Hondshaai in de vismijn van Oostende. © Helga D’Havé

Several shark species are endangered. According to scientists approximately 73 million sharks are yearly culled to sustain the increasing demand for shark fins by Asian markets. Shark fin soup is a very expensive Chinese delicacy, something fishermen are aware of. The demand for fins led to the practice of shark finning, where the fins are being cut off at sea while the rest of the shark body is thrown back into the water. Since 2003 shark finning is prohibited by a European law, but the law contains loop holes. In Belgium yearly 500 ton sharks are being caught. Even Belgian fishermen are not afraid of shark finning. In our article we describe a case of shark finning, where a Belgian fishing vessel was caught on sea with two fins of a basking shark in the ship’s freezer.

The article (in Dutch only) was published in EOS magazine nr. 2 (February 2011) and is available for download (pdf).

INTERVIEW – PART I:

Most people attribute emotions to their companion animals, but not to chickens, pigs, cows or other non-companion animals. We treat the animals we eat different than our pets. Biologist Dr. Marc Bekoff is hopeful and makes a call for a more compassionate world where people treat one another and animals better.

What do you believe is the underlying reason for the separation most people create between themselves and non human-animals?

‘The reason that people have the dichotomy of humans and animals and always put humans above and separate from non-human animals is for some part religious motivated. Humans are the only animal created in the image of God and for long time it was thought that humans were the only rational animals, but we know that this is not true. The other reason is related to how animals have been used. People do horrible things to animals and they want to believe that these animals don’t feel or that their pain doesn’t count, but that is a distancing mechanism that enables them to do these horrible things.

People do attribute emotions to their dog or cat, but not to pigs or cows?

‘Yes. The animals we don’t see, we don’t attribute emotions to, or better said; those who we eat or who we wear. It is easy for people to separate that out. Young kids don’t know that a hamburger is a cow or that bacon is a pig. I always tell kids you’re not eating a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich, you’re eating a Babe lettuce and tomato sandwich. A lot of kids get upset when they hear that, because they didn’t know the bacon was a pig. And yes, our companion animals have emotions, but people don’t like to give that same attribution to the animals who they eat, because they don’t see them, they only see a hamburger. However, it is changing: people come to me after a talk and say ‘I want to become vegetarian, I never thought of a cow as a who, but I did think of a dog as a who.’

Do you believe one day humans will treat animals as equal?

‘I’m very hopeful. I’m not a blind optimist, I know there are a lot of bad things happening, but I think we’re working to the point where animals will be treated as who they are. I would like to think ultimately maybe as equals.  Even if we don’t get to the point where animals are treated as equals, anything will count, because we’re so mean and cruel to them that any positive change really makes a difference. The choices we can make are really simple. It’s easy to choose a non-animal diet and non-animal clothes. It’s also easy to cut down from for example four hamburgers a week to two. So it’s small daily decisions that will make a difference. In my new book The animal manifesto I call it the compassion footprint. I’m asking people to expand their compassion. It has to be in the hearts of people, not in their heads, that this is the most ethical way to behave. If everyone does it the compassion footprint on earth will be huge and that can happen fast if half the world participates.’

Do you believe the human population will one day have turned vegetarian or even vegan?

‘I think there are a number of things here. First, there are too many people, so we have overpopulation and overconsumption. And we’re very self-centered and arrogant. If we want to have that under control we do have to make humane choices. I would love the world to be vegetarian or vegan, but it won’t be and I accept the fact. Also, poor people don’t have suitable nutritional alternatives. I always say when you go to a restaurant ask the source of the meat and when they can’t answer that question choose the vegetarian alternative. Also, free ranging chicken is better than slaughterhouse chicken. So it’s all about a slow progress to more ethical and compassionate choices. When people start doing that I think after a while we will see more love and compassion in the world. And that’s where my hope comes from. I have seen change so I’m optimistic.’

What should happen so that people are not only conscious of the moral and emotional lives of animals, but also change their attitude towards how we treat them?

‘We should always put the information out there and let people know what we know. People don’t like being told what to do, but they do like having information. Scientists are also responsible for putting out information. A lot of my university colleagues like to stay behind closed doors but I think it’s socially irresponsible to do that. I believe scientists have an obligation to go public.’

What do you believe is the biggest change the world needs right now?

‘I think that is more compassion among people and between people and animals and I think they feed one another. More compassion for animals feeds into more compassion for people. I like to call it an umbrella of compassion. Also we need less cultural barriers. Today the world needs more compassion, more empathy and more feeling for the pain of other people and animals.’

What has to happen to make this come true?

