Welfare of Animals in the Wild

Animals come into existence only to meet a dangerous, hostile, violent place, where each day is a struggle. A struggle through the harsh world to an inevitable, unpleasant end. This is too much. That’s enough…

Below you will find a long list of articles about wild animal suffering, welfare biology, animal ethics, and other relevant matters. There are also links to groups and organizations that focus on these topics. You’ll also find links to videos, podcasts, and lists of publications. So be sure to check them out.

The standard view of nature is that of a harmony. All the species in an ecosystem comprise a complex, perfectly tuned society. Predators eat the herbivores, so they don’t eat all the plants. When a predator dies, scavengers eat its flesh. Then the invertebrates take care of what’s left. Eventually everything goes into the soil as nourishment for the trees, the fungi, the bushes, the grasses that serve as food for the herbivores. The grand cycle of life is complete. Tuned for millions of years by evolution. All this can be seen as mutually beneficial relationships between the species. Wolves kill the weakest deer, keeping the deer population in check and their gene pool in good condition. The ecosystem takes care of itself. It’s a pristine, perfect, natural system. It is good.

Is it, though? Let’s take a closer look and see nature from up close. How does the wilderness look from the inside? How is a life of an individual animal like? When we look across the animal kingdom, we see that individuals of a large majority of species produce many, many offspring. This is peculiar: if any pair of animals make many times more of the next generation, then we should see a massive increase in the total number of members of a species. Year after year we should see more and more of them. But we don’t. We see that the number of animals this year is similar to what it was a year ago. Why? It should be clear by now. Most animals on this planet die soon after coming into existence. They die and don’t get to reproduce. A single female sea turtle can have 50 to 300 offspring. Only 10% survive to adulthood. A Chinook salmon lays around 5000 eggs. More than half hatch. From over 2000 baby fish only around 20 survive to adulthood. That’s less than 1 in a 100. Most animals in the wild don’t get to experience anything positive in their lives. They don’t have time. They die young. They die from starvation; they are eaten alive; they catch a disease, get injured. Life on planet Earth is mostly suffering for the majority of creatures that come into existence.

What about those that do survive? Do they have good lives? When a female baboon loses a child, she may carry around the body of her baby for up to 10 days. Few species do things like this. If it were a human mother, we would say she’s emotionally distraught and has a hard time dealing with her loss. It’s possible that other primates go through something similar. Male chimpanzees form bands and attack neighboring groups. They are brutal. They kill everyone. They aim to completely annihilate the others. In the human context, we would talk about genocide. In some species of ducks, a bunch of males catch a female and violently gang rape her. Sometimes the level of brutality is such that they rape their victim to death. Many mammal predators like to play. Did you ever see a cat playing with a mouse or a bird? Big cats – lions, tigers, cheetahs – do it too. A female lion can catch a young antelope and hold it down, bite on it, release it, catch again, only prolonging the terror and pain of the prey. Orcas do something like this with seals. They push a seal off of a chunk of ice, drown it, release it and let it run back on the ice, only to repeat the torment. If we were to judge people doing such things – gang rapes, extermination of other groups, playing with the victim – we would use words such as evil, genocide, crime, torture, psychopath. We would immediately recognize and empathize with the suffering of the victims. When such horrible things happen in nature, we don’t judge the perpetrator. But we can recognize the terror and suffering of the victims. And we can empathize with them.

Animals in the wild suffer from starvation, injury, disease, parasites, predation, drowning, fires, rape, psychological trauma, and many other causes. Their experiences are as real as your experiences are. Their suffering matters just as your suffering matters. It’s not less just because they’re not human. It’s not meaningless just because we’re not harming them. It’s real to them. It’s happening to them. Every year, every day, every second thousands of animals are in pain; most of them know nothing but pain in their short lives. Let’s at least appreciate this reality, however grim it is. Even if we don’t yet have any good proposals on how to address this problem today, it doesn’t mean we can’t start thinking about future interventions.

For every person on Earth, there is around a billion wild animals. Imagine a billion planets, each occupied with as many animals as there are people on our Earth. On each of those planets, the animals suffer from natural causes. A billion planets for each person. That’s more than the number of stars you see with a naked eye on a clear night. Each of them could be a planet teeming with life – and be full of starving, sick, terrorized, eaten alive, suffering beings. That’s too much.

Unthinking evolution molded DNA so it builds bodies – fragile vehicles used to make more copies of DNA. Some mutations equipped animal bodies with perceptions, cognition, but also with a capacity to feel pleasure and pain. Since that time creatures are being harmed. They can get hurt; they feel pain; they suffer. This is a tool that DNA uses to steer the vehicles to struggle for survival – to make more copies of DNA. This is the state of our planet since at least 500 million years. Our species has been roaming the planet for up to 300 000 years. Multiply that by ten. Multiply by ten again. And again. And that’s still just above half the time feeling creatures have existed for. And they have been coming into existence only to meet a dangerous, hostile, violent place, where each day is a struggle. A struggle through the harsh world to an inevitable, unpleasant end. This is too much. That’s enough…

If this resonates with you and you find the problem to be worthy of consideration and further exploration, check the links below.

References – Links

Wild Animal Suffering. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering

Articles

Eskander, Persis (2018). Crucial Considerations in Wild Animal Suffering. Effective Altruism. https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-crucial-considerations-was/

Groff, Zach & Ng, Yew-Kwang (2019). Does suffering dominate enjoyment in the animal kingdom? An update to welfare biology. Biology and Philosophy 34 (4):40.

