Do Animals Have Natural Rights?

Animals have had legal protection from unnecessary harm since the 19th century. Yet what harm is necessary is open to interpretation and animals continue to suffer and die for science and commerce. Should they have the right to freedom from humans?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is
Stuff you Should Know, Part two about animals rare sweet. Yeah,

(00:24):
good one. And you wrote this for your buddies at
Primer Yeah. Yeah, let's give a little shout out to
Primer Stories. Um So, Primer Stories are basically doing for
uh the interactive medium, the same thing that podcast did
for radio and Ted Talks did for speaking engagements. And
I wrote an essay for him for season four and

(00:46):
you can check it out at Primer Stories dot com
slash s y s K go go check it out.
It's pretty neat, but it ties into animal rights and
uh humans. But you you did put this together, right.
I've put together this episode and then I wrote a
separate essay based on my research that, um is, it's different. Nice.

(01:08):
I'm Josh Clark and I did my book report on Yeah.
Luckily the primary dudes, Joe and Tim kept it from
devolving into that. Well, this was fantastic. I just want
to say that, thanks man, I appreciate it. Uh So,
I guess we don't need to set anything up. If
you haven't listened to the one on animal testing, yes,
stop right here, Yeah, just go do that and then

(01:30):
welcome to part two. Yeah, how awkward was that? I
thought it was pretty succinct. Okay, not awkward. Uh. So
tell me a little bit about your buddy Aristotle. So Aristotle,
we mentioned him in the last episode. We're gonna say
that a lot. But Aristotle was one of the first
dudes to experiment on animals. I think I called him

(01:50):
a big dummy, you did, and as a joke, Yeah,
and yeah, no, he's fine. Yeah he Uh. He was
a smart dude, he was. But one of the things
that he did not only um experimenting on animals, he
also came up with a hierarchy of animals based on

(02:12):
the souls he anticipated each possessed. He said, kitty got
pretty good, dog much better? What is that? Is he? Checkoslovakia?
I have no idea, No, I guess it'll just be
check now. Yeah, I don't know what that was unless
he's from like the fifties. It was It was not
Greco Roman? Uh, maybe Albanian. Okay, So Aristotle the Albanian

(02:37):
comes up with this hierarchy UM. And at the top
of the hierarchy, guess who humans And humans have all
three kinds of souls, the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul,
and the rational soul. We possess all three of those souls. Therefore,
we're at the top of the hierarchy of all the
organisms on planet Earth. Below us are animals, and they've

(03:00):
got the first two. They've got the vegetative soul and
the sensitive soul, which means that like they like to
lay around and read UM romance novels, that's right. And
then you've got plants, and plants obviously have the vegetative soul.
So what he's describing are the different um I guess
life forces that he expected UM organisms to have. And

(03:24):
because of that, there was a hierarchy that was established.
And because of that hierarchy that Aristotle came up with,
we still view animals in a certain way today, like
we still basically follow that same hierarchy that he made,
uh hundred years ago or so. Yeah, And and the
whole kind of point of this episode is kind of

(03:45):
based on that whether or not animals have a soul
and where they rank or maybe should rank, and UM
it's sort of that's sort of going down the rabbit
hole myself of what a soul is and human even Well,
you're not the first to do that, of course, Um,
would you come up with? Would you come up with?

(04:06):
Everyone wants to hear, including me and Jerry? Nah, I don't.
I don't know. I'm still struggling with what I believe,
even at my advanced stage, and I think I will
till the day I die and become worm dirt. Right.
So that's one indication of what I believe. Your last
words are oh no, Um, But that that idea whether

(04:26):
or not animals do have a souls is nothing new. Um.
You point out very astutely that, Um, Judeo Christian wise,
they do not think that animals have souls and have
long held kind of a brutal attitude toward animals, like,
forget animals, just kick them in the face. I don't care.

(04:47):
That's a little harsh. But um, there the idea that
humans have dominion over animals very much a part of
the Judeo Christian ethic. Yeah, and should have dominion yea.
And that animals don't have souls, and that's reason what's
one reason why humans have dominion. That's right. It turns
out the Mormons actually are one of the few groups
in the West religiously speaking, that do believe that animals

(05:10):
survive into the afterlife. Mormons and then um seeks Muslims, Hindus,
big time Hindus, and Jane's Jainists. Um. They believe that
the best way to to um save your soul is
to protect other souls. So like you'll see a jainistum
with a little they they have little brooms and they'll

(05:32):
like wipe down or they'll they'll brush off a seat
before they sit on it because they don't want to
accidentally sit on any bug and take its life. Well
that's nice, that's uh. That's protection of other souls for sure.
Not like the cockroach, right, they'll still kill a kukara.
Oh man, I had a funny cockroach that incident last night.

(05:52):
Like I laugh, belly laughed for ten minutes. What did
the cock roads laugh? Well, there was a cockroach in
the room at some point that got away and um.
Later on that night, Emily and I were in bed
and I was on my computer and she was reading
or something, and she looked up and on the ceiling
it was right above her and she, oh, there's that cockroach,
which I was shocked that she was that lazy fair

(06:15):
about it. I went, why are you not freaking out?
I was like, that thing's about to fall on you?
And right when I said you, he moved and fell
right on her. And it's so funny, like she's she
shrieked like a small child and jumped off the bed
quicker than I've ever seen her move. She scared my dogs.
I jumped and ran, but I didn't shriek, which I

(06:37):
just thought was very interesting dichotomy. Um and I killed it.
And it was just very very funny that she was
just like, oh, there's that cockroach, Like who are you?
You're not the Emily I know exactly, Like why aren't
you running? And she's super tired or something she was,
But yeah, it's just very strange. I think she learned

(06:57):
the lesson that a cockroach on the ceiling is not
on the ceiling for long means you roll out of bed, yeah, immediately.
So anyway, that's my cocorad story. Uh. Judaism they believe that,
um well, it's a lot of debating in the Jewish community.
Some scholars say that they do have souls. Yeah, lately
they've been saying that, but only here while they're alive,

(07:19):
and they don't carry into the afterlife. Big work around. Yeah,
uh it is Uh. Pope John Paul the Second said, yeah,
you probably you you probably are going to see your
your little dog in the afterlife. Maybe it's possible. I'm
Pope John Paul. Everybody loves me. Would you like my autograph? Right? Me?

