Hierarchy of importance of animals? [fleas!]

[muchluv]

I was posting in Mabli's headlice thread but as I was taking it somewhere slightly different I've started a new thread.

In Animal Rights, I personally always get the vibe of the notion that animals are equal. More specifically animals and humans are equal, and that discrimination should not occur on grounds of intelligence. I did buy into this concept, and still do agree with it, but I thought about animals and their fleas..

If all animals have an equal right to life, is it not wrong to deflea a cat or dog? There could be 30 fleas living on that dog, and to protect the (dog) 1 animal, you would kill (30 animals/fleas). If they are equal, is it not worse to kill the fleas.

Somebody in the other thread pointed out that if it is your animal, it is a form of defence. This is true, but suppose you have no connection to the animal whatsoever but you say, find it, and decide to treat it. You are then defending the animal, not on your emotional connection to it, but on the importance you personally place on that animal due to your own views towards it. This could be based on any number of things intelligence, level of ability to experience, aesthetics, size, previous experience with said species.

I say size because I always feel that a larger animal would perhaps be deemed as of greater importance by many people because of it's physical imposition.

You could argue its defence again, but on what grounds? The fleas are only doing what comes naturally to them, just as predators hunt prey. If we happened to be mooching about in Africa and we saw a couple of lions chasing down a gazelle, would it be ok to interfere to protect the gazelle?

In addition to that previous point, those animals we are de-flea-ing, (generally) feed from dog or cat food from animals killed for the pet food industry That's ok, while it's not ok for fleas to do what they do?

I'm not suggesting for a second we stop defleaing animals, but I think this is an important point because in some ways the concept of Animal Rights revolves around this arugment of equality.

Engage me!

[xrodolfox]

I always shy away from using "equal" in any ethical discussion or personal practice... even when dealing with people.

This comes from the use of "equal" to subvert "justice" in my experience working for Civil RIghts. The reality is that people aren't all equal, not should they be. People are all different and need different things at different times. Fighting for equality in terms of equal pay for equal work is quite different than not asking for a place to nurse babies at work (something that is "justice" oriented, but not equal since a special group gets something that no one else gets). Or when fighting for justice for people of color that have different needs than the dominant groups.

I do the same thing with animals.

I do not think animals are all equal, and certainly not all ethically the same. That is different than what I see as our moral imperative to avoid harming animals (or humans) whenever possible. Non-human animals do not have to be equal to humans to deserve moral consideration, or to have a right to life and liberty.

I also do dispute a hierarchy of animals. Being more like humans doesn't mean that those animals deserve more consideration. But that's for later, if we get there.

[Fallen_Horse]

I like to think of it this way. Humans are just animals, animals are of course animals, fleas are insects, and plants are plants. So humans > fleas > plants.

Now, in order to survive I must eat plants (the lowest order of intelligence) but I have no need to eat insects or animals, so I choose not to, because I feel like I should harm other species as little as possible. If it were possible to survive without eating plants I suppose I would do that too, but unfortunately this is not an option.

Back to your quandry, I think it is justifiable or unjustifiable to kill fleas to help your pet, depending on which overall philosophical view you subscribe to. I haven't made up my mind on this particular quandry, so I choose to not have pets, and therefore not have to deal with the problem. At this point in my life though, I would go with eliminating the fleas and keeping my dog disease free.

Just my 2c....

[Gelert]

The concept of a hierarchy amongst the living world is something totally imposed by humans within the last couple of centuries. It's all that bastard Linneaus's fault. It has little basis in objective reality other than in giving taxonomical stamp collectors wood. No two species are equal, no two species are unequal. There is no "higher" nor is there "lower". Just different species.

Every extant species is the product of billions of years of biological evolution upon this planet. We all have in common an unbroken lineage of survival from the first ancestor. That puts us all in an elite group of organisms, considering the vast majority of species have gone by the wayside. In that light we should probably put our anthropocentric concepts of "intelligence" under the microscope too. Every organism, from us, to fleas to Arabidopsis to the uncultured species of archaea in your mouth that we only know exists by a few hundred base pairs of its DNA must have been smarter than the average bear to get this far.

If I were in a contrary mood I'd be inclined to question even the existence of species as anything more concrete than a human construction to aid the conceptualization of groups of organisms exploring different strategies for maximising fitness within different niches, thus dashing the whole concept of a hierarchy upon the rocks once more.

But I'm not. So enjoy some verse instead!

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee

[muchluv]

Exactly Gelert! It is imposed by people. That's what I'm saying. Aren't we imposing that in the hypothetical situation I placed above with the 'stranger' cat/dog and fleas?

Human beings put their own degree of value onto different animals and then there are consequences to this. It's just that in AR people go on about getting rid of 'speciesism' but then do it themselves to a degree? Yes/ no? And I completely include myself in this. I guess I just went along with an ideology which crumbles if you put it under pressure, when I think about it. Perhaps it was my own misinterpretation



P.S. sorry for using the phrase 'value', or 'importance' or 'heirachy' really. The notion is grosses me out, too.

[xrodolfox]

I agree with Gelert and the avoiding "hierarchal" chains of ethical importance.

However, I do make distinctions based on relationships to me.

I favor my own children over those of other people. I favor my friends over non-friends. When put in an ethical quagmire, I side with the being I am closest to in relationship. Thus, if a building is burning, and there's someone else in there, whether or not I rescue them is likely due to how well I know them, or sympathize with them. Heck, if someone I know but I loathe is in the building, and a cat that I love dearly is in there too, I'm rescuing the cat.

However, rarely do we encounter a burning building scenario, unless we are firefighters. I do not have to harm people or animals when I avoid consuming animals. Pursuing the rights of animals to live without harmful human interference, especially for food, entertainment, or fashion, seem far too removed from a burning building scenario for any "hierarchy" to be in play. Eating animals seem capricious.

So on fleas: If an animal I love and care for is harmed by fleas (very likely), I would remove the fleas. Flea related illnesses can kill or harm. If my kids are harmed by lice (which is unlikely), then I'll remove the lice. Lice don't kill anyone.

On people or animals that I don't have any relationship, I would only use the ideas of communal health as a barometer. If another human is ill with a parasite that could easily spread to harm other humans, well, then, I'm pushing for universal health coverage and making sure that parasite is contained or eradicated.

Mosquitos are a case in point.

I think that removing mosquitos from areas where malaria is present is a "good", from the perspective of humans... albeit not for mosquitos. In that case, it is human lives that are in danger.

In my case, I am terribly allergic to mosquitos. I can handle the after-effects of a bite (kind-of). So I try not to kill them on me, since I won't die (even though it often feels like I will). However, my daughter inherited this terrible annoyance. I will kill mosquitos if they get on her. But I find that the best solution is just to stay indoors, or to wear something resembling a burka in the humid days of summer.

Ethical dilemma solved. (for me at least)

[muchluv]

Thanks Rodolfo. There we have one person's perspective on the kind of thing I have been saying, (that personal relationship to the subject is the deciding factor, if I've understood that right).

Any others willing to chip in?

I want to rewrite my hypothetical and use a third person character.

Sam finds a cat. Sam has no personal connection to the cat, it is a stray. Sam owns no cats (in regards communal health). The cat has fleas. Sam has a flea tablet. Should Sam give the flea tablet to the cat? Yes/No?

If yes then, he should kill 30 fleas (in other words 30 animals) in order to protect one animal. Why?

The reason I am guessing the average person would say yes is because humans can arguably empathise easier (or just prefer) those who have a perception of life and that is more like their own. This in its own is a form of bias though.

[Johnboy74]

Interesting words....

I agree with the statements that, our relationships to other living things has a powerful effect on what we are prepared
or not prepared to do. Also that our concepts of nature are exactly that concepts, but I suppose that's all we can have.

I'm coming to the conclusion that when push comes to shove everything reduces down essentially to what our genes
want us to do. There is no escaping the power of the gene it seems, we may try and overcome, surpress, deny the
extent of its power but they invariably genes win in the end. Which weakens the 'Veganism' ideology to a degree.
Even as vegans we are all willing to kill in certain situations, which reminds me of that old argument by non-vegans that
they would rather have a monkey tested on to save their child. Veganism does crumble under the more powerful force of our genes.

I did at one time think that human intelligence both cognitive and emotional could overcome this but now i'm not so sure.
Maybe this is being too hasty, humans after all are still evolving biologically and culturally and the power shift may one
day shift from our tyrannical genes.

[xrodolfox]

Sam finds a cat. Sam has no personal connection to the cat, it is a stray. Sam owns no cats (in regards communal health). The cat has fleas. Sam has a flea tablet. Should Sam give the flea tablet to the cat? Yes/No?

If yes then, he should kill 30 fleas (in other words 30 animals) in order to protect one animal. Why?

First off, even if I didn't have any cats in my life, fleas might hurt other cats in the world of cats.

If, however, you were talking about a parasite that just attacked one cat and couldn't spread to other cats and I had the cure for the parasite and using it would kill millions of those parasites and save the one cat? Well, I guess it depends on what is suffering most and all that. I would arbitrarily gauge what seemed to be the path the caused the least suffering as I understand suffering.

In that case, I would favor the animal which was most social and reacted to pain and suffering most like I understand it. It would be a totally anthropomorphic, and personal choice. If the parasite seemed to be a sentient social life that reacted like a human, I would likely keep the parasite alive if the host was an animal that seemed to experience suffering differently that I. So I would keep such a sentient parasite on a comatose human or cat, for example, if that human or cat was otherwise unharmed. This would be totally arbitrary, and frankly based on my own personal experience with different animals. I love whales, and I dislike mosquitos (see allergies, above). If the parasite on a mosquito was a whale, and it caused mosquitos much pain and suffering to have whale sucking on them, but mosquitos experienced suffering in a manner that was unintelligible to me, but whales experienced suffering that I could relate to, I'd intervene.

But generally, my feeling is that humans should not intervene in the affairs of animals. Predatory animals can bee seen as parasites on communities of prey animals. I do not think that humans should interfere in that relationship unless it is due to personal relationships getting involved. If I was friends with an individual gazelle, I should certainly save it, but I do not feel morally obligated to save all gazelles from all lions. I *do* feel obligated to saving gazelles from humans, and human culture... but not form lions.

[Johnstuff]

Interesting discussion

I once looked out of a window and saw a swarrow and thought to my self "there is as much meaning and value in the life of the sparrow as there is in my own. To think otherwise would be to allow my own point of view to bias my outlook."

I am full of contradictions though.

Perhaps this is bad of me but I am an illogical, emotionally driven creature. I would kill parasites just to avoid being uncomfortable because that would make me feel best. There you have it: I am selfish. Sorry
However just because I am selfish does not mean I enjoy the idea of causing harm so where reasonable I do my best to avoid harming others. Also making others happy, makes me happy.

I do feel a little bit of guilt about killing parasites. It's not their fault they were born as parasites.

I suspect that most people are not nearly as logical as we like to believe. I think we do what make us feel best and then we arrange logic and reason around it to try and make it sound good. Maybe we are slaves to our genetics and environmental conditioning. Maybe there is no free-will. Maybe I kill parasites because I have no real choice.

I don't really know what I'm trying to say here. I'd love it if there was a simple formula for a comfortable, guilt free life but I have never found one.

Sorry for the waffle

[bastardo]

I don't see why valuing other beings over some others is a bad thing, though? As long as you acknowledge _some_ value and act accordingly with concern over both "values". I mean, humans value some humans over others, be it over anything from someone being a relative to something as insignificant as taste in music, or appearance.

By this I mean, I don't really care what choice you pick in the case of the cat and fleas, as long as you acknowledge both have value, and do your best to cause as little harm as possible. Most likely you're bound to make a choice either way. Perhaps you'll argue that the fleas should stay where they are because there are many fleas, or perhaps you'll argue that the fleas must go because the cat is more likely a more cognitive being for pain and/or annoyance. Either way you choose, it seems like you recognize the value of both.

[Linnéa76]

Without constructing a hierarchy of supposed value or ”advancedness”, I think it makes sense to make a distinction based on capacity for suffering. After all, that’s what we do when we choose to eat plants rather than animals - we feel certain that the plants don’t suffer because they don’t have a central nervous system that could integrate information and create a coherent experience of stress or pain. (Some people claim otherwise but I feel that’s mostly rhetoric..)

Our intuitive assessment of capacity for suffering is probably based on a variety of things, such as pain behavior/avoidance, expressions of fear, cries and body language, the size of the animal. I think we’re pretty good at these judgments when it comes to land-living creatures, but not the animals of the sea. They don’t have facial expressions and usually don’t make sounds we can perceive, their behavior is also more difficult to study. So most people wrongly assume that fish don’t have feelings.

Size is a pretty good indicator to some extent, if we accept that a central nervous system is required to experience suffering. Of course, small animals like rats and parrots have a cognitive capacity similar to much larger animals. But there’s a limit to how small neurons can be and how few you can have to coordinate an emotional experience.

So where do we draw the line? We don’t empathize with amoebae, nor tapeworms. Ticks ? Probably not. Bees? Their organization and communication is very complex and we sometimes interpret their behavior as angry or scared. It’s conceivable that they can experience stress. So yes. Mosquitoes on the other hand seem to be a bit controversial among vegans… I percieve them as purely reflex-driven. This view is based on intuition and my understanding of biology and is of course subjective. Maybe genes come into play as someone suggested, after all mosquitoes are our biggest enemy among animals if you go by human death numbers.

So I guess I do think there’s a hierarchy of emotional capacity and I don’t believe it’s entirely arbitrary. Defleeing a cat would not be a moral dilemma for me.

[mabli]

So I guess I do think there’s a hierarchy of emotional capacity and I don’t believe it’s entirely arbitrary. Defleeing a cat would not be a moral dilemma for me.

Agreed.

Given the suffering that humans cause to each other, to the planet, to animals etc if we use the "pest" argument we would annhilate vast quantities of humanity.

[muchluv]

Some interesting ideas here showing the different reasonings people have!

Another question to start some debate!

In creating de-fleaing products, be they tablets, carpet sprays etc, I think it's reasonable to imagine that these products will be tested on fleas. What are the thoughts on this?

Of course you could argue non-pharmalogical/chemical treatments, but then can possibly counter argue different amounts of flees/eggs, which may require usage of pharmalogical/chemical treatments.