When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (35 page)

An animal experimenter will almost inevitably deny that animals suffer in the same way humans do. Otherwise he would im-phcitly admit to cruelty. Experimental suffering is not randomly imposed without consent on human beings and defended as ethical on the grounds that it would bestow enormous benefit to others. (At least not any longer.) Animals suffer. Can we, should we, measure their suffering, compare it to our own? If it is like ours, how can it continue? As Rousseau wrote in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in 1755: "It seems that, if I am obhged not to injure any being like myself, it is not so much because he is a reasonable being, as because he is a sensible being." Moreover, why should the suffering have to be like ours to be unjustifiable to inflict? It has been argued that humans experience pain more acutely because we remember and anticipate it; in Rousseau's term we are "reasonable." Yet it is not apparent that animals cannot do both.

But even if they cannot remember or anticipate pain, there is no reason to suppose that they suffer any less than humans do— they are "sensible"—while there is some reason to suppose that some may suffer more. British philosopher Brigid Brophy, for example, points out that "pain is Hkely to fill the sheep's whole capacity for experience in a way it seldom does in us, whose intellect and imagination can create breaks for us in the immediacy of our sensations." But isn't the fact that they suffer at all enough? Speaking of the connection between suffering and selfless love in animals, Darwin wrote: "In the agony of death a dog has been known to caress his master, and every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man,

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unless the operation was fully justified by an increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life." As to animals, he spoke from observation. As to humans, he was optimistic.

It is often said that if slaughterhouses were made of glass, most people would be vegetarians. If the general public knew what went on inside animal experimentation laboratories, they would be abolished. However, the parallel is not exact. Slaughterhouses are invisible because the public does not want to see them. Everyone knows what goes on inside them; they simply do not want to be confronted with it. Most people do not know how animals are used in experiments. Slaughterhouses allow visitors. Laboratories where animal experiments are performed are notoriously secretive, off-limits to visitors. Perhaps those who conduct the experiments know they would be stopped if what they did was known even by other scientists. Perhaps they are ashamed. Dr. Robert White, director of the Neurological and Brain Research Laboratory at Cleveland's Metropolitan General Hospital, is a leading figure in brain transplant research. In an influential article entitled "A Defense of Vivisection" he describes his own research: "In 1964, we were successful for the first time in medical history in totally isolating the subhuman primate brain outside of its body and sustaining it in a viable state by connecting it with the vascular system of another monkey or with a mechanical perfusion circuit that incorporated engineering units designed to perform the functions of the heart, lungs and kidneys while simultaneously circulating blood to and from the brain. We were overjoyed since scientists had attempted to construct such a model surgically for the last one hundred years without success. As late as the 1930s Dr. Alexis Carrel, the Nobel laureate, with the collaboration of Colonel Charles Lindbergh, had been able to support the viability of almost all body organs in an isolated state. . . . Parenthetically, it should be mentioned that Dr. Carrel had his problems with the antivivisec-tionists of his time."

One animal experimentation group ran a paid advertisement in a newspaper, one that they saw as amusing, appealing for donations: "Send a mouse to college." The language disguises the pur-

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pose of mice in the university. The experimenters dare not say: "Grow a tumor on a mouse." Nor do they dare to say: "Send a cat or a dog to college," since people do not like to think of their pets as the subjects of experiments. Rats and mice are not generally regarded as pets, but as pests; they have few defenders. Yet the pain a rat or a mouse feels is every bit as real as that of any pet. In laboratories they suffer, as anybody who has heard them moan, cry, whimper, and even scream knows. Scientists dissimulate about this by insisting that they are merely vocalizing. Descartes lives on.

Perhaps these sounds fail to reach scientists because they are not immediately recognizable as a form of communication. In examining the human view of differences between humans and animals it is clear that humans assign primary significance to speech. Our glorious uniqueness, many philosophers have claimed, lies in our ability to speak to one another. It thus came as a shock to learn that a simple Afi-ican grey parrot not only "parroted" human speech, but spoke, communicated—the words used meant something. When animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg turned to leave her parrot, Alex, in a veterinarian's office for lung surgery, Alex called out, "Come here. I love you. I'm sorry. I want to go back." He thought he had done something bad and was being abandoned as punishment. Imagine what would happen if an animal addressed us on its imminent murder. If, in a slaughterhouse, a pig cried out: "Please don't kill me." If, as a hunter looked into the eyes of a deer, it suddenly broke into speech: "I want to live, please don't shoot, my children need me." Would the hunter pull the trigger? Or if a cat in a laboratory were to cry out: "Please, no more torture," would the scientist be able to continue? Such speech did not stop concentration camp inmates from being murdered during the Holocaust; there, humans, it was said, were lice and rats.

No one assumes the pig wants to die. It would avoid slaughter if it could. It feels the desire to live and the pain of its sorrow in being killed just as humans do; the only difference is that it cannot say so in words. The crying of the pigs being slaughtered is horrible. People report that they sound like human screams. The pigs are communicating their terrible fear. Recently a steer on the way to the slaughterhouse was reported to have bolted when it was

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close enough to hear the anguished cries of the animals. It fled through the town like a prisoner condemned to death. Its sudden lunge for freedom gave ever^'one pause, even the dnver of the death caravan. Was it right to send an animal to slaughter who so desperatelv wished to live? Perhaps just this one could be saved. Then what about the others? Do they feel the same way? If resistance is to be respected, does lack of resistance confer a right to kill? We do know what the cow wants: the cow wants to live. The cow does not wish to sacrifice itself for any reason. That a cow will v^illingly offer itself as food is a fable.

When humans refuse to inflict pain on other humans, surely it is because the}" assume they/ee/. It is not because another person can think, nor because they can reason, nor even because they can speak that we respect their physical boundaries, but because they feel. They feel pain, humihation, sorrow, and other emotions, perhaps even some we do not yet recognize. We do not want to cause suffering. If, as I beUeve, animals feel pain and sorrow and all the other emotions, these feelings caimot be ignored in our beha\ior toward them. A bear is not going to compose Beethoven's Ninth S\Tnphony. but then neither is our next door neighbor. We do not for this reason conclude that we have the freedom to experiment up>on him, hunt him for sport, or eat him for food.

Modem philosophers seem somewhat more willing than biologists to consider animal emotions, and they have also become engaged in issues of animal rights. Philosophers like Mar\- Midgley and Brigid Brophy in England, Peter Singer in Australia, and Tom Regan and Bernard Rollin in the United States, all take a strong position that animals are capable of complex emotions. In an influential passage Jeremy Bentham in 1"89 connected sentient feelings with rights this way:

The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden fi-om them but by the hand of t\Tanny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recog-

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nized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum^ are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not. Can they reason} nor, Can they talk} but. Can they suffer}

Peter Singer, in Animal Liberation, explicitly based on Ben-tham's nineteenth-century utilitarianism, argues that creatures that can feel pain deserve to be shielded from that pain, especially from scientific experimentation and hurtful farming methods. The argument is that sentience—the capacity to have conscious experiences —demands equal consideration to the interests of all creatures. However, although this provides one moral ground, this position does not explicitly accord animals rights.

Tom Regan in The Case for Animal Rights goes further, arguing explicitly for protecting the rights of animals who are "capable of being the subject of a life." Every animal used in every experiment in every laboratory has its own hfe story. It has felt strong emotions, loved and hated and been devoted to others of its own kind. It is a subject, and is therefore violated by being treated as an object. Have we the right to tear this being away from its fellows and all that gives its life meaning and put it in a sterile, hostile, aseptic environment to be tortured, maimed, and ultimately destroyed in the name of anything, far less of service to our species? Or lacking the right, do we only have the power?

What is learned from these experiments is not always of benefit to humans. It was recently reported in a German psychiatric journal that a researcher gave Largactil, a neuroleptic tranquifizer, to a spider, and succeeded either in diminishing the size and complexity of its web, or in stopping the spider from spinning a web at all. This article was held up as evidence of the great value of animal research in psychology. It meant, said the researcher, that antipsy-

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chotic drugs can be given to schizophrenics to stop them from spinning webs, that is, from creating fantasies in their heads. But why should spiders, or humans for that matter, not spin webs if so inchned? Who bestowed upon us the right to intervene and interfere and ultimately destroy the delicate product of a creature's innermost being? Whether such practices ultimately enhance humanity is also questionable. The microbiologist Catherine Roberts condemns Harry Harlow's "odious" experiments on rhesus monkeys (discussed in Chapter 5) pointing out that they "degrade the humanness of those who designed and perpetrated them." Dr. Roberts also had a comment to make about Dr. White's experiments on brain transplantation. She said: "The details of his experiments are so horrifying that they seem to reach the limits of scientific depravity."

It may be hard to imagine the sensual universe of another species, but it is not impossible. Our dog's intense sniffing suggests she is picking up and responding to something beyond our ken. Her ability to take in information hidden from us is impressive; the resulting sudden shifts of mood are honored. We know we are in the presence of something different from us but worthy of our respect. One of the most common emotions humans feel in the presence of another species is awe. The ability of a hawk to soar, of a seal to race through the waves is marvelous, humbling.

It is clear that animals form lasting friendships, are frightened of being hunted, have a horror of dismemberment, wish they were back in the safety of their den, despair for their mates, look out for and protect their children whom they love. As Tom Regan would say, they are the subject of lives, as we are. Though animals do not write autobiographies, as we understand them, their biographies can be written. They are individuals and members of groups, wdth elaborate histories that take place in a concrete world, and involve a large number of complex emotional states. They/^f/ throughout their lives, just as we do.

Jane Goodall points out that "chimpanzees differ genetically from Homo sapiens by only about 1 per cent, and that while they lack speech, they nevertheless behave similarly to humans, can feel pain, share our emotions and have sophisticated intellectual abili-

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ties." She pleads that we stop enslaving, imprisoning, incarcerating, and torturing them, and instead protect them from exploitation.

"If I learned anything from my time among the elephants," writes the scientist Douglas Chadwick:

it is the extent to which we are kin. The warmth of their families makes me feel warm. Their capacity for delight gives me joy. Their ability to learn and understand things is a continuing revelation for me. If a person can't see these qualities when looking at elephants, it can only be because he or she doesn't want to.

Humans have long recognized that animals have the potential to connect emotionally with humans. One of the oldest and most popular Indian tales is about the hfe-and-death bond between a Brahmin and a mongoose. Here it is as found in the great Ocean of Story, written about a.d. 1070, a Kashmiri collection: "A Brahmin by the name of Devasharman lived in a certain village. He had a wife of equally high birth, named Yajnadatta. She became pregnant, and in time gave birth to a son. The Brahmin, though poor, felt he had obtained a great gem. After she had given birth to the child, the Brahmin's wife went to the river to bathe. Devasharman remained in the house, taking care of his infant son. Meanwhile a maid came from the women's apartments of the palace to summon the Brahmin, who lived on presents received by performing reH-gious ceremonies. ... To guard the child, he left a mongoose, which he had raised in his house since it was born. As soon as the Brahmin left, a snake suddenly slithered toward the child. The mongoose, seeing it, killed it out of love for his master.