Flash! Animals are not people

Sometimes I think some Americans are losing their minds.

Other times I am sure of it.

We live in a time where some people believe men can get pregnant, that math is racist, that gender can be changed like your underwear, and that a bumblebee is a fish.  

Now we have two New York state appellate judges who think an elephant is a person.

I am an elephant lover and wrote many times that the Philadelphia Zoo should send its elephants to spacious sanctuaries. That eventually happened and I covered Dulary’s 2007 arrival at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. I didn’t argue that they were people. I argued they deserved humane treatment and more space than could be provided by Philly’s zoo, with its small, urban footprint.

The current suit was brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project, a group I know and like, but it went — not for the first time — into loon legal territory to redefine “animal” and “human.”

To illustrate this with a ridiculous example, if Happy the elephant is a person, she should be allowed to vote, and — why not? — marry a human.

The group was trying to free Happy from the Bronx Zoo. 

Zoos have been around forever, and they constantly are being made better. Accredited zoos no longer take animals from the wild, they are active in breeding, saving environment, and doubtlessly provide children with a respect for animals that only the live experience can provide.

Yes, you can argue the animals are “prisoners.” But is that accurate?

Taking the Philadelphia Zoo as an example, the exhibits are large enough to permit natural behaviors. The big cats, for instance, were all born in captivity, so this is the “norm” for them. They are fed nutritious food they don’t have to hunt for, they have comfortable quarters, veterinary care and toys.

“The vast, vast majority of animals in accredited zoos are born in another zoo,” I am told by Vik Dewan, CEO of the Philly Zoo. “The only exceptions are rescues, and confiscations,:” such as animals captured while being smuggled across a border.

Let’s switch to domestic animals.

I call my dog “my boy,” but I do not call him my “son.”

I love him, I respect him, I care for him, I protect him, but as lovable as he is, he is not a “person.”

He can’t have “freedom.” 

Being “free” would kill him, because he is a companion animal.  Animal, not person. He is dependent on me and his human “mom.”

That is true for the other dogs and one cat I have lived with, and been responsible for.

I stopped using the word “owner” a long time ago. I switched to the term preferred by animal advocates — guardian. That is my role with the dog I nicknamed Nut Bag. I don’t “own” him. I adopted him, he is mine to protect and spoil. 

And I do both.

I have advocated for animals for more than 25 years in my columns.

I avoid using the term “animal rights,” because it’s like waving a red cape in front of a bull, to use an animal metaphor. There are too many human animals — we are all animals, you know that, right?– who go ape shit, to use another animal metaphor, when they hear the word “rights” applied to nonhuman animals.

So I avoid it in the main, but I insist that animals deserve humane treatment. People are usually OK with that. 

So, humane treatment is the goal.

“Peoplehood” must not be. It is too ridiculous.