In which case I would assume that domination over them by us would be illegal. I would absolutely support this. Future generations will look back on pet ownership with clarity. It’s right there in the word - ownership.
I agree that keeping pets is probably immoral. But even if we accept that, there are multiple problems.
- There may not be much of a "wild" left to release animals into.
- Some animals have been bred for hundreds of generations and are now dependent on humans.
- Who has the right to speak for these animals? How do they divine what their client wants? It's not reasonable that any person on the street can bring a motion of habeas corpus on behalf of your dog.
Watching the foxes and squirrels that live near humans has suggested to me that domestication is two-way. The animals want what we have: spare food, shelter. Some of them are brave and willing enough to interact with us, some aren’t. Over time, more of them become brave and willing enough to interact.
Anyone that considers a cat their pet will observe that cats are mainly in it for themselves. They (try to) go out when they want, they’ll make it clear when they’re not in the mood for attention. They spend hours each day ignoring us whilst making use of the shelter we provide. They’ve been known to leave their humans and return to their familiar territories when their humans move house.
I don’t think pet “ownership” is inherently immoral, but some people’s implementations of it, and the terminology, probably are.
> I would assume that domination over them by us would be illegal.
I don't think being given personhood would necessarily make it illegal. There is the precedent of dependent persons (mentally handicapped, babies) that have personhood but are also under the control of someone else that take decisions for them.
On behalf of our clients, the global elephant community, we formally request that you cease and desist from using their likeness as a party symbol. The unauthorized use of their image fails to represent their values, interests, and, most notably, their stance on environmental preservation.
Our clients object to being associated with policies that conflict with their dedication to ecological stewardship and community welfare. Therefore, we urge immediate cessation of any elephant imagery in relation to your party. Further unapproved usage may result in legal action.
> Should elephants have the same rights as people?
Only if they pay taxes.
Jokes aside, there's no legal framework for this kind of stuff. "Full rights" means citizenship, passport, ability to travel, requirement to pay taxes etc etc. There's no other kinds of not-exactly-people-rights
> There's no other kinds of not-exactly-people-rights
There are rights without requirements for people that can't function in society: babies, infants, mentally handicapped, elderly with alzheimers, etc.
They all have rights even though they can't fight for them themselves. Especially the right to not be imprisoned or killed by humans, which are the typical fundamental rights sought after for animals with high cognitive capabilities. It's not all or nothing.
Paying taxes, citizenship and ability to travel are one level of abstraction higher and has nothing to do with these fundamental rights. Similarly some other rights like the right to vote are not granted to all citizens.
The zoo statement: "We hope Colorado isn’t the place that sets the slippery slope in motion of whether your beloved and well-cared-for dog or cat should have habeas corpus and would be required to ‘go free,’ at the whim of someone else’s opinion of them"
The elephant (ha ha) in the room is another slippery slope leading to the question whether we should be killing and eating intelligent and social beings.
Intelligent and social beings are being killed all the time by other beings. But none of them have the outsized edge of intelligence and tooling we have. We are too big to be doing the killing.
I would argue that our true cruelty of killing other beings is that we specifically farm them in horrible conditions just to be our food. If all meat was hunted from nature, I would have no issues with it.
Farming them is fine, we don’t need to exclusively hunt them, and arguably animals are far happier (certainly better fed) in captivity than in the wild. The problem is factory farms, and more loosely poorly maintained farms in general. Additionally breeding chickens, for instance, can be problematic because as big and juicy modern breasts are the scientifically engineered chickens deal with many painful health problems due to their excessive weight.
Another cruelty is, especially in regards to hunting, the difficulty is getting a painless kill. At least on a farm you can always guide the cow into a barn, knock it unconscious with a bolt pistol, and kill it humanely from there.
It depends on how you define it. In terms of raw number of farms, smaller farms are the norm, and these are the most likely to treat animals with respect. However, in terms of output and number of animals, factory farms are the norm, producing an estimated 99% of American meat.