(07:40):
Gorby and Ronald Reagan rule the world? Uh. During the Enlightenment,
things change a little bit from the religious aspects to
more of a uh science based or philosophical and our
old buddy Descartes said animals have no internal experience, which
is very cold way of putting it. Yeah, he called

(08:01):
them automatons kind of famously actually, and he said that, um,
they are capable of ex of responding to pain, but
because they don't have any internal experience, they can't actually
experience the pain. Therefore, when you, um are cutting open

(08:23):
a live dog and you're seeing it squirm and and
wrythe and agony strictly responding to a stimulus, it's not
actually going on. Like when Lucas testing out his new
hand and he's poking the like the different nerves or
the artificial nerves or whatever making the fingers move. He's

(08:44):
getting poked on the finger, but he doesn't feel that.
It's just a response to a stimuli. Yeah, I guess
very much like that. It's the same thing as like
with robots too. Yeah. I mean that's that's how essentially
they cart decreed that animals were And that's some thing
that stuck out to me, like throughout researching this whole thing.
Humans have long just decreed that things are a certain way,

(09:08):
and that those decrees tend to fit whatever the human
wants to do to an animal at that time of course, right, Yeah,
that idea is sort of the basis was and still
kind of is for for scientists who experiment on animals.
They're trained to um to detach themselves emotionally and just say, no,
this is just a stimuli reaction. This is not an

(09:31):
animal that's actually feeling pain. Dogs don't have that. Dogs
don't have internal experience or internal lives, so you can't really,
I can't really feel pain or suffering. It's not true. Uh.
Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher in England. Correct, Yeah, a
big one and actually he's still around. They bring his

(09:53):
mummified body out for um dinners of the the guys
who run the college what, every once a year, and
he sits at the head of the table and his
head has actually been separated from his body, and they
bring that out too. It's in a case. It's pretty cool.
Holy cow. Yeah, as far as philosophers go, it's pretty neat.
So he had a pretty neat idea, which was, um,

(10:16):
you know what, it's not just about whether you can
reason with an animal, but can they suffer? He's he's
the one that kind of brought about this idea of
animals suffering in the same way that a human might,
which is a huge change. It was a big sea
change in the way that we saw animals, because up
to that point, the idea was that animals couldn't suffer,

(10:37):
and even if they could suffer, nobody was taking that
into account. But they couldn't suffer because they couldn't talk
or they couldn't rationalize. And he said, no, we I
think they can suffer. And he used his um philosific calculus,
which takes into account all of the suffering and all
of the happiness or pleasure produced by an event and

(10:58):
you weighed against one another and it's really involved. Actually,
but if you carry out Bentham's calculations, uh, you can
take any any event, any action, and determine whether it's
ethically like, morally correct or morally repugnant. And uh, he
came to the conclusion that experimenting on animals was morally

(11:22):
repugnant because animal suffering wasn't taken into account. And he
took it into account, and it wasn't just a one
off where he wrote an essay about it like this
is a well he went back to a lot and
was kind of an agitator for animal welfare early on. Well,
there's a lot of money in it, right. Uh So
moving on to and I think you make a very

(11:44):
good point here that the protectionism for animals really starts
around the time where we made the transition um in
in farming and how we raised in eight animals. Yeah,
because you sue like you be like I feel like
some beef for dinner. I'm gonna go kill old Bessie
r Cow. Yeah, And you love Bessie, and your little

(12:06):
boy or a little girl might cry about Bessie, but
then the parents would explain that you know, We raised Bessie,
and we loved and cared for Bessie, treated Bessie very nicely. UM.
And the reason Bessie is here so Bessie can eventually
feed us, and we should um honor that in every
way possible by using as much of this animal as

(12:26):
we can and honor the life that she led. You know,
or if you had a bad parent, they just kind
of wheeled that cleaver in your direction and shut up
just as fast. This could be you. But that was
a huge sea change when things started to change and
industrialization took off, UH, and people were no longer connected

(12:47):
to the animal on their farm that they ate. It
was a sea change and how people I mean it
directly coincided with how people felt about animals. When you
could buy something in the store that looked nothing like
that animal. Yeah, it's not even called pig, it's called
pork or bacon or ham. Um. And then not only
that chuck something I left out here that came across later. Um.

(13:07):
This is at the same time when people move from
the farm to the factory, from rural um in interactions
with animals to UH to urban settings without animals. This
is when people started to keep pets. Yeah, you know,
I never realized what you just said there about pork
and beef. That never really dawned on me. It's never

(13:27):
called pick that. If it said ground cow, right instead
of ground beef, people would be like, reveal, yeah, some
baby cow, ground baby cow. Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense.
And such a dummy that that never occurred to me, Like,
is that where that came from? Calling them different names?
I would guess veal is probably like Latin for baby

(13:50):
calf or something. I don't think it was a purposeful obfuscation.
I don't know, would not surprise me. This is before
the advent of pr, so I think much more innocent,
naive back then. Chicken is but who gives? Who cares
about chicken? I was saying that, Um, this is also
the time when people began keeping pets around the house,

(14:12):
so animals, so we're removed from food production, and we're
we were starting to see animals not as commodities but
as sweet little things that we want to care for
and protect and like give food to and like let's
sleep in the bed with us. And it developed this
dichotomy of how we view animals today, which is, um,

(14:33):
animals are to be protected by humans, but we can
also eat them. It's totally cool. Uh. And that's a
really if you step back and look at it. It's
so easy to take for granted because that's how almost everybody,
except for vegans um view animals. It's really easy to
take it for granted. But if you step back and

