Animal welfare movements are repeatedly accused of wanting to impose their supposedly universal norm on other cultures.

Is it permissible to take action against ritual slaughter?

Or are the traditions of religious groups an asset that is absolutely worthy of protection?

If the latter is made strong, the objection is not long in coming that traditions in particular are often invoked to secure illegitimate privileges.

What is decisive, however, is that age, origin or the simple existence of an item do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about its quality.

One can hardly justify the slaughter of an animal by referring to customs and customs.

The same goes for bullfighting, catching songbirds and slaughtering dolphins in the Faroe Islands.

Kai Spanke

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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In her text "Animals are no longer things - what now?", the legal scholar Anne Peters discusses the connection between animal protection and cultural imperialism.

She argues for universal animal rights, because how can it be justified that since the 1990s, dogs have not been allowed to be sold as a delicacy in San Francisco's Chinatown, while millions of pigs whose sentience is undeniable end up in the slaughterhouse?

Peters' essay can be found in a volume well worth reading, presented by the behavioral biologists Norbert Sachser, Niklas Kästner and Tobias Zimmermann.

It discusses from the point of view of disciplines as diverse as philosophy and veterinary medicine, theology and art, what should follow from the change in the image of animals.

Cleaner fish recognize themselves in the mirror

Sachser calls this change a “revolution” because it also affects how people see themselves.

It was once said that animals cannot think, that it is impossible to find out anything concrete about their emotions, that the use of tools is always alien to them.

Experiments have since shown that animals can think, use tools and have emotions that go beyond fear and joy.

Some species know jealousy, dogs and corvids have a sense of fairness.

If there are skirmishes among chimpanzees, as a result of which an animal ends up on the edge of the group, it is often hugged by an uninvolved fellow chimpanzee and led back into the group.

This behavior may be based on empathy.

Since scientists who study the cognitive performance of animals devoted themselves primarily to conditioning until the second half of the last century, the path to numerous discoveries was blocked.

That changed in 1984 with Donald R. Griffin's book Animal Thinking.

It founded cognitive biology, the findings of which continue to cause a stir to this day.

We now know, for example, that not only chimpanzees, horses and dolphins, but also magpies and cleaner fish recognize themselves in the mirror.

Science as a catalyst for factory farming

Animals are therefore not automatons capable of suffering.

The authors of the volume agree that they perform services that require ethical, political and social consequences.

The animal pathologist Achim Gruber is in favor of putting an end to our fondness for “breeding excesses”.

There are three hundred and sixty-eight dog breeds in the world, many of which lead arduous lives.

Every fourth dachshund gets a herniated disc because of its short legs, of which every fourth has to be put down due to paraplegia.

There are also deaf Dalmatians and bulldogs at risk of suffocation.

In his remarkable contribution, veterinarian Jörg Luy explains how behaviorism acted as a catalyst for factory farming.

Advocates of this field of research, which was popular in the first half of the twentieth century, assumed that the mental achievements of non-human beings were hardly worth mentioning.

At the same time, there is good news in Luy's finding, because if science promoted a form of husbandry at the time that was nothing more than animal cruelty, the more recent findings could possibly also and especially contribute to a rethink.

"The Underestimated Animal".

What we know about animals today and what we need to do better in dealing with them.

Edited by Norbert Sachser, Niklas Kästner and Tobias Zimmermann.

Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg 2022. 224 p., illustrations, br., €14.