Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence 1
Tufts University

In order to understand the animal rights movement as it exists today in American society, it is necessary to explore the ways in which the beliefs of those who support the movement differ from the beliefs of their adversaries. Societal views generally determine the perceived differences and similarities between people and animals, and the issues surrounding these differences are fundamental to the animal rights controversy.

Societal and Cultural Attitudes
A vast ideological chasm divides animal rights advocates from their opponents. During interviews with informants on both sides of the debate between animal rights activists and people favoring the use of animals in research, anthropologist Susan Sperling discovered sharp dichotomies between the two groups. In general, she found that animal rights proponents believe in human perfectibility. They embrace a tradition of hope for the redemption of human nature and foresee a future in which humanity will live in peace with other species. Animal rights activists tend to be deep thinkers who are critical of many aspects of modern society. Typically, they are dissatisfied with technological manipulation of both people and animals, and are opposed to patriarchal power in Western culture, which they believe fosters war, oppression of the poor, racism, and sexism, as well as speciesism. They assert that science and technology, as agents of pollution and environmental destruction, need to be controlled, and they view animal experimentation as symbolic of the human subjugation of nature. Modern medicine, they argue, should focus more on nutrition and sanitation for disease prevention (1988, pp. 200, 211-212). Summing up the gulf between the two groups, "activists feel they are in contact with the very roots of existence, of cosmic, social and cultural order," while the research community merely "talks about cleaner and larger cages" (Sperling, 1988, p. 196).

According to Sperling's data, opponents of animal rights hold a different world view that includes the concept of people as fundamentally predatory. Evolutionary history, they argue, demonstrates that the human species was adapted for a carnivorous existence. Preying on other species was not only necessary for human survival, but also for progress and civilization. Nature for them remains red in tooth and claw. Pragmatic use of the faculty of sound reason, the quality upon which they place high value, reveals a world characterized by struggle in which people should look out for their own species' interests. Inevitably, one species' gain causes another's loss, but they accept this process as the way of the world (1988, pp. 212-213). They believe that the gulf between humankind and animals is deep and that human beings should acknowledge that separation and study it. Reflecting the Cartesian tradition, animal researchers feel a mandate to engage in the conquest of knowledge by means of rationality, and they uphold human uniqueness on the basis of our species' distinctive reasoning ability (1988, pp. 211, 213, 217). Thus the two groups are in direct opposition concerning the resemblance between people and animals and the notion of human supremacy over animals ­ disagreeing on basic assumptions concerning the human place within nature.

As the arguments are articulated in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the veterinarian speaking for animal research explains: We do not live in an ideal world. Life in a doll house can be sweet and ordered for dolls, but the world outside is waiting to dirty their clothes, tear off their arms, and break their heads. Research could be "nice and clean" if we had an all-knowing computer and electronic gadgets that detect what is going on in the body. But in the real world, animals must be sacrificed for the slow advance of knowledge. Real veterinarians realize that their duty is to human beings (Mathey, 1993, pp. 1254-1255). The veterinarian for animal rights responds: Yes, the real world is cruel, but that is no excuse for not trying to improve it (Heerens, 1993, p. 1255).

Although views favoring animal well-being are frequently expressed by the general public today and statistical surveys indicate that vast multitudes of Americans believe animals should have some rights, the animal rights movement remains a voice crying in the wilderness. The dominant social order that determines our everyday existence does not operate to any appreciable degree under the assumption that animals have the right not to be eaten, used in research, or exploited for entertainment or industry. There are, of course, humane laws to regulate the welfare and treatment of certain animals, but none to outlaw socially-sanctioned institutions such as factory farming, animal experimentation, horse shows, dog races, fur-animal ranching, and the hunting and trapping of wild species. Recently, the United States Supreme Court, to preserve freedom of religion, upheld the right to slaughter animals in sacrificial rituals, reinforcing the tenet that our society works for the interests of people, whatever these may be, not for animals.