First people need to feel better about themselves. Happy people do better work. I don’t mean happy in a self indulging way like having ten cars, but I mean internally happy. A lot of people don’t have that capacity because they are poor or sick, but if you can do something to make the world a more compassionate place and you don’t, there’s something wrong, because you have to help those who can’t.’

What do you think the World will look like in hundred years?

‘I hope it will be a more compassionate world where people will treat one another and animals better. I hope people will stop exploiting each other and will stop using animals in horrific ways.’

Helga D’Havé

Marc Bekoff (1945) is a professor emeritus Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is specialized in the behavior and emotions of animals. In 2000 he was awared the Exemplar award by the Animal Behavior Society for his long time research on the behavior of animals. He is a member of the ethical committee of the Jane Goodall Institute. He wrote more than 200 scientific articles on animal behavior in wild animals and has written 22 books. Only recently Wild justice appeared and in the beginning of 2010 The Animal Manifesto will be for sale.

The interview has been published in the science magazine EOS (in Dutch) and can be downloaded here.

The second part of the interview ”More compassion for animals feeds into more compassion for people’  will be published online soon.

INTERVIEW – PART I:

Animals have morality and know right from wrong just as humans do, says biologist Marc Bekoff . For Bekoff it’s not a question whether animals have feelings or show morality, but what these traits mean in an evolutionary context.

Bekoff derived many of his theories from his long term research on coyotes in the Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. He observed that coyotes that don’t play fair often leave their pack because they don’t form strong social bonds. According to Bekoff many animals are adept social beings that form intricate networks of relationships and live by rules of conduct that maintain social balance.

Why is morality so important in animal play?

‘Play is for most animals very important for their social, physical and cognitive development. Just as with people, animals need to play fair, and that is a manifestation of morality. A lot of research on social play behaviour in animals shows that dogs, wolfs or coyotes invite an animal to play by using a play signal telling the other animal they want to play and not fight or mate. When they play, they don’t bite as hard as they can or they don’t slam into another animal. If it does get too rough they apologize by crouching on their fore limbs. Only rarely does play in dogs escalate into fighting. In wild coyotes we say it maybe five or six times on 1000 observations. Of course moral behavior is not only seen in play. We see it also in grooming networks in baboons and other primates, and during food sharing.’

Do animals have the same kind of morality as humans?

‘There’s no reason to think that the moral behavior of a dog is the same as that of a human or even a wolf. It is also possible that there are different morals for different packs of animals. The main message is that moral behaviour is very subtle and it can also differ even among members of the same species. Humans also have different kind of moralities’

What is the importance of morality in animals?

‘It is especially important for the individual, less for the group. If individuals don’t play fair they often leave their group, and when they leave the group when they’re young, they have a higher possibility to die younger. It pays off for an individual to be fair. Sometimes it can be disadvantageous for the group, for example if a pack of wolves loses an important individual because it was unfair, this can influence the survival of the group.’

Do you think that other animals than mammals – birds, fish, reptiles, or even invertebrates – also show some kind of morality?

‘The best evidence is for mammals, but the biologist Bernd Heinrich mentioned m oral behavior in birds, when he observed ravens punishing each other for stealing food. I don’t know about other animals, but I would not be surprised if for example fish would have a sense of fairness too.”

Is morality exclusive for social animals?

‘The more social, the more complex and subtle it’s moral behaviour. Among the canidae, wolves and maybe African wild dogs are highly social and they have to negotiate their social relationships a lot, and they have to be very subtle. But if you would take less social animals and put them in a group, they would still display social behavior; they have the capacity to do it, but they may not have to show it every day. If you put solitary animals in a zoo they have to work out their relationships and be fair, in order to get along.’

Can animals show morality towards other species in a way humans show some morality for non-human animals?

‘Moral behavior does happen between species, but I bet it happens less, and therefore there are few known cases. But there are examples such as the gorilla Binta Jua saving a three year old boy after he climbed into the gorilla enclosure at Brookfield zoo. Binta Jua protected the unconscious boy against the other gorillas and safely carried him towards employees of the zoo. There are also known cases of dolphins saving people from sharks.’

In animal documentaries they mostly show competition between animals and tooth and claw. Do most people have a biased view on animal social behavior?

‘I think that the media tend to look at attention getting behaviour, at what is sensational and people’s attention is easier attracted when talking about fighting instead of play. People are misled by the nature tooth and claw paradigm. Darwin wrote about competition, but he also wrote about cooperation in animals. There’s no way that behavior would evolve with only competition. An animal wolf that is too dominant won’t survive; there needs to be it a balance between competition and (wild) justice.  What we learn from literature is that for most animals 90% of the behaviour is friendly or what we call pro-social.’

Is morality just a way to keep relationships with kin fine and enhance survival, or are underlining feelings of empathy present?

