We are past the point of needing scientific evidence that animals are conscious beings, and it is time to update the way we talk and write about them to recognize this fact.
Piia Anttonen, director of Tuulispää Animal Sanctuary in
Finland, with a rescued chicken. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne
McArthur/WeAnimals)
We wouldn’t say “it” or “that” when referring to humans, so why would we for other sentient individuals?
Happy has to be one of the most ironic names for an Asian elephant
whose living conditions have prompted groundbreaking legal action on
her behalf. Her advocates are certain that she is not happy at all
and are seeking to free her from her current confines.
Happy was born in the wild but was captured as a calf in the early
1970s. She ended up at the Bronx Zoo in New York City a few years
later, where she’s been ever since.
Given what we know about how physically and psychologically
detrimental captivity is for elephants and how vastly different
their lives are in the wild, it’s virtually impossible to draw the
conclusion that Happy is content at all after enduring decades of
confinement that include years of isolation.
We also know that she’s a sentient being, which means she is
self-aware—in 2006 she became the first elephant ever documented to
pass the “mirror self-recognition test”—and she’s the first elephant
to be considered in court for legal personhood under a writ of
habeas corpus.
Her lawyers at the Nonhuman Rights Project argue that Happy
possesses such complex cognitive, emotional and social abilities and
deserves fundamental rights to “bodily liberty” and “bodily
integrity”—something we are automatically granted just by virtue of
being born human.
Happy the elephant lives in solitary confinement at the Bronx
Zoo
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