The roots underlying societal views are complex, but in any analysis of human interactions with animals there is one factor that is preeminently influential: the perceived differences between people and animals. Although philosophers and other scholars base their arguments on the concept of interests, for most of the population the seeming otherness of non-humans places distance between them and us. And as history has demonstrated, whenever differences between two groups become evident, one is inevitably regarded as superior. The way human-animal differences are interpreted by a society determines the nature of its relationships with animals. The dualities created by René Descartes between body/mind, physical being/soul, observer/observed, and human/animal are inextricably embedded in American culture. Although Darwinian evolutionary continuity between species ­ involving mental as well as physical characteristics ­ is scientifically accepted, creationist ideas continue to influence people's thoughts and actions. According to a September, 1993 Gallup poll, 47% of Americans believe that human beings were specially created about 10,000 years ago (Buikstra, 1993, p. 1). The universe remains essentially an anthropocentric sphere, even for those who deny separate origins for man and beast.

Undeniably, the escalating concern for animals and the growing influence of the animal rights movement in America today owe much of their momentum to the rapidly expanding body of data from the field of ethology. The more we learn about animals, the more we come to accept and appreciate their likeness to people. On the basis of new and more complete knowledge, our fellow beings hold fascination for us and concomitantly demand not only better treatment, but measures to insure their survival. Yet in the quest to understand our ambivalent relationship to the animal kingdom on the threshold of the 21st century, there is a strange irony. At the same time that our modern industrialized existence makes us more appreciative of animals, especially in an aesthetic way, that same urbanized and artificial life alienates us from nature and allows us to see it only as though through the proverbial wrong end of the telescope. Distance deprives us of the immediacy and intimacy that would draw us closer. Because our personal experiences with animals are now sharply limited, we tend to see them as identical members of a species, not as individuals. One of the universal enigmas of the human condition is the conflict between the individual and society. Just as human behavior can be examined from the point of view of the person as well as of the collectivity, so these same contrasting vantage points exist for animals. Let me give a few examples.

Consideration of The Individual Animal
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' recent book, The Hidden Life of Dogs, is an unusual study, for it focuses on how dogs relate to each other rather than how they interact with human beings. Her conclusions indicate that dogs, as pack animals, have powerful feelings of unity with their group and desire membership in that group above all else. Yet, paradoxically, each canine relationship is unique to those who share it, for animals are distinct individuals, not automatons that represent a species (1993, p. 145) as is so often assumed. Thomas' subjects, studied as an ethnographer observes an alien society, display unmistakable consciousness as they go about their lives. They run loose in the city, navigating expertly and coping skillfully with traffic and other hazards, fall romantically in love like Romeo and Juliet, make moral decisions and act upon them, and demonstrate restraint in sharing alternating licks and bites of an ice cream cone with a human who is considered a peer (1993, pp. xiii-xiv, 11-14, 50-52, 58).

To understand an animal's capabilities, you must know it intimately, entering into its life as Thomas did with her dogs, an experience that is denied to all but a few people in the modern world. Horses illustrate this point as well, being generally maintained today for a few hours of recreational riding on weekends or for some specific purpose such as showing or racing. Isolated from the human sphere for most of their lives, their real nature is little known or understood, and hence horses are typically regarded as robots able to be trained to do human bidding through mechanical conditioned responses but lacking in judgment, cognitive ability, and plasticity of behavior. When people live intimately with them, however, a different picture emerges. A. F. Tschiffely, who in 1925 undertook a ten-thousand mile ride that lasted two and a half years, wrote appreciatively of the two faithful horses, his only companions on the expedition, whose quick thinking and actions often prevented serious mishaps. He related one instance in which his horse refused to go ahead, no matter how much the animal was urged. Puzzled by that behavior, he later learned that the horse knew they were on the very edge of a dangerous mud hole, in spite of the fact that such mud holes did not exist in the horse's native regions. Tschiffely, who later dedicated his book, Tschiffely's Ride, to his horses, credited the mount with saving his life (1955, p. 449).

