How Do Natural Processes Typically Affect Wild Animals?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 12 of the PDF edition · English translation

3.1. The Situation of Wild Animals

There are objections to the proposal to help wild animals that deny there is any need to help them. For example, a common belief is that the situation of wild animals is not really all that bad. According to this view, most wild animals live satisfying lives, and the number of animals who are victims of natural processes is much smaller than the number of animals who are victims of exploitation. For this reason, people who hold this view usually argue that we should focus on changing the situation of exploited animals.

The reality, however, is quite different. The typical situation of animals in the wild is also highly negative. Many of the harms they suffer are direct or indirect results of human practices, but, contrary to what is commonly thought, natural processes already harm them to a high degree independently of human actions. They are routinely victims of malnutrition, hunger, and thirst, disease, physical injuries, psychological stress, harsh weather events, natural disasters, and interspecific, intraspecific, and sexual conflicts². These conditions are the norm in nature, not the exception, and they have been occurring since long before the appearance of the human species (and not because humans caused some “imbalance” or anything of the sort).

One of the factors that contributes most to maximizing the number of animals born to lives filled with suffering is the predominant reproductive strategy. In biology, reproductive strategy is a term that designates the way animals reproduce (for example, by having few or many offspring at a time). It therefore does not mean strategy in the sense of something planned (whether by the animals or by anyone else). It means only that animals reproduce in a certain way.

The predominant reproductive strategy consists in maximizing the number of offspring. Most animal species have enormous broods, with thousands or even millions of offspring depending on the species (something common in amphibians, reptiles, fish, and invertebrates in general). For example, a single clutch of a common frog contains around

25,000 offspring³; that of octopuses, hundreds of thousands⁴; those of salmon, cod, and tuna, millions⁵; and that of the ocean sunfish reaches 300 million⁶. Terrestrial invertebrates can also lay hundreds, thousands, or even millions of eggs at a time⁷.

This reproductive strategy always results in extremely low survival rates. In periods of approximately constant population, it is possible to measure the rate of premature mortality from the size of the brood. This is because if the population has remained approximately constant over several generations, then on average only one offspring per adult has survived (that is, two per brood, and fewer than that if there are adults who reproduce more than once in their lives). All the rest are generally born only to experience intense suffering and die very prematurely, often without ever having had any positive experience at all⁸.

This reproductive strategy is normally found in small animal species, which make up the vast majority of animal species. One of the main reasons many people have an unrealistically positive view of life in the wild is that they tend to think of animals who are not representative of typical life in the wild: they think of large animals (who do not follow this reproductive strategy, having few offspring per pregnancy) and of adults (that is, they think of the small minority who escape death before reaching adulthood)⁹. This is partly because the unrepresentative animals are the ones that generally appear in documentaries and publications on the subject¹⁰.

In short, as a result of natural processes, for every animal who manages to survive, thousands or even millions die very young, usually suffering a very painful death. Most animals are born only to experience almost nothing but (or even nothing but) extreme suffering, and many others also suffer significantly, even if not so extremely. What may be surprising at first glance is that the number of animals who meet this fate is so enormous that it makes even the figures of animal exploitation, which are already huge, almost vanish by

comparison¹¹. Trillions of animals are killed in exploitation every year. However, the number of sentient animals in the wild at any given moment is between 1 and 10 quintillion, and the vast majority will reproduce by having thousands or millions of offspring per spawning.

As we have seen, this outcome results from natural processes themselves, independently of the direct or indirect effects of human practices: it was already this way long before the appearance of the human species, even if today all natural effects are already influenced by human action.

3.2. The Objection from Destroyed Eggs

It could be objected that the problem is not as big as it initially seems, since many of the eggs are probably destroyed before they develop into sentient beings. However, there is no evidence that this happens to most eggs. Moreover, the number of eggs is so enormous that, even if most of them were destroyed before developing into sentient beings, it would still result in a huge number of sentient beings born to lives filled with suffering and to premature death. For example, a common cod has on average 2 million eggs per spawning¹². Even if only 10% of these eggs developed into sentient beings, there would already be almost 200,000 sentient beings harmed per spawning.

3.3. The Objection That They Hardly Suffer

Another objection holding that the situation is not as serious as it seems claims that these animals, because their cognitive capacities are not yet developed, would not be capable of suffering (or at least would not suffer in very significant ways)¹³. According to this objection, if this is true, then there is nothing problematic about this situation.

The first problem with this objection is that these animals could still be harmed by death, regardless of suffering. Therefore, the situation would still be serious even if what the objection claims were true.

The second problem is that there are strong reasons to consider what the objection claims to be false. For example, the brain of adult zebrafish has about 10 million neurons¹⁴, and that of their young only about 100,000¹⁵. Nevertheless, these young respond similarly to adults to the same stimuli that indicate that the adults are sentient¹⁶.

Moreover, owing to selective pressure, it is quite possible that animals with less developed cognitive capacities feel even more intensely¹⁷. When they are still young, or even before they hatch, since they do not yet have developed cognitive capacities, the only motivation for their behavior and learning is to avoid negative experiences and seek positive ones. This is especially true of precocial animals, since they need to be quite active in order to break the shell and hatch, and also to have any chance of surviving after hatching¹⁸, since in oviparous species it is very common for the young to receive no parental care.

3.4. Conclusion

Given what we have seen, there seem to be no reasons to suppose that the number of animals who are victims of natural processes is small, nor that they are less capable of suffering than other animals.