Animals As Persons
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News about animal sentience:
“Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as ‘non-human persons’.”
“Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. “
Read more at Times Online >>
While I don’t think that intelligence should be the main criterion for fair human-animal relationships, I do think this is good news that will help people bridge the species barrier and begin to think of [non-human] animals as individuals worthy of rights.
PS – If you haven’t seen The Cove, please watch it. It’s available on DVD and On Demand in many places.
This comment left on the article is also worth reading:
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Lori Marino wrote:
As one of the scientists mentioned in this article I would like to clarify one of the statements made. The work I’ve done on dolphin brains shows that, when relative brain size is taken into account, some dolphin species are second only to modern humans and have larger brains than chimpanzees. However, I do not think we can “declare” that dolphins are the second smartest animals on the planet on the basis of just this information. I do not want to make categorical or hierarchical statements about matters that are clearly too complex to warrant a simple interpretation. The point of our upcoming session and arguments is this. Given what we now know about dolphin brains and intelligence we need to rethink our “accepted” cultural standards of treatment – from slaughter to capture to confinement in amusement parks. The scientific evidence is clear that the suffering imposed by these activities on dolphins is on a par with what humans would suffer under the same circumstances. That is the message of the article.
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I think that there is a great deal that we ‘don’t’ know about dolphins and other species. I found that the Bottle Nosed Dolphin has an hearing range of 90-105,000 mhz. The Purpoise has a hearing range of 75-150,000 mhz. When you compare that to the human’s hearing range of 20-20,000 its astounding. We have no idea what they are hearing in those ranges. Of course we cannot understand what they saying. We only hear the low notes they sing out. Each generation adds to the knowledge of what defines sentient..fortunately.
.-= Harry Hebert´s last blog ..Quotes – Page 218 =-.