(14:54):
look at it, it's a very bizarre contradictory um paradigm. Yeah,
it's sort of a deal people have made with themselves mfortually,
I think, and society is made with itself too. All right, Well,
we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back
and talk a little bit about the fact that, as
of yet, there were still no laws on the books
about protecting animals. All right, before we left, I teased

(15:37):
about the laws of the land and while things were
changing maybe attitude in le Uh. In England. You point
out in the mid nineteenth century, it was still legal
to beat your horse to death if he was tired,
or to kill your cow if it didn't produce milk.
There were no laws in place or like a your

(16:00):
dog did something you didn't like, you could kick it
to death. Like It's just some people did that. I
think some people are still like that today, but are
restrained by laws that developed out of this era, out
of the nineteenth century, and where before there weren't any laws.
So if you were in impulsive puts, you could kick

(16:20):
a dog to death. You know. I can't even go
there with those stories that happened today, but that happened
even more then. That's a very important point though, is
like society as a whole wasn't just beating horses and
dogs to death. UM for the most part, right, I
think it was sociopath back then, and I think it

(16:42):
still is now, you know. UM, for the most part,
people did not do that, and people didn't even like
they didn't necessarily even turn a blind eye too it.
I think they did more because there wasn't a lot
you could do. UM. But it's probably along the lines
of where if you, UM don't agree with spanking your kid,
and you see somebody in the store like grab their

(17:04):
kids and spank them, you might want to say something,
but at the same time, you probably won't because you
don't know if that's a crazy person and or whatever.
You don't get involved. For the most part, most people don't.
I think that was probably very much the same lines
like where you um, you might see something like that happening,
but you weren't gonna say anything. I think that was

(17:25):
the social status quo at the time. But that said, if, if,
if the circumstances were right in the act was particularly egregious,
some someone might say something. There was a guy in
eighteen thirty four who in the middle of Washington, d c.
Beat his cow to death, and he was arrested and
charged with um not beating the cow to death because

(17:47):
again there was no law protecting that cow, but um
with creating a public nuisance because he subjected all the
passers by to the site of his cow being beaten
to death, and people objected to it. So even even
at the time when there wasn't any legal protection for animals,
there was still there was a line that was drawn.

(18:08):
You know, people weren't cool with it, you know. Interesting, So,
legislatively speaking, it was about the turn of the nineteenth
century in England when Lords Erskine and Morton got together
and they a bunch of times to try and actually
amend the code, the legal code and UH. One of
the first things they tried to outlaw with something called

(18:30):
bull baiting UH and I imagine bear baiting, which was
also a thing. And we'll get to this in a second,
but it's like Roman gladiator stuff. Yeah. It's when they
put a bull or a bear and they chain them
to a steak and a pit. Yeah, and put dogs
in there to fight and kill. Yeah. And bulldogs used

(18:52):
to be way, way more vicious and aggressive than they
are today. They actually had that stuff bred out of
them and they looked a lot different to um. But
that's where they got their name from. Bulldogs. Bear baiting
is still going on in Pakistan. Yeah, it's it's disgusting,
it's um there's a big push to stop it now.

(19:13):
There's a group called World Animal Protection International and that's
one of their big causes is to stop bear baiting
in Pakistan. But UM, I would encourage you not to
look that up and and look at pictures and stuff
un once you want your heartbroken. But um, it's amazing
that in s that's still going on in the world
at all. But it is uh and then Uh Martin

(19:35):
and Uh Martin and Erskin the great comedy duo was
going to say, too, what is it is? Because of
Martin Rohan and Martin is that where I'm thinking Uh,
in eighteen twenty two they actually were enabled to get
the first law pass in the West that made it
a criminal act to abuse animals, called Martin's Act after
Martin and Uh it was the technical name was an

(19:57):
act to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of battle
and it was specifically for livestock. And it was a
ten shilling fine three months in the pokey if you
didn't pay the fine. But what it did was set
a precedent for the future. It was very important it did.
It was only there was a law, right, there was
a law in the books protecting animals. And again, like
you said, it was pretty specific and technically there have

(20:19):
been a law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans
had a law in their Body of Liberties, but apparently
it wasn't ever enforced. But this is the first real law. UM.
And UH. The fact that Parliament was responding to this
um kind of aroused the public. Uh. We talked about

(20:40):
in the animal animal Testing episode the last one. UM.
How I think in eight seventy six there was a
law that passed that was passed like protecting animals during
experimentation thanks to Charles Darwin Um, that that came fifty
years after the first animal protection laws in the UK.
So they've been there have been niche people. Groups who

(21:03):
had been agitating for this got actually the parliament involved,
and then the public became involved, which is usually the
opposite rum. Usually it's like these groups agitate, get the
public involved, and then the public get government to do something.
This actually kind of went out of order a little bit.
But the people who were agitating, these niche people were

(21:26):
usually very interesting people like Henry Berg is a really
good example. Boy, I love this guy. Yeah, you talked
about an agitator. He founded the created the A s
p C A, and um, he was a little rich
kid and he basically said, you know what, I'm gonna
kind of dedicate my life too walking the streets because

(21:46):
one of the things in eight sixty six when the
SPC A SPC I was founded was in New York.
They said, you know what, you have the power to
go out and police these things. We're not really enforcing it,
but you can do so, and great, I'll do it. Yeah.
He was a true believer for sure. Um. I think
the first instance, as the legend goes, he saw he

(22:08):
was a Russian diplomat or a diplomat to Russian American
diplomat in Russia. Um, during the reign of the Tsar still,
he saw a Russian peasant beating his horse, and he
threatened to beat the man, and the guy responded very
in in a way that Henry Berg was like, oh,