“Nearly all animals farmed in the U.S. (99 percent) are raised on factory farms.”, “ Large-scale farms make up only four percent of the nation’s farms but “control two-thirds of U.S. agricultural land,” reports The Guardian” - https://www.farmsanctuary.org/news-stories/2022-ag-census-fa...
Maybe there should be a cap on farm size to avoid large scale factory farming. No chance of it actually taking place though - lobbying/factories being seen as employment provider/non-agenda on political priority are some of the reasons that come to mind.
That would not be consistent with human or any other animal's history on this planet (and I assume elsewhere, I'm waiting patiently waiting for us to make contact with aliens to confirm or debunk this). When something is delicious you eat as much of it as you can until it's gone and thanks to the glory of modern farming they will never be gone.
It's long been known that certain animals are far more charismatic than others. Dogs and cats should never suffer, while thing like rats, mosquitos and wild boars are to be terminated on sight. Things such as hippos, squirrels and food sources are somewhere in between.
How much of that is us imposing our impression on their internal being? Are you certain that if we know enough about bees, mosquitoes and wild boars life we wouldn't empathize with them more?
Elephants are not merely individual organisms, but they are social animals who group in herds. Likewise, ants, termites, and bees are eusocial insects, who may sometimes be considered individuals, but indeed, their hives and mounds comprise singular organisms which are greater than the sum of their parts.
Therefore, who deserves personhood and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship? An individual termite, or its mound and colony as a whole? How mature and ancient is any given termite mound in the Australian outback? Do presidents and kings owe tribute to Termite Pharaohs?
Rights don't exist. They're an idea made up by man. You have a right to what you can defend. In the long run, legalism will align itself with that iron law of nature.
I would protect the elephants because I like them. No use bringing rights into it.
It's not that simple, people systematically create groups with laws, and those groups (governments) defend laws with violence, so as long as something is law, things don't need to be strong to be protected. "The iron law of nature" defends grandmas, because groups (governments) don't like grandmas being attacked, and defend grandmas with violence. One could do the same with elephants, no problem.
A more poignant question is what rights activists ought to have and whether a non-trivial amount of resources ought to be spent addressing their concerns.
Should policies of countries be decided by a small number of single minded zealots whilst make pretending there's some sort of 'democracy' taking place?
Please tell me and perhaps others what delightful happenstance led you to conclude that you are the definitive arbiter of what this thread (and I assume all others?) is for.
The title indicates that this isn't a thread for the discussion of that small number of single minded zealots who have captured the US Court system in a thoroughly undemocratic manner .. but by all means discuss that further.
LAWYER: Let me address... the elephant in the room.
EVERYONE IN THE GALLERY TURNS QUICKLY TO FACE THE BACK OF THE COURT. THERE STANDS AN ELEPHANT WEARING A TRENCHCOAT AND CARRYING A BRIEFCASE, READY TO GIVE HIS DEPOSITION.
It's nowhere discussed in the article, so the other elephant in the room:
Our whole society is based on animals not having rights.
Some people see a gradation where we could have criteria to determine how many rights could each kind of animal have, and argue about small details. But of course the other point of view will be that any fissuring of the concept of animals as "things" will break the dam and there will be no going back.
For anyone seeing simple and clear lines that could be drawn, try to classify the elephants in the article, the differnt kind monkeys, pigs, cows, dogs , racoons and ant colonies. You see the wall that rises the minute elephants get special rights while cows keep feeding us, for instance.
Yet, we take great care in our own society to ensure people higher up in the food chain don’t take advantage of those below them—so much so, in fact, that the declaration of human rights declares we’re all born equal. If we sort ourselves in a hierarchy with other sentient beings, why doesn’t the same concept apply to them too?
> No human has run faster than a cheetah nor flown like an eagle.
