Wild animal suffering

Disease

Wild animals may suffer from diseases that circulate similarly to human colds and flus, as well as epizootics, which are analogous to human epidemics.^[1] Examples include chronic wasting disease, white-nose syndrome, devil facial tumour disease, Newcastle disease, myxomatosis, viral haemorrhagic disease, and chytridiomycosis.^[1][2] Diseases and parasitism may produce symptoms such as listlessness, ulcers, pneumonia, starvation, and other harms before death.^[3]

Poor health may increase infection risk, which can further worsen health and increase later vulnerability.^[4] The terminal investment hypothesis holds that infection can lead some animals to use remaining resources for reproduction.^[5]

Injury

Wild animals can be injured by predation, intraspecific competition, accidents, self-amputation, molting, extreme weather, and natural disasters. Injuries can be painful and may affect movement, feeding, drinking, escaping predators, and interactions with other members of the same species. Injuries can also increase vulnerability to disease, parasites, starvation, dehydration, and further attacks.^[6]

Parasitism

Many wild animals, particularly larger ones, are infected with parasites. Parasites may affect hosts by redirecting resources, damaging tissue, and increasing vulnerability to predation.^[1] They may also reduce host movement, reproduction, and survival.^[7] Parasites can alter host bodies or behavior, as in limb malformations in amphibians caused by Ribeiroia ondatrae or behavioral manipulation in some insects.^[8][9] One meta-study found mortality to be 2.65 times higher in animals affected by parasites than in unaffected animals.^[10]

Parasitoids, including some worms, wasps, beetles, and flies, differ from parasites because they kill their hosts.^[11] Their larvae may feed on host organs and fluids until the host dies.^[12]

Starvation and malnutrition

Starvation and malnutrition particularly affect young, old, sick, and weak animals. They can be caused by injury, disease, poor teeth, and environmental conditions, with winter associated with increased risk.^[13] Food availability limits wild animal populations, and deaths from starvation have been described as prolonged and distressing.^[14]: 67 Fish larvae may also experience hydrodynamic starvation, in which fluid motion limits feeding ability; mortality may exceed 99%.^[15]

Dehydration

Drought can cause animals to die of thirst and can increase predation risk when animals leave hiding places to seek water. Dehydration may also combine with starvation, and diseases such as chytridiomycosis can increase dehydration risk.^[16][17]

Weather conditions

Weather affects wild animal health and survival. Heavy snow, flooding, drought, heat, and cold can directly harm animals and can increase risks such as starvation and disease.^[19] Extreme weather can kill animals by destroying habitats or killing them directly.^[20] Hailstorms have killed large numbers of birds.^[21] Extreme heat and drought can dry out vegetation and water sources, and hot water can make it harder for fish to breathe.^[22][23] Climate change can increase heat stress and reduce available water sources.^[24] A study on cottontail rabbits found that only 32% survived winter.^[18]

Natural disasters

Natural disasters such as fires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, storms, and floods can cause death, injury, illness, malnutrition, and contamination of food and water sources.^[25] Wildfires can cause direct mortality, injury, displacement, habitat disruption, and reduced food availability, with effects varying by species and context.^[26]

Killing by other animals

Predation is the act of one animal capturing and killing another animal to consume part or all of its body.^[27] Jeff McMahan states that predation involves stalking, chasing, killing, and devouring prey, and describes suffering and violent death as continuous where animal life exists.^[28] Animals who are preyed upon may die in different ways, including being swallowed alive or paralyzed with venom before being eaten.^[29][30] Animals may also be killed by members of their own species through territorial disputes, competition, cannibalism, infanticide, and siblicide.^[31]

Psychological stress

Some writers argue that wild animals do not appear to be happier than domestic animals, citing higher cortisol levels, elevated stress responses, and the absence of human caretakers.^[32] Sources of stress include illness, infection, predation avoidance, nutritional stress, and social interactions.^[33]

The ecology of fear describes the effects of predation risk on behavior and survival.^[34] Predator-induced fear may cause lasting behavioral and neurological changes, including PTSD-like changes in wild animals.^[35]

Christianity

Some second-century Church Fathers, including Irenaeus of Lyons and Theophilus of Antioch, held that animals were originally peaceful and became carnivorous because of human sin and the Fall.^[46] Later writers discussed animal suffering in relation to the problem of evil. Leonardo da Vinci asked why nature did not arrange that animals should not live by the death of other animals.^[47] David Hume described animals as keeping one another in "perpetual terror and anxiety".^[48]

