Cows and their calves graze near Cremona, Alta., in 2019. Rather than seeing photos of animal abuses, efforts to educate people about how they mourn and have rich social lives might be more effective.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
It’s important to design public awareness campaigns that illuminate the richness of animal lives by directing attention to actual animal agency rather than to the human abusers of animals.
What makes us human? Greek and Roman thinkers were preoccupied with this question. And some of their observations of animals foreshadowed recent findings in the behavioural sciences.
A few marine mammals in apparent revolt pushed meme-makers into overdrive. But a scholar who thinks about justice and human-animal relations suggests something deeper is behind the schadenfreude.
First published in 1975, Animal Liberation opened our eyes to the exploitation of animals. At a time of ‘ag-gag’ laws and ‘skyscraper’ farms, a new edition assesses the state of animal rights today.
Baby Rocket Raccoon in Marvel Studios’ ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.’
(Marvel Studios)
The recent death of a horse on the set of the Amazon series is the latest incident raising questions about how humans use horses for entertainment and sport.
An orangutan and a human share a moment and touch hands. Indigenous philosophies regard animals as human’s close relations deserving of respect, kindness and gratitude from birth to the end of their lives.
(Shutterstock)
Indigenous views and ways of knowing should be applied to the way we keep, use, and kill animals, and in how we teach future generations about animal use and their care.
Animal research’s benefits are clear – but public awareness of what it involves is not.
Javier Pierini/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Guidelines and regulations weigh the medical and health benefits of animal research with researchers’ ability to ensure humane care of their subjects from start to finish.
Research using animals must be more transparent regarding how animals are used and treated.
(Shutterstock)
The public’s lack of knowledge about animal research can cause a moral conflict. Institutions that use animals in research need to be more transparent about their practices.
Freya the walrus was killed in Oslo after officials decided she posed a threat to humans.
Sheard Photography/Shutterstock
Explicitly intended for a broad, educated audience, Guilty Pigs is an accessible work that reveals there is almost no aspect of the law that does not touch on the lives of nonhuman animals.
A woman who was evacuated from Irpin cries kissing a cat wrapped in a blanket at a triage point in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 11, 2022.
(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
This war has powerfully and painfully magnified the connections among human and animal lives, and our unrelenting commitment to love in the face of darkness.
Luma in a still from Andrea Arnold’s Cow (2021).
Kate Kirkwood
Professor, Management and Organizational Studies, Huron University College and Coordinator of Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership, Western University