This month it was announced that five killer whales were suing to emancipate themselves from the world of wetsuit clad trainers, hoops and hourly show times, arguing they are protected under the 13th Amendment. PETA represented the plaintiffs. A United States judge dismissed the case because the Constitution only offers protection for humans and not animals, even if considered intelligent. This case reflects the controversy in using animals to provide services like entertainment, law-enforcement and research. Although the conditions at SeaWorld are probably worth concern, animals used in research usually have different needs and conditions.
When thinking of “animal testing,” most of us have been conditioned from childhood to associate the term with an image of a Cruella De Vil-type in a lab coat, coating the faces of Dalmatian puppies with toxic levels of lead-based makeup. This is not indicative of the type of animal-based research that is largely conducted in research laboratories across the country.
The Animal Welfare Act mandates specific rules concerning the rights of research animals, including that only minimum pain and distress must be experienced by test animals and that scientists must be trained to care for them outside of research activities. Although the act provides for proper food, water, sanitation, shelter and safety for lab animals, it does not take into account their emotional well-being.
One of the biggest reasons for this is that the ability for animals to feel emotions like boredom and happiness are still being questioned. Perhaps dogs, a species which man has evolved closely alongside throughout history, present the strongest argument that animals possess emotional needs. As almost any dog owner will tell you, dogs do get bored and desire companionship.
But do so-called lower caste animals, like rats, guinea pigs and fish, animals typically used for laboratory research, experience the same thing? It’s customary for rats and guinea pigs to live together in cages to prevent boredom, but the consensus at least for now seems to be that these animals do not possess emotional needs beyond that of basic companionship. It would not be a huge stretch to say it is possible that whales, being mammals that tend to live in groups, probably have important emotional needs that aren’t being satisfied by SeaWorld.
The biggest problem is that some whales were caught from the wild. For such large animals that have grown up swimming long distances with a specific family of their fellow species for most of their lives, being confined in a tank has to be miserable.
The case of animals in research differs because most of them are not wild-caught. These animals are used to living in captivity, and for the most part are very small and do not naturally require vast amounts of area to travel.
So let’s say if, by some chance, animal rights are revisited and the court rules in the animals’ favor, and somewhere down the road it ends up freeing mammalian lab animals like rats and guinea pigs, laboratory research will have to find a way to adapt and survive. Insects like fruit flies, which are already popular in medical research because some of their biological processes are similar to humans, would probably become the dominant test subject. It is a pretty safe bet that fruit flies wouldn’t have PETA beating down their cage doors to defend them, as society tends to view flies as pretty gross and not cuddly or cute like Shamu. So you stay, weird and nasty flies, for the future of science.