‘I think that the emotional basis of moral behavior is that animals feel for each other. They are nice and compassionate towards each other. It has been observed in lab experiments it that rats wouldn’t feed if another rat was shocked while they were eating. It is important to know that these animals are making a choice. If I’m a mouse I don’t have to help you if you’re in pain nor do I have to stop what I’m doing to remove your pain, but I do because I feel for you. More scientific evidence is accumulating that a large number of mammals show empathy.

Do animals care for each other or even feel love for each other like humans do?

‘There’s no doubt that animals care for each other and have love relationships. If you define love as an enduring bond then it is clear that animals show love. In many animal species couples share a lot of time together: they eat and sleep together, raise their young together, defend their territory, … Mammals have the same nerves in their limbic system of the brain and the same neurochemicals, so it would be odd if they wouldn’t have that feeling. Their love may not be the same as in humans, but humans don’t love one another in the same way either.

What other emotions do animals experience?

‘Animals have the same array of emotions as we do: love, sadness, grieve, jealousy, resentment, disgust, … Grieve is very pronounced. Elephants will try to lift up sick and dying young elephants and they will hold funeral rituals by mourning and touching the corpse. I’ve seen this in the wild and their whole behavior changes. I’ve seen grieve in magpies too by pecking and covering the corpse.  When this story was published in newspapers I got tons of emails of people telling me they had seen this before, meaning my observation is not an exception.’

Some scientist remain skeptic and depict this kind of social behavior – like caring for the young together or touching corpses – are instincts that serve the survival of the species only.

‘It may be instincts, but these animals are making choices to interact with a particular individual different than with other individuals. To say it’s instincts doesn’t mean the absence of underlying feelings. For human behaviour one could also say that we follow our instincts for survival of our species, but this doesn’t mean that we don’t feel.

‘It’s easy to say: we don’t know something about animals, so therefore it doesn’t exist. I think we should approach this subject differently: if we don’t know if something is there, assume it is there. If you accept Charles Darwin ideas about evolutionary continuity, where the differences are differences in degree rather than in kind, then it’s clear that if we have something so do other animals. So if we have grief they have it, if we have joy, pain or suffering they have it, but it doesn’t have to be the same as in humans.’

‘It is strange to see that today many scientists and other people accept Darwin’s principle on evolutionary continuity for physical structures, but not for mental faculties. In The descent of man Darwin already stated that humans have many instincts (emotions, passions, …) in common with animals, and that yet many authors keep insisting that men is divided by an insuperable barrier from al the lower animals in his mental faculties. The heart of a fish is also different from that of a human, but it remains a heart. That is no different for feelings.’

Scientists that attribute emotions to animals are often found guilty of anthropomorphism.

‘Indeed, and these same people say that an elephant is happy in a zoo; making themselves guilty of anthropomorphism. They can do that, we can’t. We see this especially in how people treat their companion animals. People talk on how happy or sad their dog or cat is, or how it has pain. They attribute emotions to their pet animals and are being anthropomorphic…and they are right, because the more time you share with an animal the more sensitive you become for its underlying emotions of social behaviour. These same people do not give emotions to cows or pigs because they don’t spend time with these animals.

The same skeptic scientist says that the study of animal behavior in wild animals is only a bunch anecdotes and therefore not scientific. I say: sum all anecdotes and you have data.’

Intelligence has been more widely accepted in animals than emotions.

‘It is easier to test animals for intelligence in the lab by asking them to do different tasks. You can observe their behavior and watch them solve particular problems. Regarding emotions, people say you can’t ask an animal, because you can’t talk with them, but they have their own language. If you watch their ears, their tail, eyes and their behavior, you learn a lot. We need to learn how to communicate with them and read their body language.’

Recently it has been shown that some birds may be better at using tools than chimpanzees. Do you believe birds may be more intelligent than non-human primates?

‘When people ask me if birds are smarter than primates or dogs are smarter than cats, I always say that’s not a good question because animals do what they need to do to be a member of their species. It’s not because animals don’t show certain intelligent behavior that they aren’t capable of it; they just don’t need it to survive.’

A recent study by University of Buffalo scientists that states some animals share functional parallels with consciousness and cognitive self-awareness in humans. For example dolphins show uncertainty, and they are aware of their own state of uncertainty.

‘I think that most animals show some degree of self-awareness. The typical test is the mirror test where you have a mirror and you put a dot on the head of the animal and the animal points to the dot. But an animal pointing to a dot on its body doesn’t mean that it knows who it is. I believe scientist overrate the mirror test. I tried to do the same study with wolves and wolves don’t point to something, so I moved yellow snow around, urine packed snow, and found that they discriminate between their own urine and that of others. The important message is that we’re visual animals and when we design these tests we use visual tasks, but many animals know one another by odours or sounds so you need to tailor the study to the sensory world of the animal you are studying. So it’s not right to say elephants and dolphins and chimpanzees show self-awareness but wolves or dogs don’t. I think the more we study the more we’ll find out that animals have a sense of ‘self’, but this doesn’t mean they know who they are. It means they can discriminate their body from the body of another animal.’