In Natural Theology, William Paley described animals as dying from violence, decay, disease, starvation, and malnutrition, but defended predation as part of divine design.^[49] In 1860, Charles Darwin wrote that he could not reconcile an omnipotent and benevolent God with the intentional creation of the Ichneumonidae, whose larvae feed inside living caterpillars.^[50]

Islam

In Islamic philosophy and theology, animal suffering has been discussed in relation to the problem of evil. One Shia theodicy argues that animal suffering can be justified if it has benefits and if animals are compensated after death on the Day of Judgment.^[51]

Eastern religions

Ole Martin Moen argues that Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism all treat the natural world as filled with suffering, regard suffering as bad for those who endure it, and identify the ending of suffering as an aim.^[52]

Buddhism

In Buddhist doctrine, rebirth as an animal is regarded as bad because animals suffer from both human and natural causes.^[53] Animal suffering has also been interpreted as evidence of dukkha.^[54] Buddhist texts and teachers, including Shantideva and Patrul Rinpoche, have described animals as vulnerable to predation, fear, and other harms, and as beings toward whom compassion should be directed.^[55][56]

Calvin Baker argues that Buddhist approaches to wild animal suffering create problems for both traditional views based on rebirth and naturalized views that reject rebirth.^[57]

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

In Histoire Naturelle, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon described wild animals as suffering want in winter, including stags exhausted by the rutting season and affected by parasites. He defended predation as a check on overabundant reproduction.^[60]

Johann Gottfried Herder

Johann Gottfried Herder described animals as existing in a state of striving, needing to secure food and defend their lives. He argued that nature produced equilibrium through different animals and instincts.^[61]

Lewis Gompertz

In Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, Lewis Gompertz argued for an egalitarian view of animals and for assisting animals suffering in the wild.^[39] He argued that humans and animals in their natural state are exposed to starvation, enemies, injury, weather, and illness without reliable aid.^[62]: 47 He also wrote that he would intervene to help an animal being eaten by another animal, though he added that doing so might be wrong.^{[62]: 93–94}

Pessimist philosophers

Giacomo Leopardi and Arthur Schopenhauer cited wild animal suffering in support of pessimistic views. Leopardi used predation as an image of nature's cycles of creation and destruction.^[63] Schopenhauer argued that anyone wishing to compare pleasure and pain should compare the experience of an animal devouring another with the experience of the animal being devoured.^[64]

John Stuart Mill

In the essay "Nature", John Stuart Mill argued that many acts condemned among humans are performed by nature. He rejected the view that nature is morally perfect and argued that humans should struggle against harmful natural processes where they can.^[65]

Henry Stephens Salt

Henry Stephens Salt was a British writer and early advocate of animal rights.^[66] In Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, Salt argued that wild animals have a claim to live unmolested and uninjured unless they directly threaten human welfare. He allowed action in self-defense or to prevent serious harm, but rejected needless killing and torment.^[67]

J. Howard Moore

In Better-World Philosophy, J. Howard Moore criticized natural selection for producing predation, competition, and suffering among animals.^{[68]: 125, 190} He described natural selection as "irrational and barbarous" and argued that humans should replace it, where possible, with deliberate ethical action.^[68]: 91 Moore argued that humans, because of their intellectual and moral capacities, could reduce suffering in the natural world.^{[68]: 90–91} In The Universal Kinship, he described the world as filled with inhumanity and suggested that ordinary human concern could improve terrestrial affairs.^[69]

William Temple Hornaday

In Our Vanishing Wild Life, William Temple Hornaday described wild animals as vulnerable to climate, starvation, and disease. He discussed birds dying in freezing rain, wild ducks suffering from hunger and cold, and disease affecting hoofed animals, rabbits, antelopes, and deer.^[70] In The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals, he described fear as the "ruling passion" of wild animals and proposed a "Bill of Rights for Wild Animals".^[71]

Alexander Skutch

In "Which Shall We Protect? Thoughts on the Ethics of the Treatment of Free Life", Alexander Skutch discussed five possible principles for human relations with free-living animals: considering only human interests; a laissez-faire principle; the ahimsa principle; favoring "higher animals"; and "harmonious association". Skutch favored a combination of laissez-faire, ahimsa, and harmonious association.^[72]