No, but we have and regularly do move faster than any cheetah and fly higher and further than any eagle.
My point is that, to an objective observer, there are things that humans have done and can do that make us obviously separate, as a species, than any other animal on earth.
The scale of our combined efforts dwarf the efforts of other animals.
Especially when considering that, physically, we have very few advantages over other animals.
Arguing against that point is just playing mental gymnastics to say “oh actually humans aren’t really exceptional”
Idk what that might say about the “value” (whatever that means) of human life compared to other life.
A concrete example would be climate change. Humans have been pumping the atmosphere full of shit for a long time and it’s causing global climate changes. No other animal has affected the climate at that scale.
Bad or not, that kind of thing makes us humans exceptional.
The environmental impact humans have had, if any, is astronomically negligible. Even if it wasn't, we certainly aren't the first and certainly won't be the last.
> This began approximately 2.460–2.426 Ga (billion years) ago during the Siderian period and ended approximately 2.060 Ga ago during the Rhyacian
So it took them what, like 400M years?
Our Industrial Revolution was 500ish years ago?
Hell, we’ve only been around for 10k years.The scale of that is wildly different.
Also let’s not forget that we can quickly change the atmosphere’s composition, leave the planet and return, move faster than any cheetah, and fly higher and further than any eagle. All of that and more.
The rate of change of our species’ capabilities seem to change much faster than other animals as well
My point is that an objective observer looking at the world would absolutely recognize that humanity is an exceptional species (not necessarily in a good or bad way) among all that exist on earth in many ways.
The impact we have on the planet is non-negligible. A few fractions of an inch in 500 years (effectively instant on a geological timescale) is indeed meaningful, but not what I’m trying to argue.
> people like you
You know next to nothing about me. Try not to generalize.
I can infer enough about you from our conversation to reaffirm my point that human society is predicated on humans being special. It is our instinctive nature to place ourselves upon a pedestal and look down upon all non-human life, and you're demonstrating that in spades.
I'm not going to say this is human nature, because I think all species have the same instinctive frame of mind if we could but communicate with them. I have no doubt that elephants look down upon us as crazy apes, but I have no way to prove that since I don't speak elephant.
> Human society is predicated on humans being special.
So far, so good.
> Any truly objective observer will say humans are no different from other animals on Earth
And...we hard exit stage left. It's sad when presumably good intentions, like the ethical treatment of animals and cultivating some well needed humility as a species, leads to such an unfounded point of view.
From a purely biological perspective, I could see that argument. But until animals start hunting, experimenting on, cultivating, and eating humans, en masse, creating symphonies or buildings that will last centuries, and start sending themselves to space, I'll continue to believe the difference between humans and animals is a qualitative and not just a quantitative difference. I don't think a truly objective observe could see it any other way.
- Humans can easily treat other humans as things as well. Humans being special is to me more or a convenient fiction than something really at the core of our societies.
- For such a long time, we didn't have to care whether humans need to be separated from animals, the value scale was pretty flat in that respect. In many circumstances a horse from a higher up would be more important than a peasant's life.
Whether or not you describe it as "rights", the concept of animal cruelty has been around for centuries. Probably millennia. And the great majority of people seem comfortable with shades-of-gray classifications of animals for that purpose. If some kid is capturing squirrels and torturing them, he's "obviously" a psychopathic sicko. Vs. if Ed's Exterminators is fleabombing some cat lady's house - nobody's getting worked up about Evil Ed "gassing" the poor, innocent fleas.
I would be all for more severe laws on abuse and living conditions for animals without it getting into the specifics of "intelligence" or "rights".
Something akin to the golden rule.
Let's be honest, these laws won't apply to the average person. It'll apply to where it really matters:
Poach an elephant in Africa and come home? Now you're going to court for murder.
Keep a Monkey inside your house? Looks like you're going to court for kidnapping.
Keep a dog outside chained to a fence and barely feed it? Looks like you're going to court for abuse (more severe than what we do now).