If we look at how we treat animals, pain in animals is important in the debate. Do you think that for example lobsters feel pain when they are being cooked alive?

‘I think it is clear that lobsters don’t like being dropped in boiling water or fish don’t like getting a hook in their mouth. We know that fish respond to the drug morphine, a pain killer, the same way humans do. People thought for so long that fish didn’t feel pain, but they feel fish pain. This pain may be different from ours, but every human feels pain differently too and has another pain limit. Pain is pain. Pain has an important function in the survival of an animal. It’s a warning signal that something is wrong, so it would be silly to believe animals don’t feel pain. So Darwin’s evolutionary continuity argument applies here too, but my pain may be different from your pain.’

What can this knowledge on animal emotions and cognition learn us on how we should treat animals?

‘I would hope that as we learn more from animals and accept that they have emotions and feel pain, that we would adjust our behavior.  From a functional point of view, we need to use this information to make the lives of animals better and treat them well. I think the world needs more empathy between people and animals and I am convinced that they feed one another.’

Helga D’Havé

Marc Bekoff (1945) is a professor emeritus Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is specialized in the behavior and emotions of animals. In 2000 he was awared the Exemplar award by the Animal Behavior Society for his long time research on the behavior of animals. He is a member of the ethical committee of the Jane Goodall Institute. He wrote more than 200 scientific articles on animal behavior in wild animals and has written 22 books. Only recently Wild justice appeared and in the beginning of 2010 The Animal Manifesto will be for sale.

This interview is part of the series ‘Wetenschap Werkt’ (Science Works). It was published in Eos Magazine 2 (Jan. 2010) and can be downloaded here (in Dutch).

The first part of the interview will appear soon on my website (in English) and in the science magazine Eos (Dutch only). I talked to Bekoff about emotions, morality, intelligence, consciousness, pain and tool use in animals. Bekoff strongly believes in Darwin’s concept of evolutionary continuity where differences between species are differences in degree and not in kind. This means that if we have a certain characteristic – for example empathy or pain – animals have it too, but in a different degree.

The second part of the interview will appear later on my website. In part two Bekoff  addresses the artificial dichotomy between men and the other animals, ‘whom’ we eat, how we treat animals and vegetarianism. Bekoff concludes by sharing the biggest change he believes the world needs right now and how we can help to bring about this change.

This interview is part of the series ‘Wetenschap Werkt’ (Science Works). It was published in Eos Magazine 1 (Jan. 2010) and can be downloaded here.

An Vercalsteren and Carolin Spirinckx investigate the environmental impact of products/ services by means of life cycle analyses (LCA).

This interview is part of the series ‘Wetenschap Werkt’ (Science Works). It was published in Eos Magazine 12 (Dec. 2009) and can be downloaded here.

© Helga D'Havé. Young pigeons.

Pigeons are not stupid… I knew that since I was a kid. How could they otherwise find their way home to the pigeon house of my uncle after being released in a strange land they had never visited before? The intelligence of pigeons is now scientifically proven.

A short article on this (in Dutch) was published in Eos-magazine 4 (April 2009) and can be downloaded here. The English version follows below:

An essential cognitive component of human intelligence is the capacity to determine if two or more objects are the same or different. American researchers showed that pigeons – yes, these grey birds that are being culled in many cities – have this capacity, just as baboons do. Pigeons can learn same-different discriminations with visual stimuli that never repeat from trial to trial, thus proving that simple memorization cannot explain this cognitive feat. But the intelligence of pigeons goes further; they can also learn relations between relations, that only humans were believed to appreciate. For example, the relation between A and A and the relation between B and B is the same: same equals same. So, too, is the relation between A and B and the relation between C and D: different equals different. But, the relation between A and A and the relation between C and D is different: same does not equal different. The pigeons learned to peck a computerized touch screen to indicate which of two testing arrays of pictures involved the same relationship as the sample array that they had recently been shown. Baboons accomplished the same task by using joysticks.

‘Darwin raised the possibility of a continuity in mental development from animals to human beings. And it certainly looks as though he was right. – Dr. Edward A. Wasserman of the University of Iowa’

Researcher Wasserman adds: ‘Despite obvious anatomical differences, this behavioral evidence confirms Charles Darwin’s proposal that ‘the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind” and is of broad evolutionary significance’. The notion that there might only be a quantitative – not a qualitative – disparity between human and animal intelligence may make people uneasy. