World Animal Day is an opportunity to recognise animals for their intrinsic value.
For all of us in the animal protection movement – and many beyond – animals are a source of wonder and inspiration. Today gives us the chance to celebrate that wonder and them.
How we recognise animals’ awesomeness
We recognise the intrinsic value of animals in many ways: when we’re moved by their beauty, connect through our empathy, or marvel at their abilities. I don’t think these are different facets; just as ancient philosophers linked beauty, goodness, and truth, they are windows into the same fundamental ‘animal awesomeness.’ They are how we open our minds and hearts to truly appreciate animals for how awesome they are.
Our appreciation of the beauty of animals is a recognition of their harmony, balance, and freedom. From majestic whale sightings to melodious dawn choruses, these moments give us a glimpse of the world as it should be.
Our empathy is our healthy reaction to animals’ suffering, frustration, or enjoyment. The fact that many animals have conscious experiences is awe-inspiring, especially considering the emergence of these emotions within the physical world. It is a bona fide miracle that surrounds us. Recent discoveries have revealed that animals, from pigs reacting to music to bees and octopi playing and gibbons dancing, exhibit emotional complexity that mirrors our own.
Our admiration for animals’ abilities reflects our recognition of their unique sets of physical, perceptive and mental skills that often surpass our imagination. These abilities are widespread across the animal kingdom, shaped by both shared and convergent evolution, making them even more remarkable. Slowly—perhaps too slowly—we are realising that animals possess abilities once thought to be uniquely human. From spiders dreaming and, horses planning ahead, to chimpanzees self-medicating, sperm whales using a phonetic alphabet, marmosets and elephants using names for each other, and cats and cleaner wrasse demonstrating self-awareness, animals continue to surprise and impress us.
Animals’ ethics
Animals also display a range of impressive social and, dare we say, ethical capacities.
Many animals can empathise with one another, including with those outside their in-group.
Many animals also maintain complex social relationships. Bumblebees, for example, can learn from each other and dogs have shown strategical cooperation in game-theory tasks, improving outcomes by anticipating their partners’ actions. Many social animals living in unequal societies have “levelling mechanisms,” such as food sharing, coalitions, forgiveness, and inequity aversion.
Underlying these behaviours are executive functions, such as inhibitory control. Cleaner wrasse, for instance, must forego eating their clients’ preferred mucus and instead consume ectoparasites to maintain long-term relationships. This demonstrates remarkable self-control, ensuring a sustainable resource.
Animals’ awesomeness reminds us that morality isn’t purely human; it’s woven into the natural world, intertwined with animals’ intrinsic value.
What does this mean for us?
The growing body of evidence that humans’ abilities aren’t as exceptional as we’ve long believed –even in terms of intelligence or ethics – underscores our longstanding failure to recognise animals’ full capacities. We have consistently underestimated them–a lesson echoed in the year that saw the sad passing of Christophe Boesch and Frans de Waal.
Even if we wish to believe humans have the greatest potential for ethical behaviour, we frankly have yet to demonstrate it. Inequality and unsustainable practices are rife within human society, let alone our destructive relationships with other animals and nature. We struggle to even acknowledge the moral significance and emotional experiences of others.
Perhaps we’ve developed an exaggerated form of self-awareness at the expense of empathy, inequality aversion, and cooperation. It’s ironic and tragic that we pride ourselves on the very abilities we have not only failed to recognise in other animals but have failed to display towards them.
In fact, our mistreatment of animals inhibits our ability to see their awesomeness. We cannot see their beauty when we crush them into industrial containers or destroy their habitats. We blind ourselves to their suffering when we subject them to experiments. We inhibit the expression of their full abilities when we modify their genes, put them in unnaturally restrictive conditions, or remove them from the ecological niches in which they thrive. And all this mistreatment biases us against recognising their awesomeness and intrinsic value.
Putting it into practice
So, what does this mean for us? I believe it comes down to three things.
First, we need to base our decisions on how to treat animals not only on evidence of their capacities but also on our consistent underestimation of those.
Second, we can use animals’ awesomeness to motivate people to protect them and the environment. It would be hypocritical to celebrate animals to gain support, only to neglect their actual well-being.
Third, we need to talk about how great animals are AND how vital they are to us. Animals’ beauty, feelings and abilities are inherent and a source of health and wellbeing benefits to humans.
We should adjust our messaging based on the audience to be effective advocates for animals and the environment. But this is not a choice between recognising animals’ intrinsic worth AND their value to humans – both are true, both are good, and both are beautiful.
Photo credit: Shannon Johnstone / We Animals