We can make provisions for things. Animals eat animals that's the reality of our world. But make cows sit in their own shit for years and eat food that's non nutritional for them? Now you're going to jail for mass incarceration of living things.
It's wildly accepted bees are quite intelligent. Let's treat the company who made insecticides that killed all the bees with genocide. Once that legal president is set, let's do the same for people who continue to use insecticides.
Animals have rights, but they are not treated as humans (in some jurisdictions you can even be jailed for mistreating certain animals). The anthropomorphisation of animals is kind of a childish behaviour that affects too many city kids.
Grading rights in this way could also have consequences for humans. If rights are to be assigned based on intelligence/sociability/capability then it opens the door to considering whether some humans might not qualify.
For some people it might look far fetched at first, but considering that women only got full voting rights around a few decades ago in most western countries, and are still far from there in so many countries, humans getting different rights is still totally a thing.
When a court is essentially dictating law, you know we are in trouble. When a law tries to do philosophy, it's even worse.
You can't do this stuff unless you have a working definition of personhood. Good luck with that. The moment that animals have rights you run into a huge series of ethical problems. Should dogs have rights? Should rats? Should insects? Should tardigrades? Should plants? Bacteria?
Most of these philosophical questions have no univocal answers and are usually the layperson can't go beyond "this cute animal has rights because I like it and this other animal doesn't because it's ugly", which frankly is appalling.
How about equal rights for dogs? They are already family members and "children"!
We need something like child support for dogs. Shelters are horribly underfunded. Animal abusers deserve to have their income confiscated, so their family members can have a dignified life!
I would argue,and I am sure that if they could the elephants would also argue, that colerado has NO juristiction in ANYTHING elepantocentric,or African,or Indian, or Asian in any way shape or form,did some one say sanctions?The idea that Colerado can get away with a blatant attempt at re colononising whole continents by declaring them as legato incognito is quite a little something
I do love Colorado,fine place,fine people,but they have most definitly had there legal system hijacked by others looking for a place to set precidents?,presidents?
Elephants are social beings that live in groups, mourn their dead, raise their young, and care for their elders. They show emotions like anger, joy, boredom, and can be playful or even cheeky sometimes.
That you don’t take a second to consider they may have a subjective reality similar to your own, and instead ridicule the mere thought that these animals deserve some kind of protection, leaves me troubled.
I'm not replying in the context of the gp, but more curious about where you see a line to be drawn (or if you see no line ?).
I'm personally not sure where I stand, but there is a whole can of worms when we start to evaluate which animals "deserve" protection and on what grounds. For instance many of the characteristics you underline probably apply to crows, except crows are either categorized as nuisance or only tolerated in many places in the world.
And it might be too much expanding the subject, but there is a chance that most animals that are living in urban or technically advanced settings are getting some boost on "inteligence" and will show traits that make them better fit for a human environment, including better display of emotions for instance. I think we're already seeing such a development in cats, and as animals crossing that threshold would be protected while other get the boot, the selection for that trait could happen pretty fast.
The line I draw isn’t a clear one; my personal opinion is that we should try to minimise overall suffering, and that requires realising that almost all animals are capable of suffering the way we do. That doesn’t mean we should try to abdicate animal suffering altogether, because that just plain won’t work and conflicts with basic human interest. But we still can try to avoid suffering in every way possible.
In a broader scope, I think we’re just now realising that continuing the human way of life is just not sustainable and makes the planet inhospitable to Sapiens: We consume too much at once, and bring a disbalance to the global ecosystem. Fixing that requires rethinking a lot of the systems we rely on, and yes, also restraining ourselves from doing things that damage the ecosystem we depend on. A practical consequence is drastically reducing meat consumption and mass farming, and that ties back in to the point of reducing suffering.
