Do Animals Have Rights and, If So, Should They Be Protected?

Essay by snjalil1High School, 10th gradeA-, January 2010

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The earth is inhabited by millions of species of creatures and out of all these, man is but one. Owing to a superior brain he has developed into a successful species and has evolved into a complex being who leads a good life. Somehow in his mad rush to get the best of everything, he has dominated all his fellow beings on earth. He has domesticated a large number of animals and birds and makes use of them to make life easier for himself. He is on the top of the food chain and feeds on many animals and plants and he is prey to none. There is no animal which can claim to predate on man - except that man predates on his fellows. Certainly man is a successful species and definitely the dominant species on earth. It is unfortunate that this exalted position has led to man treating animals in a shameful manner.

First of all man treats his domestic animals very cruelly. We see them being bred only to serve as food, we see their young being derived of milk while man robs them for his own use. We see the young of animals being killed for food, as if killing the older animals is not enough. Man even kills suckling animals - pigs for instance - as a delicacy. He decides which animal should live and which should die. He even makes animals eat their own kin. For example, chicken farmers are known to kill the cock chickens and mix the ground carcasses with chicken feed and feed the mess to other chickens. All this is done just to make a profit. In another area, the treatment afforded to beasts of burden is extremely cruel too. Many of them work without sufficient rest and with little...