 Whether R must be an agent. Most philosophers agree that at the very least, benefactor R must be an agent in order for Y to owe gratitude to R for φ-ing. Indeed, this is suggested by the fact that φ in the formulation of prepositional gratitude (Y is grateful to R for φ-ing) paradigmatically represents an intentional verb. Two notable skeptics of the “agency requirement” on gratitude are Sean McAleer (2012) and Karen Bardsley (2013). McAleer points out that people sometimes purport to be grateful to inanimate objects. He gives the example of a prospector who finds gold on a mountain and then claims to be grateful to that mountain for yielding its bounty to him. The plausibility of the prospector’s claim in that case need not imply that gratitude to inanimate objects is appropriate, however. The plausibility of his claim could be chalked up to his implicitly anthropomorphizing the “benefactor”, attributing to it the ability to give a benefit when it, strictly speaking, lacks the agency to do so. Manela (2016a) argues that the prospector in McAleer’s example might, on reflection, be just as accurately described as glad or appreciative that he found gold on the mountain. A more recent critique of the “agency requirement” comes from Karen Bardsley (2013), who argues that Y’s gratitude can be appropriate toward something, R, when two conditions are met: 1) R has benefited Y in a way Y did not deserve, and 2) that benefit was not the result of an accidental or regrettable feature of R. Insofar as conditions 1) and 2) are sufficient for gratitude to be warranted, and R’s being an agent is not necessary for 1) and 2), R’s being an agent is not necessary for gratitude to be warranted. This argument, if successful, has important implications for environmental ethics, because it implies the possibility of appropriate gratitude to beneficial natural non-agents like non-sentient organisms, ecosystems, or the whole of nature. Manela (2018) has objected to Bardsley’s argument by putting forward counterexamples to the claim that her conditions 1) and 2) are sufficient for the appropriateness of gratitude. If Manela is right, then 1) and 2) entail the appropriateness of appreciation and praise but not gratitude; and we can only be appropriately grateful to natural objects that exhibit some kind of agency, like dolphins.