(22:28):
I'm going to do this all the time. Now he
was like, I'm so sorry. Apparently the guy started crying
he was being talked down to by someone of a
higher station. Then when Henry Bird got back to America
and tried it, he found that people of the middle
or lower classes beneath him socially did not respond the
way the Russian peasantry did. They said, this is New York,

(22:49):
so he had to kind of So he would um
sometimes actually follow through on his threats and like beat
people he saw beating their horses. Um, I have no
problem with that. Yeah, I think most people didn't. But
he would also he'd go and break up like underground
bullfight or underground bull baiting that underground bullfight to both

(23:11):
going a uh. And he is buried in Greenwood Cemetery
in Brooklyn. If you want to go by and uh
lay some flowers at his grave and pay your respects.
I think I might do that next time in New York. Yeah,
and I mean even if you're not in the animal rights.
He was also a huge children's crusader, and he very
wisely never allowed, uh, the children's organizations that he funded

(23:33):
and supported, to merge with the animal organizations, because he
knew full well that the little children would take the
wheel and they would very quickly overwhelmed the sentiments in
the UM. The efforts on behalf of the animals. Yeah,
it was. It was pretty smart to keep it uh separate.
You got to keep them separated. You point out in

(23:56):
this article very astutely that um abusing an animal is
it could be an indicator of violence toward humans. And
I know that. You know, uh a lot of serial
killers started out like killing animals first as their first try.
That is, from what I can tell, most likely a
pop psychology urban legend, what that they did that. Yeah,

(24:22):
I mean there's Jeffrey Dahmer did for sure. There's okay, yes,
but that the idea that it's a predictor of future
serial killing. Oh yeah, yeah. The triad of evil, which
is bed wedding, harming, farming animals, and setting fires. If
you have your kid doing those three things allegedly under
this triad of evil, you can bet that there's a

(24:43):
pretty good chance they're going to grow up to harm humans.
I went to bed. I uh, I didn't set harmful fires,
but I did play with fire a little bit. I
think this is more like you're intentionally setting fires like
harmiting or burning burned down the woods. No, I didn't
do that. Um. And then you know, my dog died

(25:04):
and I sat in his doghouse for two days and cried.
So I was it's not harming animals, clearly not. I
was on the other side of the coin from early
on when Huggy Bear died. But that whether or not
that's true that that's been used. The Huggy Bear, Yeah,
that was my German Shepherd. Great name for a dog. Yeah,
that was like the first dog that I really bonded with.
That was the dude from the like the street Wise

(25:27):
start from start, right, Huggy Bear. That's great. Yeah, he
was awesome. I get a little sad thing about him today,
which Huggy Bear not the TV show. Okay, I just
remember my mom literally came home from work and like
I was in the doghouse crying, like laying down and crying.
That is sweet. You know, I was such a little boss.

(25:51):
How old? How long was Huggy Bear around? Uh? You know,
I don't remember, like your whole life. Was he alive
when you were born, not when I was born? His
mom Daisy was And then Daisy died when I was
really young, so it didn't have a super big impact.
But then Huggy Bear was one of the puppies we kept.
How old were you when he died? I want to
say I was like eight or nine maybe, Oh, yeah,

(26:16):
that's right there. Yeah, first big loss. You know. Um
r I p Huggy Bear. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah,
we'll drink one in your honor tonight. Hb uh. But anyway, Yeah,
you're right. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny all the time.
But if you're torturing and killing animals, it's it's not
a good sign. No, And and the people who have

(26:39):
agitated for animal rights have long used this. Whether it's
true or not, people think it's true. So the whole,
the whole premise for a lot of people has been
if a human harms an animal, there's a good chance
they're gonna harm a human. So if you protect animals
and prevent people from harming animals, you're preventing somebody from
possibly harming human. I'm fine with that line of thought.

(27:01):
Or you're also by drawing a line before animals, you're
rooting out people who might harm humans down the road
by having them exposed themselves as harmers of animals. That
one's a little morally trickier. If harming animals doesn't lead
to harming humans. If you assume that it doesn't treat

(27:23):
the person like that like, oh, you're a serial killer
because you just certifire Peter Pants and Ate bit the
head off a chipmunk. Actually, you'd probably be right if
especially if you did all three at once. At the
very least, I wouldn't leave them alone with your child.

(27:44):
Uh So, a lot of progress is being made, and
by nineteen o seven all the states in the United
States had some kind of anti cruelty law going on,
and it started to become just sort of the mindset. Yeah,
that was kind of the tradition, Like the states oversaw
a protection of animals until the mid sixties when the

(28:06):
federal government got involved and created the Animal Welfare Act
and the Animal Welfare Act. Um. Again, this kind of
follows that thing where some people agitate for changes to
the law, changes to our way of thinking, and get
the public aroused, and then the public say Congress or
government do something. The same thing happened here. UM Sports

(28:27):
Illustrated in Life Magazine both came out with articles about
how people's family pets are being stolen and used as
what are called random sourced animals that are sold to labs.
And that really would get the public going right, because
the idea that Huggy Bear could be stolen from your yard,
sold to Johns Hopkins University's Head Trauma Center, and then

(28:51):
have his head beaten open with a bat. See what happens.
I'm sorry I used Huggy Bear. Now that I'm I'm
making this this far forty years later, that still cuts
the uh so, Snoopy Snoopy is stolen from your yard
and experimented on the idea that this could happen just

(29:12):
scared an outraged America, and UM it created very quickly
the Animal Welfare Act. Yeah, and that originally just protected
lab use, but then over the following decades, you know,
it really expanded. UM and today it protects all warm
blooded animals in lab experience except three birds sadly uh,

(29:34):
the rattus genus rats, and the muss genus mice and
uh not Coincidentally, they those three makeup of research animals
in the US, along with the other cold blooded animals
that are used like fish and reptiles. So of the
animals used in lab experiments are not covered by the

