Wild animal suffering

Wild animal suffering (WAS) is the suffering of animals due to natural processes, although the term could also be used for “unnatural” instances of wild animal suffering, such as when wild animals suffer due to human activity.

The issue has recently received attention from academics, and is now starting to gain the interest of animal protection activists .

Notable academics on wild animal suffering

John Stuart Mill

In "On Nature",John Stuart Mill, a British utilitarian philosopher, argued that nature is not moral:

In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's every day performances. [..] The phrases which ascribe perfection to the course of nature can only be considered as the exaggerations of poetic or devotional feeling, not intended to stand the test of a sober examination. No one, either religious or irreligious, believes that the hurtful agencies of nature, considered as a whole, promote good purposes, in any other way than by inciting human rational creatures to rise up and struggle against them.

Yew-Kwang Ng

Economist Yew-Kwang Ng published a paper in 1995 entitled "Towards welfare biology: Evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering" . In his paper Ng discusses which animals may be able to suffer, how population dynamics and r-selection cause vast amounts of suffering, and how the situation of wild animals may be improved.

Oscar Horta

Oscar Horta, a professor of moral philosophy at University of Santiago de Compostela, has written several papers on the subject of wild animal suffering. He also often presents lectures on the subject of wild animal suffering.

Jeff McMahan

In 2010 The New York Times published an article by Jeff McMahan, entitled "The Meat Eaters" in which he argues that phasing out predation would be a moral thing to do.

Tyler Cowen

The economist Tyler Cowen argues in his paper, "Policing Nature," that the idea of intervening in the wild to protect animals has been neglected and should be on the agenda. He argues that there are ways that we can protect animals in the wild at no cost to ourselves, such as by not reintroducing predators to areas, and that most moral theories are probably committed to protecting animals in these cases.