2023-06-09 08:07:00
You’ll just be a deer that has to keep looking over your shoulder to see if a wolf isn’t approaching. Other wild beasts, too, always live under the threat of a grim death, and on the way there is sadness everywhere, always hunted and desperate for food and shelter.
It is a printed image that, according to the philosophers Heather Browning (British) and Walter Veit (German), often crops up in current animal ethics. They make it in the internet magazine Biology & Philosophy short shrift.
Good food and lovemaking
No, the great outdoors isn’t paradise, they argue, but it’s not as gloomy as many of their fellow researchers make it out to be. It’s really nice to be a wild animal.
They point to research showing that dying between the jaws of a predator is likely not very painful and is short-lived. Browning and Veit especially believe that those minutes of agony should not make us forget that a good life preceded it. An existence full of ‘social contacts, good food and lovemaking, quiet lounging, playing, discovering, and enjoying special and pleasant smells, sounds and tastes’.
Of course, more research is needed, but the British and the German philosopher dare to say: “Many, perhaps most, wild animals have a happy life.”
Read also:
The cattle must give way to wild animals
The Netherlands is rapidly losing animal and plant species. Fortunately, wild animals are coming back. Give them space, says Jozef Keulartz – so it is high time for a significant reduction of the herd.
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