But it is in regard to birds that the ingrained idea of species homogeneity and a stubborn insistence upon mechanistic, instinctual behavior as opposed to consciousness with deliberate actions reaches its heights. In his recent book, The Human Nature of Birds, research psychologist Theodore Barber reveals the extent to which the official scientific community has chosen to ignore the body of evidence that has been gathered by scholars and keen observers who have lived intimately with birds of a variety of species, coming to know them as individuals and recording their actions and relationships with humans (1993, pp. 74, 96). In 1953, for example, Len Howard, a British country-dweller, published a remarkable work, Birds As Individuals, chronicling her many years of living with wild birds. She literally shared her home with them, leaving windows and doors open so that they could enter and exit freely. Howard succeeded in gaining their confidence so that they did not fear her, and thus became a participant-observer in avian life.

Influenced by ornithological literature when she began her studies, Howard did not expect birds to demonstrate intelligence. She was taken by surprise one morning only three months after settling into Bird Cottage when a blue tit fluttered up before her face, hovering agitatedly and making obvious cries of distress. Flying in front of her, the bird soon led her to its nesting-box. The nest had been torn apart and the eggs were scattered on the floor of the box. Howard rebuilt the nest and replaced the eggs. The bird then resumed brooding and the eggs eventually hatched. Certainly, Howard reasoned, it is not a bird's instinct to seek human help. Thought must have determined the bird's actions. Up to that point, she had merely fed the birds and watched them build their nests (1953, pp. 25-26). A bird had taken the first step in communicating with her.

Acclaimed ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson visited Howard and saw her interacting with the birds she distinguished as individuals and was convinced that they demonstrated intelligence. In his introduction to the American edition of her book Peterson praises her sympathetic understanding combined with objective observation, and warns that mechanomorphism is as great a pitfall in the study of bird behavior as anthropomorphism. Ethologist Niko Tinbergen commented that although critical scientists not familiar with the ways of birds in the wild may disbelieve Howard's findings, he himself had no such doubts (1953, pp. 14-15, 19). Julian Huxley noted in his foreword to the book that few people had ever spent so much time watching birds at such close quarters, and commends to his professional colleagues as well as the general public Howard's discoveries about the differences in behavior demonstrated by individuals of the same species. He advises that professional biologists take to heart the fact that fear inhibits normality of behavior, and that only when birds lose their fear, as they did with Howard, can the secrets of their lives and the degree of their intelligence be known (1953, p. 7).

Yet because it contradicted the culturally ingrained dogma that birds are mechanistic carbon copies or virtual automata, Birds As Individuals generally has not been cited in ornithological texts. However, much of the scientific data gathered in recent years agrees with Howard's basic conclusion that wild birds are much more like people than anyone (especially official scientists) had imagined (Barber, 1993, p. 96). Indeed the likeness between birds and people is increasingly recognized by scientists. A 1993 field study by a biologist whose conclusions a decade or so ago probably would have been rejected as anthropomorphic reveals the close similarities that exist between song development in young birds and speech development in human babies (Kroodsma, 1993, pp. 17-25). Many personal accounts of long term relationships with individual birds confirm Howard's observations about avian flexibility and intelligence. The starling, Arnie, the quail, Robert, the owl, Bubo, and the scrub jay, Lorenzo, to name a few, all interacted with people on an intimate level and communicated with them in ways that can only be interpreted as demonstrating awareness (Corbo and Barras, 1990; Stanger, 1966; Heinrich, 1987; Leslie, 1985). Most notable is Irene Pepperberg's African grey parrot, Alex, who, defying the stereotype of parrots as mindless mimics, actually uses language creatively and demonstrates cognitive understanding of its meaning (1991, p. 153-177). When left with a veterinarian for surgery, he called out to his departing mistress, "Come here. I love you. I'm sorry. I want to go back," thinking he was being abandoned as punishment for some bad act (Begley and Cooper, 1993, p. 67).