(29:57):
Animal of Welfare Act. But it's not to say that
other animals can't be used in animal experiments. It just
means that if you do experiment on a guinea pig
or a macaque monkey or something like that, you have
to follow these guidelines. But even then the guidelines are
pretty slouchy. Actually, they're huge loopholes, and basically they amount

(30:19):
to um you. Especially originally in like nineteen sixty six,
you just have to reduce unnecessary suffering. Who's to say
what's necessary or unnecessary? Certainly the law didn't, and they
left it up to the researchers to decide what was
necessary or unnecessary. What's crazy is Chuck is it has

(30:40):
been expanded and amended, It's also been narrowed. There was
an amendment made I think in the seventies that extended
the protections, which again are loose and almost toothless, to
all animals warm and cold blooded. And then in two
thousand two they dialed it back to what it is
now and what it was originally, whichard's warm blooded animals

(31:02):
except rats and mice, and the cold blooded animals and
the birds and the birds and the bees in the
sycamore trees. All right, well, let's take a break here
and we're gonna come back and talk about the kind
of the two categories for animal protection, animal welfarest and
animal rightest's what I call them, all right, right after this, Okay,

(31:45):
we're back, Chuck, and you teased um the different types
of approaches to protecting animals, right there is like a
whole contingent of people. And I think most people on
the street, if you stopped them said do animals deserve
protection from harm or suffering? I would guess most people
would say yes. And I'm sure there's surveys out there.

(32:07):
I didn't find one, Um, but if you drill a
little deeper into it, to adopt a little corporate buzz speak, um,
low hanging fruit, yeah, you would find that there's really
kind of two threads to this, like, and they're they're
based on just how far you feel that protection should go. Right,

(32:27):
So the first is animal welfare. So and that's the
current accepted paradigm of how we approach treating animals protecting animals. Yeah,
and they generally think, uh, and these are you know, generalizations,
but it's if you're going to fit people into two groups,
you got to do that. They generally think that, you know,
what we're doing now works pretty well, but we need

(32:49):
to enforce it more. We agree with John Locke and
Emmanuel Kant that you should protect animals from cruelty, but
not because like they have moral standing necessarily, but because
that is a sign of a bad person that makes
us look bad, which you know that's valid. Um. But

(33:11):
they balance that out with we treat animals humanely, but
we can still use them for food and labor. Right,
So animals deserve protection from humans harming them, um, But
they're also our property, like we can we can do
what we want with them, so long is there isn't
any unjustified suffering, right and uh, not suffer needlessly, which

(33:35):
you pointed out earlier, but more so here that that's
a needlessly what does that mean it's very open to interpretation. Yeah,
because if you look at what happens to animals in
animal experiments, there's um I mean it runs the gamut,
like and everything from withholding food and water to um

(33:55):
uh burning skin with blow torches or to making a
monkey obese on purpose and making sure they don't exercise.
So you can study what lap band surgery does, right,
I mean there's damaging their brains, maiming on blinding them, um,

(34:16):
just doing invasive surgical procedures for for practice like just um.
The idea of what is justified is extremely subjective, but
as a society we've all generally agreed that hey, as
long as science is being advanced, as long as human

(34:37):
uh humanity is is being in some way advanced or
developed or protected, then it's justified. Um or And then
with food, right, like, is it those animals don't die
of old age? Is it? Is it a needless death
to eat a cow uh and kill the cow before

(34:58):
it's time? Yeah? And so most people, I think who
believe in the hierarchy of humans at the top of
all organisms here on earth would say, well, yeah, that's
a useful a useful um use of an animal feeding
a human, right, right, So that's the idea of animal welfare.
Protect them from harm, but yeah, we can eat them

(35:21):
and and and a good example is making sure a
cow has a good life while it's alive, it's not
suffering while alive, it's not scared when it dies, and
then you can eat it totally fine. That's the animal
welfares view, and that's the generally accepted view in in
the West. Animal rights or rightists. Uh. They think generally

(35:48):
that the system we have is flawed and that um,
animals have these rights they or they should have rights
kind of along the same lines that humans do. Um.
They should have legal protection just like we do under
the law. And we are a long way from where
we need to be when it comes to protecting animals
from humans. Right. Um. The idea of the animal rightists

(36:12):
is that animals have an inherent moral value. Um. And
the idea behind that is if if they have an
inherent more moral value like humans do, then they deserve
legal protections that humans enjoy, which is a radically different
approach to protecting uh animals. Um. And the idea is that, um, well,

(36:38):
it all kind of came from this guy named Peter Singer,
and he wrote a book in nineteen called Animal Liberation,
and he basically started off the modern animal rights movement,
especially the radical version of it. He said in it
that um that you, if you use Bentham's philocific calculus,

(37:02):
but include animals right to happiness, not just their suffering.
He added a little cherry on top, right, you just
blow the concept of using animals for human means out
of the water, like it's just not justifiable. Is an
animal a moral agent? And a moral agent is a
being that is capable of making decisions based on right

(37:25):
or wrong. And moral behavior comes in all sorts of forms.
We think of it as like, um, helping a little
lady across the street, or not stealing even though you
totally could and get away with it. Um, But it's
it's even more. It's even broader than that. And some
people say animals do demonstrate moral behavior like loyalty or
showing concern for someone that's or a person that's injured,

(37:48):
or something like that, and so therefore an animal can
be a moral agent. Other people say, no, an animal
can't rationalize, it can't think about the future, it can't
want to keep living. Therefore, it couldn't possibly be a
moral agent. And Peter Singer really made a lot of
waves when he said, he said, well, then if you're
going to experiment on animals because they're not moral agents,

(38:09):
you might as well go ahead and experiment on people
in vegetative states and infants because they're not moral agents
under that definition either. Yeah, he says, you know what, else,
can't rationalize your baby? Yeah, so go ahead and do
some horrible experiments on your baby. Yeah. And I'm sure,
I mean, the other side of the argument was probably like,
oh god, and he dropped that Mike, and everything is