I think we’re aware of an equilibrium in our environment, and if we look at the world close enough, everyone realises the status quo just won’t work much longer. Drawing the consequences is the hard part, and realising animals suffer and that that is a sign something is wrong is one of them.
91 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] thread- There may not be much of a "wild" left to release animals into.
- Some animals have been bred for hundreds of generations and are now dependent on humans.
- Who has the right to speak for these animals? How do they divine what their client wants? It's not reasonable that any person on the street can bring a motion of habeas corpus on behalf of your dog.
Watching the foxes and squirrels that live near humans has suggested to me that domestication is two-way. The animals want what we have: spare food, shelter. Some of them are brave and willing enough to interact with us, some aren’t. Over time, more of them become brave and willing enough to interact.
Anyone that considers a cat their pet will observe that cats are mainly in it for themselves. They (try to) go out when they want, they’ll make it clear when they’re not in the mood for attention. They spend hours each day ignoring us whilst making use of the shelter we provide. They’ve been known to leave their humans and return to their familiar territories when their humans move house.
I don’t think pet “ownership” is inherently immoral, but some people’s implementations of it, and the terminology, probably are.
I don't think being given personhood would necessarily make it illegal. There is the precedent of dependent persons (mentally handicapped, babies) that have personhood but are also under the control of someone else that take decisions for them.
[Elephant Lawyer]: Dear Republican Party,
On behalf of our clients, the global elephant community, we formally request that you cease and desist from using their likeness as a party symbol. The unauthorized use of their image fails to represent their values, interests, and, most notably, their stance on environmental preservation.
Our clients object to being associated with policies that conflict with their dedication to ecological stewardship and community welfare. Therefore, we urge immediate cessation of any elephant imagery in relation to your party. Further unapproved usage may result in legal action.
Sincerely, Counsel for Proboscidea
Only if they pay taxes. Jokes aside, there's no legal framework for this kind of stuff. "Full rights" means citizenship, passport, ability to travel, requirement to pay taxes etc etc. There's no other kinds of not-exactly-people-rights
There are rights without requirements for people that can't function in society: babies, infants, mentally handicapped, elderly with alzheimers, etc.
They all have rights even though they can't fight for them themselves. Especially the right to not be imprisoned or killed by humans, which are the typical fundamental rights sought after for animals with high cognitive capabilities. It's not all or nothing.
Paying taxes, citizenship and ability to travel are one level of abstraction higher and has nothing to do with these fundamental rights. Similarly some other rights like the right to vote are not granted to all citizens.
The elephant (ha ha) in the room is another slippery slope leading to the question whether we should be killing and eating intelligent and social beings.
Related: I hope that Spanish cephalopod farming operation gets axed by law soon for precisely the same reason.
Industrialized animal farming is a cruelty factory that (mostly) doesn’t even produce quality product. Senseless by any sane measure.
Another cruelty is, especially in regards to hunting, the difficulty is getting a painless kill. At least on a farm you can always guide the cow into a barn, knock it unconscious with a bolt pistol, and kill it humanely from there.
“Nearly all animals farmed in the U.S. (99 percent) are raised on factory farms.”, “ Large-scale farms make up only four percent of the nation’s farms but “control two-thirds of U.S. agricultural land,” reports The Guardian” - https://www.farmsanctuary.org/news-stories/2022-ag-census-fa...
Glad we cleared that up.
The animal rights group NonHuman Rights Project
Where do you stop? Insects? Bacteria? Viruses?
In these times, what about an AI?
[0] https://www.nonhumanrights.org/about-us/
We generally are too soft on animals abuse and abuse of an animal like an elephant should carry a sentence similar to abusing a person.
Therefore, who deserves personhood and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship? An individual termite, or its mound and colony as a whole? How mature and ancient is any given termite mound in the Australian outback? Do presidents and kings owe tribute to Termite Pharaohs?
I would protect the elephants because I like them. No use bringing rights into it.
They absolutely do exist, but it's really unfortunate that we don't talk about them more accurately.