Harris, Jamie. Measuring Wild Animal Suffering: The Issues. Faunalytics. https://faunalytics.org/measuring-wild-animal-suffering-the-issues/

Herrán, Manu. Is there more suffering than enjoyment in nature? https://manuherran.com/is-there-more-suffering-than-enjoyment-in-nature/

Horta, Oscar (2010). Debunking the Idyllic View of Natural Processes: Population Dynamics and Suffering in the Wild. Telos: Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios Utilitaristas 17 (1):73-90. https://philpapers.org/rec/ALVRLV

Horta, Oscar (2017). Animal Suffering in Nature. Environmental Ethics 39 (3):261-279. https://philpapers.org/rec/HORASI-3

Moen, Ole Martin (2016). The Ethics of Wild Animal Suffering. Etikk I Praksis – Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics. 10: 1–14. doi:10.5324/eip.v10i1.1972. http://www.olemartinmoen.com/wp-content/uploads/TheEthicsofWildAnimalSuffering.pdf

Ng, Yew-Kwang (1995). Towards welfare biology: Evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering. Biology and Philosophy volume 10, pages 255–285.

Rowe, Abraham. Should Longtermists Mostly Think About Animals? Effective Altruism Forum. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/W5AGTHm4pTd6TeEP3/should-longtermists-mostly-think-about-animals

Sebo, Jeff. All we owe to animals. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/we-cant-stand-by-as-animals-suffer-and-die-in-their-billions

Soryl, Asher (2018). Establishing the moral significance of wild animal welfare and considering practical methods of intervention. (Master’s Thesis.) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Asher_Soryl/publication/331025520_Establishing_the_Moral_Significance_of_Wild_Animal_Welfare_and_Considering_Practical_Methods_of_Intervention/links/5c6210e5a6fdccb608bba7fe/Establishing-the-Moral-Significance-of-Wild-Animal-Welfare-and-Considering-Practical-Methods-of-Intervention.pdf

Tomasik, Brian. The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering. Center on Long-Term Risk. https://longtermrisk.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/

Torres, Mikel (2015). The case for intervention in nature on behalf of animals: A critical review of the main arguments against intervention. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism 3: 33. https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/Relations/article/view/824

Vinding, Magnus (2016). The Speciesism of Leaving Nature Alone, and the Theoretical Case for “Wildlife Anti-Natalism”. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/624122

Višak, Tatjana (2017). Preventing the suffering of Free-living Animals: should Animal Advocates Begin the killing?. Journal of Animal Ethics 7.1: 78-95.

The Myth of a Wilderness Without Humans. The MIT Press Reader. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-myth-of-a-wilderness-without-humans/

The situation of animals in the wild. Animal Ethics. https://www.animal-ethics.org/wild-animal-suffering-section/situation-of-animals-wild/

Estimates of numbers of animals

Ray, Georgia. How Many Wild Animals Are There? Wild-Animal Suffering Research. https://was-research.org/writing-by-others/many-wild-animals/

Tomasik, Brian. How Many Wild Animals Are There? https://reducing-suffering.org/how-many-wild-animals-are-there/

Lists of organisms by population. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_organisms_by_population

Videos, Podcasts

Animals in the wild often suffer a great deal. What, if anything, should we do about that? 80,000 Hours. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/persis-eskander-wild-animal-welfare/

Graham, Michelle. How evolution can help us understand wild animal welfare. Centre for Effective Altruism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPzvWKOzWjY

Oscar Horta: Why animal suffering is overwhelmingly prevalent in nature. EffectiveAltruismCH. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ0XTofuGmY

Oscar Horta – Interventions and advocacy for wild animal suffering. Morality is Hard Podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HftQ7quFcss

Wild Animal Suffering, Welfare Biology, Nature Ethics (playlist). https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWWQ0LBECuOc1jZt7g8aqwXv8RYE6xbpa

Suffering in Nature (playlist). https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWWQ0LBECuOfoP1BQk52lufPfqI85JRv_

Lists of Publications

Publications about wild animal suffering. Animal Ethics. https://www.animal-ethics.org/publications-about-wild-animal-suffering/

Dorado, Daniel (2015). Ethical interventions in the wild: An annotated bibliography. Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism 3: 219. https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/Relations/article/view/887

Wild animal welfare: a bibliography. Pablo’s miscellany. https://www.stafforini.com/blog/wild/

Groups and Organizations

Wild Animal Initiative – research on wild animal welfare, and works to build welfare biology as an academic field. https://www.wildanimalinitiative.org

Nature Ethics – raises awareness of wild animal suffering, increases our understanding of their lives and welfare. https://www.natureethics.org

Wild-Animal Suffering Research – research on animal welfare [Archived]. https://was-research.org (archive, refocused to Wild Animal Initiative)

Utility Farm – research and articles on animal welfare [Archived]. https://www.utility.farm/words (archive, refocused to Wild Animal Initiative)

Animal Ethics – outreach and research in defense of animals. https://www.animal-ethics.org

Other articles

Animals Can Get PTSD, Too. The Cut. https://www.thecut.com/2016/05/animals-can-get-ptsd-too.html

Baboon mothers carry their dead infant up to 10 days. EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/ucl-bmc030920.php

Beekeepers traumatised and counselled after hearing animals screaming in pain after bushfires. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-20/beekeepers-traumatised-by-screaming-animals-after-bushfires/11721756

Female Octopus Strangles Mate, Then Eats Him. Scientific American. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/female-octopus-strangles-mate-then-eats-him/

Reproductive behavior and lifecycle of Emerald cockroach wasp. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_cockroach_wasp#Reproductive_behavior_and_lifecycle

Tags

#WildAnimalSuffering #WelfareBiology #AnimalEthics #EFILism #WildAnimalWelfare #Nature #Suffering #Ethics #Antispeciesism #Bioethics