(38:32):
the rubbing in our faces. Uh. Another guy came along
named Tom Reagan, and uh. He wrote a book called
The Case for Animal Rights. He argued favorably, the animals
do have moral rights, and he had a little thing
that he liked to call subjects of a life. He said,
humans and animals are both subjects of a life, which

(38:55):
means we have you know, animals have that inner experience
that is called haveing a life like we do. Right,
So some of the ones that have higher moral, higher
faculties up. Yeah, yeah, it's not all animals in his
his uh, in his um view, it was like ones
that are capable of reasoning, because some people say humans

(39:17):
are the only rational beings on the planet and therefore
everything else is is open season. Um, these guys like
Tom Reagan said, no, there are certain animals out there
that can reason and therefore can be moral agents. Yeah.
I mean when you see behavior of some of these
animals like that elephants, well then people would be like,
that's anthropomorphizing, anthropomorphizing burn him. Yeah, you know, you try

(39:41):
and burning can't can't be can't be, can't be proven.
So therefore Descartes ghost exists. And then Tom Reagan also
made waves chucked by saying, um, if if an animal
is a subject of a life, meaning it can think
about its own life and want to live, therefore, um,
I sound like Miss South Carolina. Therefore, um, that animal

(40:05):
deserves at least one basic freedom, which is the freedom
from being property, which in and of itself would radically
alter our relationship humans relationship with animals. So these guys
are like kind of putting these ideas out there, and
as we'll see, they got some response, but it was
typically um among hardcore animal rights people rather than the

(40:29):
general public. Up to this point, and then the final
dude in the trifecta, the triad of Evil, of Evil,
of good. I know, I'm just teasing Gary franc Uh.
He was a guy that came along and said, you
know what, we need to abolish our domination over animals period. Outright,

(40:50):
it is slavery and we should treat it as such,
get rid of it. And he said, we didn't get
rid of slavery by making slavery more humane. We got
rid of slavery by getting rid of slavery. That's what
you do. And he's saying, it's the same thing here. Yeah,
pretty radical ideas at the time. Yeah, it's um and
radical is a pretty good word because these these ideas

(41:11):
really caught the attention of some people who did become
I guess radicalized by them. Like the the animal rights
movement has had long had a militant arm to it,
for sure. Yes, it started actually before even Peter Singer's
book Animal Liberation, from as far back as nineteen sixty two,
there was a group in the UK called the Hunt

(41:33):
Saboteurs Association. This is the most polite saboteurs organization name
you can come up with, probably, so they um, they
sort of laid the groundwork for for the Animal Liberation Front,
who was got a lot of press, and then another
group called the Band of Mercy Um. The Band of
Mercy was named for the Victorian era British SPC A

(41:57):
with their children's wing. Yeah, that's what in the cute Yeah,
totally cute, the Band of Mercy Um And they were
the actual the first people to liberate animals when they
broke into a laboratory that used uh or a farm
that that sold guinea pigs, two labs, and freed six

(42:17):
guinea pigs. Yeah, they made off with six, but I
mean there were six guinea pigs lives that uh that
otherwise would have been um subject to experimentation. So it
was a big success and they ended up eating the
guinea pigs to celebrate, No, they didn't. Uh. And the
actually the lady who ran the farm though, she was
really shaken up and she actually shut down her guinea

(42:38):
pig selling business because of that because she was I
mean some some people had broken into her house at
night and she thought twice Yeah, she was like this
is I don't want this to happen again. And I
mean this is depending on your viewpoint, this is deeply
uncool of these people, like they used in imidation. They

(43:01):
would make death threats, they would make bomb threats. Um.
They would threaten people's family. Yeah, they would set fires.
People who were running legitimate labs were threatened. Um, people
who were legitimately supplying the labs were threatened. Yeah, they
would set fires. Um. And then there were other ones
where you're just like, yeah, I'm kinda and can kind
of get behind that. The point to a lot of

(43:24):
these wasn't not wasn't just to get people to um
cease their activities or to actually liberate animals. They um
were done also to generate publicity. This is a huge
aspect of it. These guys were pr masters. They realized
that the bigger and the bolder, UM, the more likely
it was to get headlines. So guys like the or

(43:45):
groups like the Animal Liberation Front or UM the Band
of Mercy would agitate, go out and do these these acts,
and then Peter like more moderate groups that weren't actually
doing us would publicize it and write up press releases
and send it out to the press and um maybe
set up interviews and stuff like that and try to

(44:07):
get the get the word out as much as possible
about these One thing Peter did was they would, uh,
they would basically turn people. Well sometimes they would send
people in undercover to get jobs at these labs so
they could make videotapes. And sometimes they would just get
in touch with someone there who worked there, turn them
as but basically as a double agent, and say you

(44:29):
will be our person on the inside and you can
do these videos for us. And they got kill the Queen.
They got sixty hours worth of audio and video from
a lab, cut it down to a about a half
an hour documentary called Unnecessary Fuss and released it. And
it was a big deal. Like basically experimentation and and

(44:54):
in humane treatment on tape for the masses beyond. Like
it was about as ugly as you could get. Was
that the u PEN Head Trauma Center, UM research lab.
That's probably all you need to say. Pretty much. Baboons
were involved and they were researching head trauma. Yeah. So um.
When this came out, it really got the public going.