History would beg to differ.
>I would protect the elephants because I like them. No use bringing rights into it.
Rights are rarely needed to protect x from y when y likes x..
Should policies of countries be decided by a small number of single minded zealots whilst make pretending there's some sort of 'democracy' taking place?
Anyhoo :)
The title indicates that this isn't a thread for the discussion of that small number of single minded zealots who have captured the US Court system in a thoroughly undemocratic manner .. but by all means discuss that further.
EVERYONE IN THE GALLERY TURNS QUICKLY TO FACE THE BACK OF THE COURT. THERE STANDS AN ELEPHANT WEARING A TRENCHCOAT AND CARRYING A BRIEFCASE, READY TO GIVE HIS DEPOSITION.
Our whole society is based on animals not having rights.
Some people see a gradation where we could have criteria to determine how many rights could each kind of animal have, and argue about small details. But of course the other point of view will be that any fissuring of the concept of animals as "things" will break the dam and there will be no going back.
For anyone seeing simple and clear lines that could be drawn, try to classify the elephants in the article, the differnt kind monkeys, pigs, cows, dogs , racoons and ant colonies. You see the wall that rises the minute elephants get special rights while cows keep feeding us, for instance.
Any truly objective observer will say humans are no different from other animals on Earth.
And of course, an elephant will likely say they're special while everything else isn't.
We're special to each other because we wouldn't function very well if we didn't find each other special.
Except in all the ways that we are?
What other species have left the planet and came back to tell the tale?
It seems askew to attribute 8 billion+ humans with an attribute marking so few humans .
What is your point that elevates the value of human life above that of other animals?
No, but we have and regularly do move faster than any cheetah and fly higher and further than any eagle.
My point is that, to an objective observer, there are things that humans have done and can do that make us obviously separate, as a species, than any other animal on earth.
The scale of our combined efforts dwarf the efforts of other animals. Especially when considering that, physically, we have very few advantages over other animals.
Arguing against that point is just playing mental gymnastics to say “oh actually humans aren’t really exceptional”
Idk what that might say about the “value” (whatever that means) of human life compared to other life.
A concrete example would be climate change. Humans have been pumping the atmosphere full of shit for a long time and it’s causing global climate changes. No other animal has affected the climate at that scale.
Bad or not, that kind of thing makes us humans exceptional.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
The environmental impact humans have had, if any, is astronomically negligible. Even if it wasn't, we certainly aren't the first and certainly won't be the last.
> This began approximately 2.460–2.426 Ga (billion years) ago during the Siderian period and ended approximately 2.060 Ga ago during the Rhyacian
So it took them what, like 400M years?
Our Industrial Revolution was 500ish years ago? Hell, we’ve only been around for 10k years.The scale of that is wildly different.
Also let’s not forget that we can quickly change the atmosphere’s composition, leave the planet and return, move faster than any cheetah, and fly higher and further than any eagle. All of that and more.
The rate of change of our species’ capabilities seem to change much faster than other animals as well
It’s crazy that you’re serious, I’m sorry.
Yeah, and we're talking about maybe we could cause the oceans to rise a few fractions of an inch in that time.
The impact of humanity has been massively overblown by people like you, which only take away from any worthwhile conversation.
My point is that an objective observer looking at the world would absolutely recognize that humanity is an exceptional species (not necessarily in a good or bad way) among all that exist on earth in many ways.
The impact we have on the planet is non-negligible. A few fractions of an inch in 500 years (effectively instant on a geological timescale) is indeed meaningful, but not what I’m trying to argue.
> people like you
You know next to nothing about me. Try not to generalize.
I'm not going to say this is human nature, because I think all species have the same instinctive frame of mind if we could but communicate with them. I have no doubt that elephants look down upon us as crazy apes, but I have no way to prove that since I don't speak elephant.
