Do elephants have rights?
Answer: NO. Only human beings have rights. Human beings are the only creatures capable of conceiving rights or exercising them. Animals have no conception of rights, or the obligations that go with them.
They also have no concept of right or wrong - that is to say, morality - or of law; some may have a kind of limited intelligence, and can be taught to obey human commands and do wonderful tricks, but they lack reason and abstract thought, along with other strictly human qualities. The higher animals can in fact be loyal, useful companions to human beings, which is a lovely thing as far as it goes - but they can never be human beings.
That being said, in your Head Trucker's estimation, human beings have a moral duty to treat animals humanely, not abusing or mistreating them; the higher the animal, the greater the duty. This duty can and should be enforced by law.
Consider the elephant in this video: would you want him for a roommate? What do you think he smells like? Is he really a person, just like you?
Optional homework assignment: Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and for each occurrence of the word "everyone," mentally substitute the word "elephant," and see where that gets you.
See also anthropomorphism.
Your Head Trucker has answers to a lot of other questions now bedeviling the public mind, like What is a woman? and Is Donald Trump a pathological liar? but it's probably best that I stop right here.
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2 comments:
I agree that "human beings have a moral duty to treat animals humanely, not abusing or mistreating them" but I question the concept of "the higher the animal, the greater the duty."
What I meant was, it's one thing to kill a fly, a mosquito, an ant, a microbe, a rat, or a snake - it's another thing to kill or maim or torture a cat, a dog, a horse, or an elephant. They are a higher order of being, more intelligent and companionable than the rest, though still not human.
And it's an especial sin to kill a mockingbird, as everybody down South knows.
I wouldn't hesitate to shoot a mad dog or any wild animal endangering me or mine. But I confess that I sometimes exercise mercy on tiny stray insects who aren't bothering me at that moment and are not in a forbidden place, like the sugar bowl.
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