Perspectives from animal and environmental ethicists

Human obligations toward wild animal suffering have been debated by animal and environmental ethicists. In 1973, Peter Singer addressed whether humans should prevent predation, stating that he would support intervention if it produced a positive outcome, while noting the risk of greater suffering in the long term.^[73] Stephen R. L. Clark argued that humans should protect wild animals from serious dangers but are not required to regulate all natural interactions.^[74] J. Baird Callicott contrasted animal liberation with Aldo Leopold's land ethic, identifying tensions between animal ethics and environmental ethics.^[75] Steve F. Sapontzis, Arne Næss, and David Olivier also discussed duties toward animals suffering from natural processes.^[76][77][78]

Publications

In 2009, Brian Tomasik published "The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering", arguing that wild animals far outnumber animals under human control and that animal advocates should pay more attention to wild animal suffering.^[79] A revised version appeared in Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism in 2015, as part of a special issue on wild animal suffering and intervention in nature.^[80]

Jeff McMahan's essay "The Meat Eaters" argued for reducing wild animal suffering, including suffering caused by predation.^[81] Vox has published essays by Jacy Reese Anthis and Dylan Matthews on the subject,^[82][83] and Aeon has published essays by Steven Nadler and Jeff Sebo.^[84][85]

Catia Faria's PhD thesis and later book Animal Ethics in the Wild: Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature argue that humans have obligations to help animals in the wild.^[86][87] Kyle Johannsen's Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering argues for intervention to reduce wild animal suffering.^[88] Johannsen also edited Positive Duties to Wild Animals.^[89]

Organizations and institutions

Organizations concerned with wild animal suffering include Wild Animal Initiative, formed in 2019 from Utility Farm and Wild-Animal Suffering Research;^[90] Animal Ethics;^[91] and Rethink Priorities, which has researched invertebrate sentience and invertebrate welfare.^[92] The Wildlife Disaster Network was founded in 2020 to help wild animals affected by natural disasters.^[93] In September 2022, New York University launched a Wild Animal Welfare Program to study how human activity and environmental change affect wild animal welfare.^[94]

Animal rights and welfare perspectives

Arguments for intervention can be rights-based or welfare-based. Rights-based arguments hold that if animals have rights such as life or bodily integrity, humans may have reason to prevent violations by other animals.^[103] Tom Regan, however, argues that animals are not moral agents and therefore cannot violate one another's rights.^{[104]: 14–15} Welfare-based arguments hold that intervention may be justified when suffering can be reduced without causing greater harm.^[105]

Werner Scholtz argues that individual-centered animal rights can conflict with holistic environmentalism, which prioritizes ecosystem integrity and biodiversity. He proposes group-based rights for wild animals and argues that such rights do not require ending all natural suffering.^[106]

Non-intervention as a form of speciesism

Some authors argue that refusing to aid wild animals while aiding humans in similar circumstances is a form of speciesism.^[107][108] Jamie Mayerfeld argues that an impartial duty to relieve suffering implies duties toward animals suffering from natural processes.^[109] Oscar Horta argues that awareness of speciesism could increase concern for animals in the wild.^[108]

Humans already intervene for human interests

Horta observes that humans already intervene in nature for human and environmental purposes and argues that such interventions are treated differently when they are aimed at helping wild animals.^[110]

Human influence on natural harms and obligations of care

Martha Nussbaum argues that humans affect animal habitats and therefore have responsibilities toward animals affected by human action. She also suggests that humans may have duties to assist animals suffering from natural causes such as disease and natural disasters.^[111]: 374 Jeff Sebo argues that wild animals suffer from both natural and human-caused harms, and that climate change is increasing some harms.^[85] Steven Nadler similarly argues that humans have obligations to assist individual wild animals regardless of the extent of human responsibility.^[84]

Feminist perspectives

In "Wild Animal Ethics: A Gender-Sensitive Perspective", Catia Faria presents a feminist account of wild animal ethics. She discusses harms caused by humans, including hunting, culling, and predator reintroduction, and harms from natural causes, including injury, disease, parasitism, starvation, drought, and extreme weather. Faria links indifference to these harms to views that treat individuals as parts of ecological wholes, idealize nature, and use a narrow account of autonomy. She argues instead for a relational account of autonomy in which aid can expand the options available to wild animals.^[112]

