Animal Rights

If you had the chance to protect another life and stop their pain and suffering, would you? If you choose to go to another animal show at a theme park, use a product tested on animals, or perform any other act of some sort involving cruelty to animals than you are no better than the person in control of those performances and tests. As David Williams Mitchell from the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria states, he can estimate 1,735 animals have been killed/died in zoos annually. That does not include zoos and animal parks that are not under the association. According to People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA), "Each year, more than 100 million animals—including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds—are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing." Eventually, all these deaths add up to a lot more than we'd ever expected. Animals need a Bill of Rights to be protected because they feel pain, know what love is and are so closely related to humans in more ways than we know.

As the article, Hooked on a Myth, stated "We stimulated the nociceptors by injecting diluted vinegar or bee venom just under the skin of the trout... Their gills beat faster, and they rub the affected area on the walls of their tank, lose interest in food and have problems making decisions" (Rifkin). Just as you would feel pain if you got a cut on your leg, an animal will too. The only difference is that not all animals may show it as a human does, we all have our way of dealing with pain. For example, a dog will yelp or bark when you step on their tail, a cat may hiss or run when something hurts, and fish may become distorted or swim away, no matter what the case, all people, and animals experience pain. They don't just undergo physical pain but emotional pain as well. According to Blackfish, "After, Kalina was removed from the scene and put on the truck and taken to the airport, and Katina, her mom, was left in the pool, like, literally just shaking and screaming, screeching and crying" (Carol Ray, former Seaworld Trainer). The experience of having your child taken away from you with force is something you never forget. It is a tragedy that scars you for life. All these animals know when someone that is dear to them is going to be taken away.

Although, do animals feel love? If they know pain, why is it so hard to believe they don't know how to love? In an experiment composed by Harry Harlow, a research psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, newborn monkeys were separated from their mother at birth and placed either with a fake surrogate made of cloth or one made of wire, in some cases the birth mother was present as well. The monkeys that grew up with the cloth mother were somewhat ordinary, but the monkeys that grew up with the wire mother were, "fearful and desperate. Their behavior was so bizarre that they seemed psychologically broken by the lack of a loving — or at least a cuddly-if-inanimate — mother" (David J. Tenenbaum) as The Why Files states. Just as human babies need love and attention, animals do too. Though we do not know if animals can feel love in a 'romantic' way, we can determine that they do indeed feel some emotion that can fall into the category of love. In the article, A Change of Heart about Animals, it states, "Elephants will often stand next to their dead kin for days occasionally touching their bodies with their trunks" (Rifkin). Animals mourn the dead for the same reason we do because we cared and loved them.

PhysOrg.com stated that dolphins "could be the most intelligent creatures