Chickens are not protected by the same laws that govern treatment of other farm animals. As avians, feathers, beaks, and egg-laying differentiate them from mammals, and they are perceived as more machine-like, even though their cognitive abilities have been demonstrated scientifically. People who eat poultry but avoid meat from other animals commonly refer to chickens as vegetables with legs and visualize them en masse, like a bunch of carrots. Profitability in the poultry industry is not measured per bird, but per unit. Indeed, there is a long-standing, persistent, and perhaps nearly universal mandate to regard non-humans as groups, not individuals. Native American cultures, for example, tend to refer to all coyotes as Coyote, all wolves as Wolf, and all eagles as Eagle. When working among the Crow Indians, I learned that because of their feeling of reciprocity toward dogs who had once drawn their travois and horses who had given them mobility and other benefits, there is a strict societal taboo against killing those two animals. For traditional tribespeople, the constraint still applies, and exceptions cannot be made even for individuals who may be terminally ill or suffering.

The dominant strain of our own society may currently embrace this concept of a collective identity for animals. Gary Zukav, author of two national best-sellers and winner of the 1979 American Book Award in Science, expresses an aspect of this view in The Seat of the Soul. Taking unto himself the authority of a latter-day Descartes, he categorically states that each human being has a soul. The journey toward individual soulhood is what distinguishes the human kingdom from the animal kingdom. Animals, he asserts, do not have individual souls. They have group souls... Each horse is a part of the group soul of horse, each cat is part of the group soul of cat, and so on. Instinctual behavior is the way of the group soul (1990, pp. 175-176). No provenance is cited for these revelations, but they evidently reflect a prevalent mode of thought.

This attribution of sameness bears a resemblance to the old racial slur ­ they all look alike to me. If there are no differences among members of a group, their value and importance are greatly diminished so that it is easier to dislike them and to justify their exploitation and destruction. Individualism has been a quality prized by Americans since pioneer days, and as a frontier virtue, it has retained its status as a national trait forged by the conquest of the New World. This value system is of paramount importance to the animal rights debate, for the issue of the individual versus the population or species is often at the center of controversies concerning human interactions with nature. People who care about non-human well-being often wish that the two viewpoints ­ that of concern for the individual animal and that of concern for the population or group ­ could join forces and pool their energies, strategies, and resources. But such unity is elusive, because the interests of the two frequently conflict. Organizations like the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and the National Wildlife Federation work toward the well-being and preservation of populations or species of animals, with special attention to ecosystems and endangered species, while groups such as humane societies, the Fund for Animals, and Friends of Animals advocate the welfare and protection of individual animals. Occasionally, the two find common cause, but often they are at odds when individuals would be sacrificed in the interest of group welfare or preservation of a biota.

Granting of Rights According to Species
When rights are granted to individual animals, these animals belong to species thought to most resemble humans. In the effort to understand more fully the attribution of rights to non-humans, it is instructive to consider common perceptions of and values ascribed to those categories of animals generally deprived of all rights in our society. Insects exemplify that status, and recently, two experiences stimulated me to think about them in relation to this phenomenon. One day a spectacular black bug with gold legs and body markings appeared on my mailbox. Enraptured by its beauty, I longed to locate it in a field guide, to learn its name so that I could hold it permanently in memory. Yet I was hesitant to disturb its life, so I left it alone, unnamed. The creature's right to be there seemed more important than my own need to identify it. At about the same time I was a dinner guest in a person's home. As I sat talking to my hostess, an ant walked by us on the floor, instantly causing the woman to crush it with her foot. I managed to keep my composure, but inwardly I was shocked at the needless killing of what I perceive as a fascinating animal whose kind cultivate underground gardens, maintain other insects for food production, and live in tightly-knit societies with division of labor.

Statistically, in American culture I am nearly alone in those opinions. According to a new study by sociologist Stephen Kellert, invertebrate animals, despite playing a crucial role in the earth's ecosystem and contributing to human welfare and survival, are not only valued far less in our society than vertebrates, but are viewed by the general public with aversion, dislike, or fear. Only a tiny minority perceive these animals as possessing the capacity for affection, conscious decision-making, or planning future action. Most people disapprove of expenditures and sacrifices on behalf of protecting endangered invertebrates. Insects, in particular, are objects of hatred, and there is widespread opposition to the idea of their receiving moral consideration. Hostility may stem from surface factors like insects' role in disease transmission, fear of being stung or bitten, or from potential damage to agriculture, but there are deeper motivations. People feel alienated from creatures so different from our own species (Kellert, 1993).

Speculating on the reasons why people hate bugs, James Hillman offers insights that relate to the question of animal rights. Not only is there a huge difference in size, there is an overwhelming disparity in populations ­ with insects far outnumbering our species. Their multiplicity is an alienating element that can profoundly threaten human assumptions about individuality and independence, representing a formidable challenge to cherished human notions about personality and individuality. Imagining insects numerically threatens the individualized fantasy of a unique and unitary human being. Their very numbers indicate the insignificance of us as individuals (Kellert, 1993, pp. 21-22). Insects' perceived monstrosity, from an anthropocentric perspective, causes antipathy. They are associated with insanity, as terms like going buggy and being sent to the bughouse express contempt. To become an insect is to become a mindless creature without the warm blood of feeling (Kellert, 1993, p. 22). Their radical autonomy from human will and control are offensive. Insects often invade human space and habitations in unexpected ways. Their mysterious nature alienates a majority of people, most of whom respond to the unknown with fear and disdain rather than wonder and fascination (Kellert, 1993, p. 23).

Empathy, missing from human-insect interactions, seems to be a necessary concomitant for the granting of rights. This is particularly true for modern society because we have lost the sense of reciprocity with nature that, for pre-industrial people, ensured a relationship with other living creatures that depended upon mutuality rather than domination. When humans are perceived as part of a circle of being in which all interact as part of a whole, rather than reigning at the top of a linear hierarchy as in Western culture, their likenesses to animals, not their differences, are emphasized. By failing to classify my gold-legged bug, some would theorize that I symbolically negated domination over it. Indeed the classification of animals ­ the cognitive system we impose upon all creatures ­ exerts considerable influence over their standing with respect to rights. Different societies categorize animals in various ways, underscoring the fact that classifications are artificially created systems not intrinsic to the animals themselves.

Influence of Cultural Perceptions
Cultural constructs determine the fate of animals. Americans, for example, generally hate and fear bats due to their extreme otherness and defiance of the perceived natural order. Because they are active at night, frequent deserted areas, hang upside down with their wings folded about their bodies like witches' cloaks, are associated with vampires, and seem to be an eerie mixture of mouse and bird that confounds classification, they have been routinely persecuted. Their important ecological role, though beginning to be appreciated, has never been valued enough to overcome connotations of evil. Pigs, because of characteristics like their corpulence, their habits of wallowing in mud and rooting in the dirt, their voracious appetite for garbage, their ugly squeal, their alleged stupidity and sloth, their biblical status as unclean, and perhaps the projected disgrace of their exclusive role as meat providers, are almost universally derided in our society. They receive little humane consideration, despite the intelligence and loyalty they have been shown to possess (see Lawrence 1993, pp. 315-326).

Classifications vary, depending on the circumstances. In some societies the mourning dove is known as a game bird and is hunted, while in others it is grouped with song birds and thus is protected. During my field work on perceptions of wildlife in the American West, a conservation official told me that in the area where he worked, the proposal to hunt doves was rejected. He said, "biologically, there is no reason not to hunt them, but due to the Bambi complex being applied to the species, the decision was made to prohibit hunting them. People hear the dove cooing, so they put it in the same light as a robin rather than a game bird. People were assured by the Fish and Game that hunting wouldn't hurt this species, but the general attitude was don't confuse me with facts. If a dove were as ugly as a vulture and didn't sit in the backyard and coo, they wouldn't care" (Lawrence, 1982, p. 259).

That even natural history itself is shaped to suit human purposes is illustrated by the case of the capybara, a huge South American rodent. Observing the creatures' aquatic habits, the sixteenth-century church officials who accompanied the conquistadores into the new lands classified them as fish. Today, though science has long identified them as mammals, for religious and dietary purposes they retain their status as fish. Therefore, their delicious flesh may be eaten in good conscience by Catholics during Lent. Venezuela ranchers have developed a profitable industry by letting these animals who were once considered pests reproduce during most of the year and rounding them up in February for consumption during the forty days of the pre-Easter ban on meat (Lawrence, 1993, pp. 302-303).

So, in a similarly divergent process, animals can be viewed through different lenses ­ the scientific and the poetic ­ which profoundly influence society's attribution of rights to nonhumans. Recently when I heard a presentation by an animal rights advocate I noticed a sign taped to her slide carousel reading "everything is beautiful." She also confided that she had prayed to God to help her find the best career for helping animals. People favoring rights for animals often view them in a poetic light, and many say they feel a spiritual tie to animals. Such views frequently conflict with so-called "hard-science" views of animals that are dominant in our society and cause the opponents of animal rights to stigmatize activists as emotional, sentimental, impractical, and unreasonable. But if the gap between the two ideologies is ever to be broached, the scientific and the poetic must come together as complementary.

Eminent scientist Edward O. Wilson believes that human beings exhibit biophilia, an inherent tendency to focus on and affiliate with other forms of life (1984, p. 1). If he is right ­ and there is considerable evidence to support his hypothesis ­ human relationships with animals take place at the most fundamental level of our existence. Because it operates at that level, the bond we share with animals may be comprehended more clearly through poetry than science. According to Wilson, the poet focuses on the inward search. Poetry differs from science in that its world of interest is the mind, not the physical universe on which mental process feeds. For a poet and a scientist who listened to the same birds, he theorizes, the first swirl of imagery, the first tensile pleasures were the same, but the two then diverged, the poet inward and the scientist outward into separate existences (1984, pp. 75-76). Perhaps this inward viewpoint, rounding out the so-called objective view provided by science, is necessary to forming the perceptions of animals that ultimately determine the nature of human interactions with them.

Currently, poetry and ecology seem to be coming together, for the refusal to separate out the objective self from the environment is one of the guiding ecological principles. Thus there is an essential connection between poetry and biology, ecology's original parent discipline (Dunn and Scholefield, 1991, p. xxxiv). Elizabeth Sewell argues that biology has mistaken its mythology. It needs poetry rather than mathematics or language-as-science to think with; not an exclusive but an inclusive mythology to match the principle of inclusion inherent in all of its living and organic synthetic subject matter. Its failure [to do so] has imprisoned us in old habits of thought which try to restrict the world to their narrowness (1960, p. 44). Challenges to narrow thinking are now coming from within science itself, as evidenced by James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis which incorporates all supposedly non-living things ­ oceans, rivers, soil, atmosphere ­ into one vastly complex self-regulating organism: Gaia, the earth, the whole of which is alive like a tree. Poets, meanwhile, continue to challenge us all to see this aliveness, which has always been the wellspring of poetic inspiration (Dunn and Scholefield, 1991, p. xxxv).

But societies, with their predilection for preserving the status quo and tradition, employ time-honored methods to enforce their mandates and quell dissenting voices. In the American Great Plains ranching complex, for example, calves are seasonally rounded up, branded with hot irons, castrated without anesthesia, marked by ear mutilation or perforating tags, and vaccinated ­ generally in quick succession. If an outsider, witnessing these procedures, were to object on the grounds of cruelty, that individual would be severely ridiculed as a tenderfoot or dude, if not physically attacked, and excluded from further contact. If persons raised in that society were to revolt against such practices, they would be ostracized and would find it necessary to choose another way of life. Such mechanisms tend to keep the system operating and to maintain the societal equilibrium that has been shown to work and is in the financial and practical best interests of its members.

Common belief dictates that if a custom is part of a certain culture it is sacrosanct and should not be questioned. Anthropologists often protect the society they study from criticism. In a graduate seminar when discussion centered on an Eskimo ethnography containing descriptions of natives pulling the legs out of birds and throwing puppies over ledges, I heard a student who had spent the summer with Eskimos vehemently defend all actions of those she viewed as her people. In a recent study of Mexican Charreria, the ethnographer's focus is on the strength and skill exemplified by the participants in traditional events, not the steers whose tails are twisted around the men's legs or the saddle horn to flip them to the ground or the wild mares who are violently knocked down by having their front legs lassoed (see Sands, 1993, pp. 14-16, 44-45). Mainstream social scientists cling to anthropocentric attitudes, rarely including the perspective of nonhumans. In the culture of the scientific community, dissenters are often eliminated. Donald Griffin reveals that young scholars' careers can be jeopardized by doing research that reveals awareness in animals. As a respected scientist, Griffin had earned his reputation and was tenured and near retirement before he published his work on the tabooed subject of the existence of nonhuman consciousness (Begley and Cooper, 1993, p. 65).

