![]() They can influence the final decision to end the life of the animal, or the amount of time and money we might be willing to spend on potential alternatives. These interests can be diverse, including emotional, financial and societal considerations. Human interests are often at play when an animal's life is ended. Freya and the beluga whale show that when animals cross contexts, in this case from the wild into human urban areas, views on how to treat them can change dramatically. Nonetheless, attitudes towards animal euthanasia are fluid. ![]() ![]() They are best placed to assess the interests of the animal, based on its quality of life and the suffering it may be experiencing. It is therefore vital that species-specific experts are involved when decisions are made to end an animal's life. In either case, this old-fashioned garden plant is a lovely addition to. Because in most cases humans cannot communicate with animals, we have to rely on veterinary, animal behavior and animal welfare science to determine if it's in an animal's interests to end or continue its life. become hard to tell the difference between wild and cultivated varieties. Whether or when animals themselves have an interest in the continuation or ending of their lives is the subject of an ongoing debate.Īnimals are increasingly recognized as "sentient beings." Many are understood to possess the ability to evaluate the actions of others, to remember some of their own actions and their consequences, to assess risk, to have feelings, and to have some degree of awareness.ĭespite this starting point, there remain challenges to deciding when to end an animal's life. Some countries have bestowed legal rights to animals. We tend to treat wild animals differently to kept animals, for instance, and we tend to see farm animals as different from pets. Public disagreements about when animals should be killed reflect the diversity of views in society about how we should treat animals. But they're also different from case to case, informed by different ethical perspectives on the moral value of animals. A private fundraising campaign has even been set up to erect a statue of Freya in Oslo, with its creators arguing that the walrus should not have been killed.Īlthough the decisions to end the lives of the beluga whale and Freya the walrus were based on different factors, they both ultimately expose the contested nature of animal euthanasia, which is often referred to as " mercy killing".Īs a researcher of animal end-of-life situations and the decision-making behind animal euthanasia, I know these decisions aren't taken lightly. Many people followed the whereabouts of these animals, cared about their welfare, and were shocked and saddened by their deaths.
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