Animal Rights Concerns

Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights

Author: Steven Wise
ISBN-nr: 738203408
Category: Animal Rights Issues
added by terri

In Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights, Wise explores the abilities and degree of intelligence different animals have. The law has criteria for personhood, and by studying and often witnessing the latest research by leading experts in animal intelligence, Wise shows how at least some creatures clearly meet those criteria.

Are we ready for parrots and dolphins to be treated as persons before the law? In this unprecedented exploration of animal cognition along the evolutionary spectrum-from infants and children to other intelligent primates, from dolphins, parrots, elephants, and dogs to colonies of honeybees-Steve Wise finds answers to the big question in animal rights today: Where do we draw the line? Readers will be enthralled as they follow Wise's firsthand account of the world's most famous animal experts at work: Cynthia Moss and the touchingly affectionate families of Amboseli; Irene Pepperberg and her amazing and witty African Grey parrot, Alex; and Penny Paterson with the formidable gorilla Koko. In many cases, Wise was able to sustain an extended conversation with these extraordinary creatures.

If humans are entitled to fundamental rights, why not animals? In our considered opinion, legal rights shall not be the exclusive preserve of the humans which has to be extended beyond people thereby dismantling the thick legal wall with humans all on one side and all non-humans on the other side. While the law currently protects wild life and endangered species from extinction, animals are denied rights, an anachronism which must necessarily change. - N. R. Nair v. UOI (Kerala High Court of India, june 6, 2000)

Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights by Steven M. Wise
Perseus Publishing
ISBN: 0738203408
336 Pages

Steven Wise, President of CEFR, who has taught animal rights law at Harvard and has been called (in the Yale Law Review) "one of the pistons of the animal rights movement," offers compelling scientific and legal answers to that question.