(45:15):
And just like in the sixties with those two articles
about people's pets being stolen and used in lab experiments,
this led to an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act.
UM directly led to it, and the amendment said that, uh,
there needed to be committees that oversaw each lab that
was carrying out animal experiments. There needed to be the

(45:36):
use of pain relievers and anesthesia uh in in experiments,
and there needed to be postoperative care in lab experiments.
Right yeah, and that you couldn't take a single animal
and just keep operating on that animal. Okay, Again, all
of these things had a very important caveat. Caveat is

(45:59):
unless it's necessary. So there was a huge loopholder. If
you're testing like pain threshold on a maccaque monkey, while
you can't give it pain relievers, you can't give it anesthesia,
you need to inflict pain, and well it's part of
the experiment, so it's medically necessary. Or we have to
see how one maccaque monkey responds to multiple surgeries because

(46:22):
we're trying to induce ps PTSD in that monkey, so
we can study PTSD drugs. Well, that's medically necessary, and
that this this whole loophole, that huge loophole with the
idea that advancing science and human understanding and human welfare
as long as it's necessary, then you can justify anything

(46:44):
you do to an animal that's still around and it's
been around for a very long time. So this is
all culminated in more recent years with a guy, an
attorney named Stephen Wise, who uh depending on who you are,
you might this guy is crazy, or you might say
he's amazing, a hero and a hero. So he's an

(47:07):
animal rights attorney essentially. He wrote a book in two
thousand called Rattling the Cage Colon toward Legal Rights for Animals,
and he basically put forth a very radical idea, which
is that some animals, like the elephant, or the great ape,
or the gray parrot African gray parrot, they actually deserve personhood.

(47:29):
They deserve legal protection under the law, just as a
human being does. And let me uh well, he founded
a in two thousand and seven, a group called the
Non Human Rights Project Big in Little H Big are
Big P and it's a legal defense group that basically said,
let's find a sympathetic judge somewhere where we can bring

(47:51):
up a case and maybe get something some precedent set,
get something on the books. Yeah, all they have to
do is get one case heard, get it denied, and
that's to motion the appeals process where you can work
through the higher courts. Right, um and hopefully get to
get some sort of legal ruling. Right. So this guy
is sharp and part of the problem that he's facing

(48:11):
right now is, as far as law in the United
States goes, animals are property. The strictly property, their special
property right Like, for example, if you're beating up your
microwave and the neighbors aren't going to call the cops,
and the cops aren't gonna come. But if you're beating
up your dog, the neighbors are probably going to call

(48:33):
the cops, and the cops are probably going to come. Right.
The thing is is that animals still property, and and
as far as the law goes, property cannot possibly have
standing in a court. And if it doesn't have standing,
then that means that the animal can't sue on its
own behalf. You being the neighbor, you can't sue on

(48:54):
the dog's behalf because you're just the neighbor who you
have no standing in this dog's wealth, are either. So
these these animals, any animal is in legal limbo as
far as American courts are concerned. Him. Why is trying
to figure out a way around that? Yeah, he attempted
some lawsuits and his organization did UM in New York

(49:16):
on behalf of four chimpanzees. UM, and he said, you
know what I'm gonna see on these chimps behalf, I'm
gonna try and gain their freedom. He lost all the cases,
got a lot of press, but he did have one
heard and in one of the cases he even got
a judge or not got a judge, but the judge
actually issued a writ of habeas corpus, first time ever

(49:38):
for an animal, even though the judge reversed that order
that same day. It Yeah, what did I just do? Uh?
It was a very big deal in the media. Got
I mean, I remember hearing about this guy on the
news and when you when you wrote this article, is like, oh,
I totally know that guy. Yeah. Yeah, there's a really
great Boston Globe profile on him and what he's doing

(50:00):
UM from a year a couple of years ago that's
worth checking out. Yeah, there's a documentary to UM release
this year called Unlocking the Cage by the legendary d A.
Pinne Baker and his wife and partner Chris. I'm not
sure you'd pronounce her name Heddas. Perhaps he's he's the

(50:20):
one that did Dylan's don't look back in or. He's
very legendary the War Room. I don't know if you
ever saw that, the political one. Um, what else because
I know the name he's he's a documentary legend, documentary
documentary and legend documentary, legend whatever. But he's uh made

(50:44):
this movie about Stephen Wise and his group called Unlocking
the Cage. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on
the list. Um. Yeah, he's a pretty interesting guy. Uh,
what's what. Something that struck me that I found in
my research was he and Peter don't really see eye
the eye. They're not working in conjunction. In a few
years back, Peter Um brought a case against Sea World

(51:06):
on behalf of the Orcas and said that it was
a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment against slavery, and Stephen
Wives is like, what are you doing? He saw that
they had very very clearly opened the door for the
judge to be like, the Constitution doesn't apply to animals
because animals aren't people. And once that precedent is set
like that, because it's not actually written in law, and

(51:33):
no one there hasn't been that precedent, and that really
opened the door for it. And he Luckily the judge
is just like no, but didn't rule any further. So
what why is trying to do is to get somebody
to set a different precedent, which is, uh, yeah, well
that that actually makes kind of sense. So let's let's
go ahead and run this trial through. Yeah, and it's

(51:55):
something that could be possible one day. Like you know,
there have been courts that have ruled where, uh, this
animal was an heir to in a state, and the
court made the animal temporary ward of the court and
endowed this animal with the inheritance give it a nice lunch. Yeah,
they had to kind of work through that. So he's
he's kind of he's got a little bit of a

(52:16):
leg to stand on and kind of pointing some of
these things out right. And plus, corporations are artificial people
under the law. Yeah, we did a whole show in
that right, right. Um, So, I mean it's not like
this is just totally wacky as far as the law goes.
I think the problem is this the big challenge he's
facing is, Okay, let's say you're successful and all of
a sudden, animals have the same rights under the law

(52:39):
that humans do. What's that gonna do to the world. Um,
And that's a huge that's a huge question that's raised.
I mean, like you can just you can come up
with a lot of stuff that would happen automatically. Obviously,
medical testing has gone. No more zoos, no more circuses
for lea circuses with animals, right, it's just flee circuses

(53:01):
maybe um the creepiest circus of all. Um. Obviously, there
would be no hunting. Veganism would probably just be that's
just what we eat. Now. Nugent would just drown himself, Yeah,
he really would. Yeah, Ted Nugent would not like a

