Guest Post by Catia Faria



It is commonly believed that our obligations towards other human beings are not restricted to abstaining from harming them. We should also prevent or alleviate harmful states of affairs for other individuals whenever it is in our power to do something about it. In animal ethics, however, the idea that we may have reasons not only to refrain from harming animals but also to help them is not particularly widespread. Of course, exceptions can be found regarding companion animals. Most people agree that failing to assist them would be wrong if we could otherwise help them. But what about all other animals in need, shouldn’t we also help them? Consider, for example, a case that has recently caught the attention of social media. In Norway, a man rescued a duck trapped under the ice on the surface of a lake. Everyone is celebrating the intervention as a form of heroism. But wasn’t intervening in order to help the duck precisely what he ought to do?

The laissez-faire intuition

It is sometimes claimed that even though interventions like this seem beneficial, the best we can do for animals living in nature is simply to let them be. In other words, that we don’t have reasons to prevent or alleviate the harms that animals suffer in the wild. This has been referred to as the “laissez-faire” intuition. This intuition relies on two fundamental assumptions. Firstly, it is based on an idyllic view of nature, according to which wild animals have generally good lives, only threatened by occasional human interferences. Secondly, it is based on the idea that we only have reasons to help others in need when their situation is caused by human action. Nevertheless, there are compelling reasons to think that these two ideas are not justified.

The prevalence of suffering over well-being in nature

Contrary to what is often thought to be the case, animals living in the wild are subject to an enormous variety of threats to their well-being. They are usually injured, starved or dehydrated. They must endure extreme weather conditions and cope with psychological stress, mainly due to fear of predation. They also experience excruciating deaths at the claws of predators, are devoured by parasites, and debilitated or killed by disease. Moreover, this does not happen only to a few. The majority of wild animals follow a reproductive strategy (r-selection) that consists in increasing the population’s fitness through the maximization of the number of offspring. The outcome of this is an extremely low survival rate. Most of the animals that come into existence do not survive to adulthood and have gruesome, short lives. This implies that most wild animals experience more suffering than positive well-being in their lives. Hence, on aggregate, suffering is largely predominant over well-being. The idyllic view of nature is thus clearly false, failing to provide grounds on which to base the laissez-faire intuition.

Preventing suffering caused by natural events

The idea that we only have reasons to alleviate the suffering of others when it is caused by human action is clearly incompatible with common practices of helping human beings and companion animals in situations of need. If we want to adhere to that belief we must thus accept that it would be justified to refrain from helping humans suffering from natural events such as starvation, disease or natural catastrophes. And the same would be applicable to companion animals. Nevertheless, this implication seems hardly acceptable. We believe that we have very strong reasons to help these individuals whenever it is in our power to do so. But if this is the case, then we also lack the grounds on which to support the laissez faire intuition regarding wild animal suffering.

This must follow unless we embrace speciesism, an unjustified moral position. Any attempt to establish a moral divide between human and nonhuman animals will necessarily run into the so called “species-overlap” phenomenon. That is, for any attribute we might appeal to in order to justify the preferential consideration of humans over nonhumans, we would have either to exclude some human beings from the scope of moral consideration (those who lack the attribute) or to include some nonhumans within the scope (those who possess it). Since the former seems unacceptable, moral consideration must be grounded on an attribute that successfully applies to any human being whom our actions might affect for good or ill. Sentience, insofar it is the capacity that allows an individual to have a well-being of her own, is the most salient candidate. As sentient individuals, humans and nonhumans are equally susceptible to being affected by what happens to them in negative (suffering) and positive (enjoyment) ways. Hence, they can be equally harmed, either by human action or natural events, or benefited by our help. Thus, the well-being of wild animals is morally relevant. Because of the nasty conditions of animal lives in nature, that implies that we have very strong reasons to help them whenever we can.

Perversity, futility and feasibility

A common way of objecting to intervention in nature is to appeal to perversity, futility or feasibility considerations. They all share the belief that intervention aimed at alleviating wild animal suffering might fail to do so. This may happen either because intervention might have counterproductive results (perversity), it might produce no significant effects at all (futility) or it is not currently possible to implement (feasibility). Nevertheless, the soundness of these objections is clearly limited. After all, interventionists and anti-interventionists of this sort agree that the best state of affairs is one in which we could phase out wild animal suffering. But once we refine our understanding of intervention as cautious and informed interference, current or future epistemic limitations fail to provide any grounds for opposing intervention.

Moreover, beneficial interventions in nature already take place. In addition to occasional rescues, such as the one in our initial case, there are other, more significant ways in which we are already helping animals. Vaccination programs for wild animals against diseases such as rabies or tuberculosis have been implemented for decades. In national parks, starving animals are sometimes provided with additional food so that they may survive. These are just some examples among many. The success of these interventions suggests that many others would definitely be feasible as well. At any rate, the fundamental discussion is not about which ways of helping animals in nature are already available, but rather whether we have reasons to develop the means that will make it increasingly more feasible to help them.

Catia Faria is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Law, Universitat Pompeu Fabra