There are lots of things going on about animal rights though, personally, my opinion is that animals do not have some “special” rights. In order to have rights you have to respect the rights of others. Cats do not respect the rights of a mouse. A wild dog would happily kill and eat another animal. If one person kills someone else, society will punish that person. A dog could kill another dog, and “dog society” wouldn’t do anything about it. Rights as we know them, are just an agreements that we make with each other. A dog, a cat, a horse, cannot enter that agreement. We are a more conscious species of animal, therefore, we can be superior to them because this is how the food chain works. If we, would respect animal rights like the rights of people we would all be vegetarians. To what extent these rights are true, depend on peoples’ moral beliefs. Most of the people would refuse to eat dog meat and would eat pork when actually scientist proved that pigs are very clever animals and have similar brain and heart structure to humans. Our pets compared to animals in farming have much more important rights.
On the other hand, we are part of a culture, which uses animals for food, their fur for clothes, for research when developing new drugs, also when determining safety of some daily uses products. This use of animals gives a great deal of pain to animals and people can find books written about humans torturing animals. Though, when it comes to question we ask ourselves if we would better choose a rat or human to do some development drug test on, of course we wouldn’t choose humans because they are our species. Most people are unfamiliar about all these topics going around them and they are never bothered to find out unless they are interested in animal rights.
“One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.”( by Charles Darwin).
But as said by Aristotle: “Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered."
Seeing that we are the superior species, should make realise us the importance of the protection of weaker species. Animals maintain ecological balance because they kill only for their need and there’s enough in this world for everyone’s needs, but never enough for one’s greed. Humans have to stop killing animals for selfish motives, otherwise everyone except humans will be extinct from the planet.
Even today, after the government has laid such strict rules, some greedy, monstrous people have been continuing to torment animals. Poaching and hunting for the fur of animals and for making leather has not only resulted in the extinction of numerous species but has also led to an ecological imbalance. Therefore, sooner or later we will have to face the wrath of the nature. What we do now may have a negative effect on us. Serious food chain issues may lead to scarcity of food and humans will starve to death. Therefore, it is a perfect time to realise the importance of animal rights and start living in harmony with nature.
Hence I would like to conclude by stating the following: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the ways its animals are treated.”-Mahatma Gandhi. We need to follow animal rights but they can never be the same as human rights unless there will appear another animal species that will be more clever than we are now. Though now we cannot always rely on the law as Aristotle said.