“Based on this one comment thread, I know enough about you to be able to tell that all of human society is based on humans being special“
Is a crazy statement that has next to nothing to do with the conversation I’ve been having…
This isn't a jab at you, rather you're demonstrating the axiom of human society as a member of it.
So far, so good.
> Any truly objective observer will say humans are no different from other animals on Earth
And...we hard exit stage left. It's sad when presumably good intentions, like the ethical treatment of animals and cultivating some well needed humility as a species, leads to such an unfounded point of view.
From a purely biological perspective, I could see that argument. But until animals start hunting, experimenting on, cultivating, and eating humans, en masse, creating symphonies or buildings that will last centuries, and start sending themselves to space, I'll continue to believe the difference between humans and animals is a qualitative and not just a quantitative difference. I don't think a truly objective observe could see it any other way.
- Humans can easily treat other humans as things as well. Humans being special is to me more or a convenient fiction than something really at the core of our societies.
- For such a long time, we didn't have to care whether humans need to be separated from animals, the value scale was pretty flat in that respect. In many circumstances a horse from a higher up would be more important than a peasant's life.
Let's be honest, these laws won't apply to the average person. It'll apply to where it really matters:
Poach an elephant in Africa and come home? Now you're going to court for murder.
Keep a Monkey inside your house? Looks like you're going to court for kidnapping.
Keep a dog outside chained to a fence and barely feed it? Looks like you're going to court for abuse (more severe than what we do now).
We can make provisions for things. Animals eat animals that's the reality of our world. But make cows sit in their own shit for years and eat food that's non nutritional for them? Now you're going to jail for mass incarceration of living things.
It's wildly accepted bees are quite intelligent. Let's treat the company who made insecticides that killed all the bees with genocide. Once that legal president is set, let's do the same for people who continue to use insecticides.
For some people it might look far fetched at first, but considering that women only got full voting rights around a few decades ago in most western countries, and are still far from there in so many countries, humans getting different rights is still totally a thing.
You can't do this stuff unless you have a working definition of personhood. Good luck with that. The moment that animals have rights you run into a huge series of ethical problems. Should dogs have rights? Should rats? Should insects? Should tardigrades? Should plants? Bacteria?
Most of these philosophical questions have no univocal answers and are usually the layperson can't go beyond "this cute animal has rights because I like it and this other animal doesn't because it's ugly", which frankly is appalling.
We need something like child support for dogs. Shelters are horribly underfunded. Animal abusers deserve to have their income confiscated, so their family members can have a dignified life!
How about slugs ? Or bacteria ?
That you don’t take a second to consider they may have a subjective reality similar to your own, and instead ridicule the mere thought that these animals deserve some kind of protection, leaves me troubled.
I'm personally not sure where I stand, but there is a whole can of worms when we start to evaluate which animals "deserve" protection and on what grounds. For instance many of the characteristics you underline probably apply to crows, except crows are either categorized as nuisance or only tolerated in many places in the world.
And it might be too much expanding the subject, but there is a chance that most animals that are living in urban or technically advanced settings are getting some boost on "inteligence" and will show traits that make them better fit for a human environment, including better display of emotions for instance. I think we're already seeing such a development in cats, and as animals crossing that threshold would be protected while other get the boot, the selection for that trait could happen pretty fast.
In a broader scope, I think we’re just now realising that continuing the human way of life is just not sustainable and makes the planet inhospitable to Sapiens: We consume too much at once, and bring a disbalance to the global ecosystem. Fixing that requires rethinking a lot of the systems we rely on, and yes, also restraining ourselves from doing things that damage the ecosystem we depend on. A practical consequence is drastically reducing meat consumption and mass farming, and that ties back in to the point of reducing suffering.
I think we’re aware of an equilibrium in our environment, and if we look at the world close enough, everyone realises the status quo just won’t work much longer. Drawing the consequences is the hard part, and realising animals suffer and that that is a sign something is wrong is one of them.