An Introduction to Bunny-hugging

We are kind to a select few animals, and horribly cruel to many others

The Standard - Thursday, October 30, 2008

BY DANIEL WILSON

“All the arguments to prove man’s superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.” – Peter Singer

When little Claudio died in his mother’s arms a few months ago, his mother behaved like any mother would upon losing her baby: she grieved. For several days, Gana, a gorilla at Germany’s Muenster Zoo, carried and stroked her dead son, trying to revive him.

Dr. Bill Sellers, a primatologist at Manchester University, says gorillas can experience pain and loss similar to humans, “but of course it’s extremely difficult to prove scientifically.”

Still, a growing number of scientists are recognizing what pet owners have known all along, that animals have feelings - perhaps not exactly like us - but they have them nonetheless.

Some animals have demonstrated a wide range of emotions, including grief, guilt, revenge and even altruism. Elephants have risked their own lives to help other animals. People have witnessed buffaloes sliding across the ice, apparently for the sheer pleasure of it. Captive dolphins have been known to “get even” with abusive trainers and farmers tell of cows calling for days when their calves are taken away.

Dogs are even prescribed anti-depressants these days; further evidence that animals have emotions.

According to Marc Bekoff, a biology professor at the University of Colorado, “If we feel jealousy, then dogs and wolves and elephants and chimpanzees feel jealousy. Animal emotions are not necessarily identical to ours but there’s no reason to think they should be. Their hearts and stomachs and brains also differ from ours, but this doesn’t stop us from saying they have hearts, stomachs and brains. There’s dog joy and chimpanzee joy and pig joy, and dog grief, chimpanzee grief and pig grief.”

So why aren’t we nicer to animals? If they share many of the same feelings that we do, wouldn’t they want to avoid pain, suffering and death, like we do?

Of course most people will say they love animals. But our actions speak louder than our words. We’re really only kind to a select few, and unspeakably cruel towards others.

We hunt and kill animals for “sport”, lock them in cages for our amusement and torture them for scientific curiosity. We even consume their flesh and wear their skins.

If such atrocities were committed against our own kind, we would be repulsed and outraged, yet we have no problem doing these things to other sentient animals, provided we don’t have to think too much about it.

Enter the animal rights activists, those annoying bunny-huggers whose mission in life is to remind us of how barbaric and nasty we are to animals; always trying to make us feel guilty for enjoying our steaks, wearing our leather jackets and going to the circus.

As you may know I’m one of those bunny-huggers, but my goal is not to make anyone feel bad. It’s simply to try and end the suffering that we humans have created.

My hope is that by educating the public about how we treat animals, people will choose compassion over cruelty; that just because we can exploit and kill others doesn’t mean we should. Live and let live.

But discussing animal rights is a touchy subject. Some people get offended, even belligerent, when it’s suggested that the animals we use suffer as we do. Others argue that if you’re defending animals, you’ve turned your back on your own kind.

I don’t see why we can’t do both. A lot of animal rights people, including myself, support organizations aimed at reducing human suffering too. My circle of compassion is big enough to include humans AND animals. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. A mother doesn’t tell her children, “Sorry kids, but I can only love one of you,” and neither should we.

And it’s not that I love animals more than people; I just don’t want to see anyone suffer. A parent who stops his child from kicking the family cat doesn’t love the cat more than the child, he just wants his child to grow up to be a kind, caring and compassionate human being.

That’s what I want too. I want us to be kinder than we currently are.

Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation, and its moral progress, can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”

The advances we've made as a species don't mean much if we still enslave, exploit and murder those that are weaker than us. I know we are better than this. I believe we can, and should, extend our circle of compassion to include the animals.

Dan Wilson is a vegan, environmentalist, animal rights activist and public education director for the Niagara Centre for Animal Rights Awareness. He is a member of The Standard's community editorial board. Contact him at dkw1@sympatico.ca.