VII of this collection. ↩
- 26 For objections to the proposal, see Taylor (1986), (1980), Baldner (1990), Kirkwood and Sainsbury (1996), (2001), et. al. (2003), Clement (2003), Simmons (2009), Hills (2010), and Groff and Ng (2019). ↩
- 27 For a detailed analysis of this question, see Horta (2010) and Cunha (2022). ↩
- 28 For a comparison, see Tomasik (2019). ↩
- 29 On sentience in juvenile animals, see (2022). ↩
Sources cited in this text 22
The full list for the volume is in the Volume XII references.
- BALDNER, K. Realism and Respect. Between the Species, v. 6, n. 1, p. 1-7, 1990.
- BONNARDEL, Y. Contra o apartheid das espécies. Les cahiers antispécistes, v. 14, 1996.
- BOVENKERK, B.; STAFLEU, F.; TRAMPER, R.; VORSTENBOSCH, J.; BROM, F. W. A. To act or not to act? Sheltering animals from the wild: A pluralistic account of a conflict between animal and environmental ethics. Ethics, Place and Environment, v. 6, p. 13-26, 2003.
- CALLICOTT, J. B. Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair. Environmental Ethics, v. 2, n. 4, p. 311-338, 1980.
- CLEMENT, G. The Ethic of Care and the Problem of Wild Animals. Between the Species, v. 13, n. 3, 2003.
- COWEN, T. Policing nature. Environmental Ethics, v. 25, p. 169-182, 2003.
- CUNHA, L. C. A igualdade, suas várias interpretações, e a ética interespécies. In: BARBOSA-FOHRMANN, A. P.; LOURENÇO, D. B.; AUBERT, A. C. P. (orgs.). Estudos e direitos dos animais: teorias e desafios. Porto Alegre: Editora Fi, 2022b, p. 104-128.
- EVERETT, J. Environmental ethics, animal welfarism, and the problem of predation: a Bambi Lover´s respect for nature. Ethics and Environment, v. 6, n. 1, p. 42-67, 2001.
- FARIA, C. Animal Ethics Goes Wild: The Problem of Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia). Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2016.
- GROFF, Z.; NG, Y. K. Does suffering dominate enjoyment in the animal kingdom? An update to welfare biology. Biology & Philosophy, v. 34, n. 40, p. 1-16, 2019.
- HILLS, A. Utilitarianism, Contractualism and Demandingness. Philosophical Quarterly, [s.l.], v. 60, n. 239, p. 225-242, 2010.
- HORTA, O. Animal Suffering in Nature: The Case for Intervention. Environmental Ethics, n.39, 2017. p .261–79.
- HORTA, O. Debunking the Idyllic View of Natural Processes: Population Dynamics and Suffering in the Wild. Télos, v. 17, p. 73-88, 2010b.
- JOHANNSEN, K. Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020.
- KIRKWOOD, J. K.; SAINSBURY, A. W. Ethics of Interventions for the Welfare of Free-living Wild Animals. Animal Welfare, v. 5, n. 3, p. 235-243, 1996.
- MCMAHAN, J. The Moral Problem of Predation. In: CHIGNELL, A.; CUNEO, T.; HALTEMAN, M. C. (org.). Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments About the Ethics of Eating. London: Routledge, 2015. p. 268-294.
- SAPONTZIS, S. F. Predation. Ethics and Animals, v. 5, p. 27-38, 1984.
- SIMMONS, A. Animals, Predators, the Right to Life and the Duty to Save Lives. Ethics and the Environment, v. 14, n. 1, p. 15-27, 2009.
- TAYLOR, P. Respect for nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
- TOMASIK, B. How Many Animals are There? Essays on Reducing Suffering, 07 ago. 2019.
- TOMASIK, B. Why digital sentience is relevant to animal activists. Animal Charity Evaluators, 03 fev. 2015.
- TORRES ALDAVE, M. The Case for Intervention in Nature on Behalf of Animals. A Critical Review of the Main Arguments against Intervention. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, v. 3, n. 1, p. 33-49, 2015.
Go deeper on each point
The chapters the author points to in the tables above.
Recommended texts
Keep exploring The Essentials of Animal Ethics.
The Debate on the Proposal to Help Wild Animals (Part 1)
The table answers the most common objections to helping wild animals: outside the scope of ethics,…
The Debate on the Proposal to Help Wild Animals (Part 2)
The second set of objections to helping wild animals denies our responsibility or questions practicality;…
What Criteria Should We Use to Help Efficiently?
To help effectively, we use criteria: seriousness (the number of victims and how bad it is for each one),…