The wolves behind the fence at the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, were lithe and rangy. They weren’t big. They didn’t slaver. They trotted up and down as our human guide told us charming tales of wolf-ambassadors, wild creatures who trusted their handlers enough to come out . . . . Continue Reading »
James Herriot’s values had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with gratitude. Continue Reading »
The E.U. is concerned with minimizing pain, but in the process allows the human character to become indifferent to the loss of animal life. Continue Reading »
A four-month-old Gentoo chick at London's Sea Life Aquarium will be the world's first “genderless” penguin. Continue Reading »
Those who throw out accusations of “speciesism” seek to subvert human exceptionalism. Their framework should be rejected as a prescription for tyranny every time it is proposed. Continue Reading »
Children are not exposed to enough violence. Yes, I know the grim statistics, how a child who enters middle school has already witnessed 8,000 murders and 100,000 other violent acts on TV. As he and his friends enter adolescence, they take up first-person shooter video games. In college, he becomes . . . . Continue Reading »
The ultimate goal of animal rights is not to improve our treatment of animals, but to end all animal domestication. Continue Reading »
Wayne Pacelle’s rather rudderless quest to make the world safe for animals seems to be taking us to a world without any livestock at all. Continue Reading »
We appeal to other animals to help us arrive at self-understanding in these perplexing times. But we struggle to understand non-humans in a productive way. Therefore we cannot ultimately understand ourselves. Continue Reading »
My oldest son once spent a summer on staff at a Scout reservation. Underneath his tent platform lived a family of skunks. They would amble by, mama and her kits (baby skunks are kits, as baby goats are kids), with nary a hint of animosity and rarely a spark of curiosity. Who knows how many summers . . . . Continue Reading »
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