(53:22):
world where animals had the same rights that I think
about it. Um, And like pets would would there be
pets any longer? There's actually been changes I think somewhere
in Colorado and definitely in somewhere in Rhode Island, if
not Rhode Island, the state. Um, they they amended the
law to include guardian instead of owner or in addition

(53:46):
to owner. That's a different thing. It totally is like
when you're the legal guardian of your younger brother, you're
not their owner. No, I mean you might treat them
that way. But uh. And then the lastly, so we
talked about animals being moral agents. Right, so if you're
a moral agent, you also have moral responsibilities in addition

(54:07):
to moral protections. Another can of worms. Yeah right, So
like if an animal kills another animal, as are you
going to try it and execute it? Yeah? I mean, well,
I mean that kind of happens today. You can animals
are often put down when they attack other animals. Yeah, okay,
so yeah, there would be more of the same. What's

(54:28):
weird is apparently back in the Renaissance, in the medieval era,
um they used to have trials for animals that did
something record. It wasn't I mean like we do it today.
Like remember Travis the chimp who um who ripped the
woman's face off. He was summarily executed by police and

(54:49):
I think had he even been captured they would have
put him down. There wouldn't have been a trial. But
they used to actually have the trial. And it wasn't
because they wanted to give the animal a fair trial.
It was for he feeling the the community, you know,
to make the humans feel better. If they could draw
this out and make this like an actual issue that

(55:09):
was resolved in the execution of the of the animal. Interesting,
it's yeah, it's pretty way boy, good one, dude. Yeah,
nice job. Yeah, thanks you too, buddy. If you want
to know more about animal rights, you can type that
into the search bar your favorite search engine. And since

(55:29):
I said search engine, that means it's time for listener mail. Yes,
this is the famous part two from earlier this week
with IVON and I promised a list of band names
and a list of puns from Josh, because Josh says
that he hates puns despite his somewhat regular use of them. Yeah,

(55:51):
I again, I take issue with this. If you accidentally
make a pun, you're not a punny person. All right, Well,
let's just go on this list. Poison IVY episode Josh,
let's stop beating around the bush. Accident blood types Josh,
I'm sure I take a B blood. I'm positive of it.
Hula hoops discussing a pushing a hula hoop with a stick.

(56:13):
Hang in there and stick with it. Accident police dogs
discussing the current popularity of arson dogs. They're so hot
right now. I think that was on purpose. It's possible.
Remember that one chili Chili peppers, Josh, it's right for it.
Total accident. I don't even think you can include that one.
Can you sweat colors? There's this boiling point, I guess

(56:36):
talking about how hot it's been in Atlanta. M hm,
that's a reach. Yeah, I agree. Strike that one from
the record, UM spam, talking about the trouble the maker
of spam had one trying to sell spam. He was
hamstrung by the name Hormel spice meat. Again. Accident, handwriting analysis,
the writings on the wall. I don't even remember that one.

(56:59):
I'm not pun though, I'm not copping to any of
these purpose. I've got a few more UM casinos. It
paid off an aces Nolpe accident. White collar crime. This
is something that has woven into history of white collar crime.
Total act, disgusting. A wool transporter keeping wolf for his
own use. Again accident. I'm just gonna do one more,

(57:21):
pick the best of him, chuck uh. This like a letterman,
Tom tasteing how it works. After saying it makes you
wonder how things we can taste taste, he said, chew
on that one. Accident. And now the band names. I'm
gonna read through these very quickly and looking at this list,
these are great. So if you're out there looking for
a band, name, Listen up, listen up, toe thumb uh interest,

(57:45):
cytoplasmic sperm injection. Maybe like a prog band. Maggot Therapy
that's a metal band. The Static Crush that's total chew gaze,
oh yeah, or ima uh disruptive Technology. I don't even know.
My Atonic Goats. That's a good one. Yea. The Tennessee
Stiff Legs. I love it. That's a blue grass band.

(58:08):
A fist full of neurons. Metal uh, force Multiplier, total metal. Yeah,
that's pretty cool. Nazis on meth it's metal. Oh yeah,
punk that can be good too. Masters of Plastic, nerd Core,
colloidal quantum dots, definite nerd core, super critical fluid. That's

(58:31):
probably nerd Wore two actually, I guess so. Or a
boy band, the Brownie Wise Massacre. That's a indie that's good.
Brownie Wise overdrive boy they were two um Snake detection
theory up on that one. He's really cracking me up.

(58:53):
Extraordinary rendition. That's like a guy just like you. Two
guys in Maine that singing a coffee shop. They do
all the classics. Ye standards were extraordinary rendition, controlled burn
not bad. That's a new metal Poor fred Noonan. That's
a band that's destined to break up poop Fusion, same

(59:17):
cooperative eye hypothesis. I don't know if that's a good name.
After all, I might retract that one. Uh, Flesh on
the Chunks, that's a good one. Or that could be
the first uh album from poop Fusion. Uh, like a
Zappa esque band, the Horny skin Folds. M. I can

(59:39):
see that being like, uh, party party rock kind of thing, right, Um?
Is that freedom rock? Yeah? Man, turn it up professional
mermaid culture. That's not bad. That's very indie though. Yeah,
like they go to Columbia University or something. Uh. And
then finally too or super Critical CEO two not bad. Okay,

(01:00:03):
that's too super critical. So and then finally Frozen poop
Knife in there. Who did you tell to change their
name to Frozen poop Knife? Oh? I don't know. Oh
uh diarrhea Planet. Yeah, and they tweeted back and said
thanks for the idea, and never did they No way. Yeah,
that's great. Oh yeah, those guys are good. Yeah, all right,

(01:00:26):
that's it. That's it. Everybody von for keeping track of that. Man,
that's a great lesson. Yeah, and thank you to the
dudes at primer Stories for posting the essay I wrote.
Go check it out at primer stories dot com, slash
s y s K and if you want to hang
out with us, you can hang out with us on
Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at

(01:00:47):
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
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Is it how stuff Works dot com. Mhm