Misunderstandings between societies can be based upon opposite assumptions. For instance, during field work with the Crow Indians and their horses I found that neighboring whites criticize the natives for what they perceive as cruelty in following the traditional practice of leaving horses out in the winter without providing shelter and supplementary food. But Crows say they respect hardiness in all living creatures. The ability to get along independently, unaided by humans, is attributed to power that is admired. For them, a coddled horse, artificially fed and stabled, is not worthy. Strength and endurance are highly valued and Crows identify with the toughness of their horses who reflect their own ability to survive in spite of many adversities. Non-Indians also claim that Crows allow their horses to overgraze and believe they should fence them in and control them at all times. But the natives, with their nomadic background as hunter/gatherers, do not feel the urge for management of animals and manipulation of nature that are ingrained in the Western ethos, and bitter conflicts are caused by different outlooks (Lawrence, 1985, pp. 49-51).

In an analogous way, ideas about the autonomy of animals can complicate animal rights debates. Advocates may look toward a future goal of non-interference with nature, intervening only when necessary to prevent undue animal suffering (see Singer, 1991, p. 226). Opponents of animal rights generally envision a world where humans exert considerable control over the nonhuman realm. However, unlike the subjects of other campaigns such as the women's movement or the winning of civil rights for blacks, animals cannot make their own demands. Animal rights proponents are asking for consideration not for themselves but for other beings. Their altruism can be denigrated as anthropomorphism by their opponents, even as the advocates accuse animal exploiters of being motivated by greed and self-interest.

Conclusion
In conclusion, a society's world view is the essential determinant of the perceived differences or similarities between humankind and animals and hence of the question of animal rights. Controversy still surrounds these matters, and classification presents profound dilemmas. As recently noted, the frontier that separates humankind from all other species has been the site of one of the world's fiercest and longest-running border disputes... Consider some of the more recent skirmishes: the orangutan was declared human by Enlightenment philosophers, one of whom even suggested mating an orangutan with a prostitute to see what kind of children she'd bear. New World Indians were considered sub-human by European colonists until the pope issued a bull in 1537 attesting that the Indians were, in fact, human. Feral children, foundlings who grew up in the wilderness, were originally described by Linnaeus as a species separate from Homo sapiens; he listed them among the quadrupeds. Today, while some scientists are busy trying to teach monkeys to talk, an act sure to provoke the many people who believe that language is our defining characteristic, other scientists work in laboratories that are being dynamited by animal rights advocates, some of whom believe that the only distinguishing quality of our species is its arrogant assumption of dominion over all other species (Rymer, 1993, p. 3).

If animals suffer pain, experience enjoyment, possess awareness, symbolize and communicate by means of language, make and use tools, perform rituals, pass on learned traditions to their progeny, display individuality, live in organized and efficient societies, show altruism, and create art that is aesthetically appealing and even saleable ­ as evidence seems to indicate ­ what are the bastions of human uniqueness and supremacy upon which society's domination rests? Although the exploitation of animals greatly benefits human welfare, it is still a vexing problem for society to identify precisely how their use is incontrovertibly justified. Many people that I interview in field work still cite the Judaeo-Christian tenet of humanity's God-given domination of animals as grounds for their actions. Yet as our culture becomes ever more secularized, this injunction loses potency. What remains, then? Are we left with only the rationalization of humankind's greater power and resources as a mandate for supremacy and control?

Note
1 Correspondence should be sent to Elizabeth A. Lawrence, P.O. Box 35, Adamsville, RI 02801. The author is an anthropologist and veterinarian on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Studies, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine.

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