Events like FARM’s Animal Rights Conference are an opportunity for animal advocates to learn new things, network with likeminded people and energize  your activism.

The notes below are from a talk given at one of the morning plenary sessions by Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy and Why They Matter as well as Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. According to Literati.net, he has published more than 200 papers and 22 books!

From his talk:

• Why do we slaughter sentience? How do we decide who lives, who dies, and who suffers?
• Why do we do invasive things to animals in the name of entertainment or science?
• Who do we eat and why? WHO not what.
• Power doesn’t mean license.
• Good welfare isn’t good enough.
• What do the animals feel about what we do to them?
• Fish feel pain. There’s actually more scientific evidence that fish feel pain than there is that human neonates or preterm infants feel pain.
• We’ve recently discovered more data on the emotional lives of animals formerly thought to be unemotional: bees and jellyfish.
• Chickens can empathize and do math.
• Cows and pigs respond positively to touch and friendship… just like humans!
• Chimpanzes suffer PTSD from captivity.
• The differences between humans and animals are of degree, not kind. We all suffer, we all experience joy.

Here is a video of Marc Bekoff describing what he does:

—
Our notes from the 2011 AR conference will be all at http://www.vegansoapbox.com/topics/ar2011/. Notes from 2009′s conference are at http://www.vegansoapbox.com/topics/ar-2009/.

1,725 views
Sections: Vegan Resources
Topics: animal rights, animal rights conference, ar 2011, ar2011, bees, chickens, cows, emotion, feelings, fish, human neonates, jellyfish, likeness, marc bekoff, pain, pigs, preterm babies, science, sentience, similarities, suffering, welfare, who not what