Practicality of intervening in nature

One objection to intervention is that ecosystem complexity makes outcomes difficult to predict.^[113] Aaron Simmons argues that interventions to save wild animals could damage ecosystems or cause more animal deaths overall.^[99] Peter Singer argues that intervention would be justified if it could be expected to greatly reduce suffering and death in the long run, but warns that interfering with ecosystems may cause more harm than good.^[73]

Other authors argue that some interventions could have good consequences. Tyler Cowen argues that, since humans already intervene in nature, the question is which interventions should be favored.^[105] McMahan argues that because humans are already changing nature, they should favor changes that reduce suffering.^[113]

Intrinsic value of ecological processes, wilderness and wildness

Some environmental ethicists, including Holmes Rolston III, argue that natural animal suffering can have ecological value and that humans have no duty to intervene in suffering caused by natural processes.^[114] Rolston also defends carnivores because of their ecological roles.^[115] Yves Bonnardel criticizes the concept of nature as an ideological tool that treats animals as bearers of ecosystem functions rather than as individuals with interests.^[116]

Nature as idyllic

The idyllic view of nature is the view that happiness in nature is widespread.^[42][43] Oscar Horta argues that a romantic view of nature can lead people to oppose interventions to reduce suffering.^[42] Bob Fischer argues that many wild animals may have net negative lives even without human activity, and that what benefits individual animals may conflict with species preservation, biodiversity, or climate goals.^[117]

Intervention as hubris

Some writers argue that interventions to reduce wild animal suffering would express arrogance, hubris, or playing God, and could have serious unforeseen consequences.^[118] Beril Sözmen replies that many human-caused harms result from agriculture and industry rather than from interventions aimed at helping animals, and that the risk of harm does not show that all interventions should be rejected.^[118] Nussbaum argues that, because humans constantly intervene in nature, the question should be what kind of intervention is appropriate.^[111]: 377

Laissez-faire

A laissez-faire view, defended in different forms by Tom Regan, Elisa Aaltola, Clare Palmer, and Ned Hettinger, holds that humans should not harm wild animals but do not have a general obligation to aid them.^{[103][115][119][120]} Regan argues that wildlife managers should allow animals to exist without human predation and to "carve out their own destiny".^[119] Faria argues that a principle of helping only those harmed by humans would also imply refusing aid to humans and companion animals suffering from natural causes, which she regards as unacceptable.^[121]

Wild animal sovereignty

Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, in Zoopolis, argue that humans should not conduct large-scale interventions to help wild animals, because doing so would undermine their sovereignty and self-governance.^[122] Oscar Horta argues that many wild animal populations do not constitute political communities and that sovereignty, where it exists, has only instrumental value.^[123]

Analogy with colonialism

Estiva Reus compares proposals to reform nature for the benefit of wild animals with colonial arguments that "backward peoples" should be ruled by those claiming superior knowledge and ability.^[124] Thomas Lepeltier replies that colonialism was objectionable because it involved dispossession and cruelty, whereas advocates of helping wild animals do not stand to benefit from assisting them.^[125]

Cognitive and social biases

Some writers argue that cognitive and social biases contribute to neglect of wild animal suffering. These include speciesism and anthropocentrism, appeal to nature, status quo bias, scope neglect, omission bias, and the tendency to focus on rare or dramatic cases rather than ordinary sources of suffering. Other proposed explanations include doubts about feasibility, underestimation of public concern, lack of attention to long-term effects, and neglect of invertebrate welfare.^{[52][126][127]}

Providing aid

The Bishnoi, a Hindu sect founded in the fifteenth century, have a tradition of feeding wild animals.^[129] Some Bishnoi temples also function as rescue centers for injured animals.^[130] The Borana Oromo people leave water out overnight for wild animals because they believe animals have a right to drink.^[131]

Culling

In 2002, the Australian government authorized the killing of 15,000 kangaroos trapped in a fenced military base and suffering from illness, misery, and starvation.^[132] In 2016, park rangers at Kruger National Park killed starving hippos and buffaloes; one stated reason was to prevent prolonged suffering during drought.^[133]

Rescues

Large-scale rescues of wild animals include Operation Breakthrough, in which the United States and Soviet governments worked to free three gray whales trapped in ice off Alaska;^[135] BBC crews rescuing stranded penguins;^[136] the rescue of baby flamingos during drought in South Africa;^[137] rescues during the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season;^[138] and rescues of stranded whales, abandoned Cape cormorant chicks, and cold-stunned sea turtles.^{[139][140][141]}

Vaccination and contraception programs

Vaccination programs have been used to prevent rabies and tuberculosis in wild animals.^[142] Wildlife contraception has been used to reduce or stabilize populations of wild horses, white-tailed deer, American bison, and African elephants.^[128][143]

Technological

Some writers argue that existing forms of assistance could be expanded if research showed that they were feasible and did not increase suffering overall.^[82][144] Proposed future interventions include gene drives and CRISPR to reduce suffering among members of r-selected species, and biotechnology aimed at reducing or eliminating suffering in wild animals.^[145][146]

Preventing predation

Proposals to reduce suffering from predation include removing predators from some areas, avoiding predator reintroduction, gradual extinction of carnivorous species, and "reprogramming" predators to become herbivores through germline engineering.^{[28][144][147]} For predation by cats and dogs, some writers recommend sterilization, keeping cats indoors, and keeping dogs on leashes except in designated areas.^[148]

Preventing rewilding and implementing dewilding

Rewilding projects may include the reintroduction of species such as wolves, beavers, and lynx. Moen argues that rewilding can cause unnecessary suffering and should be stopped.^[52] Josh Milburn argues that in some cases dewilding, or preventing rewilding, may be ethically preferable, especially where animals depend on human-created habitats because of past human action.^[149]

Habitat destruction

Some writers, including Brian Tomasik, have argued from a consequentialist perspective that if most wild animals have lives dominated by suffering, habitat destruction could reduce total suffering. Tyler M. John and Jeff Sebo discuss and criticize this view, calling it the "Logic of the Logger".^[150]

Spreading wild animal suffering beyond Earth

Some researchers and nonprofit organizations have argued that human civilization could create wild animal suffering beyond Earth, for example by creating wild habitats on extraterrestrial colonies or terraformed planets.^[152] Another possible route is directed panspermia, in which microbial life could eventually evolve into sentient organisms.^[153] Such scenarios have been described as suffering risks.^[154]

Representation and selection effects

Some writers argue that wildlife documentaries give a non-representative picture of wild animal suffering because they focus on charismatic animals, adults, and visible predator-prey encounters, while giving less attention to small animals, invertebrates, young animals, disease, parasitism, and injuries after predator attacks.^{[104]: 47 [155]}

Editing practices and non-intervention norms

David Attenborough has stated that viewers who think his documentaries include too much violence should see what is left out during editing.^[156] Toni Muñoz argues that wildlife documentaries present nature as something to be viewed passively and protected, while often portraying hardships as obstacles that wild animals overcome through adaptation.^[157]

Ethical critiques and audience responses

David Pearce criticizes wildlife documentaries, which he calls "animal snuff-movies", for aestheticizing suffering and using narration and music to present natural violence in an acceptable form.^[158] Clare Palmer argues that images of wild animal suffering in documentaries do not usually produce the same response as similar suffering in companion animals, reflecting a laissez-faire view toward wild animal suffering.^[120]

Non-intervention as a filmmaking rule

Whether wildlife documentary filmmakers should intervene to help animals is debated.^[159] Non-intervention has been described as a "golden rule" of wildlife filmmaking.^[160] The rule has sometimes been broken, including BBC rescues of stranded baby turtles and penguins.^[136][161]

Fiction

Non-fiction

Annie Dillard's writing in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm has been interpreted as departing from peaceful or balanced depictions of nature. Joanna Smith argues that Dillard presents nature through images of predation, parasitism, and death, and treats divine presence as intertwined with violence in the natural world.^[172]

Poetry

Nineteenth century

Erasmus Darwin's The Temple of Nature describes predation and parasitism and refers to the world as "one great Slaughter-house".^[179] Isaac Gompertz's "To the Thoughtless" asks readers to imagine themselves as prey.^[180]

In Queen Mab (1813), Percy Bysshe Shelley presents a utopian transformation of nature in which predatory relations are altered.^[181] John Warner Taylor identifies Alexander Pope's Messiah as a likely source for this future paradise, comparing Pope's peaceful coexistence of lambs, wolves, steers, lions and serpents with Shelley's image of the lion becoming harmless beside the kid.^[182] Robert Mitchell reads the poem's images of the transformed ocean and the lion's sheathed claws as part of a wider vision in which humans reshape the earth, with nature responding to "kindliest human impulses".^[181]

John Keats, Alfred Tennyson, and Edwin Arnold also described predation and suffering in nature.^{[183][184][185]}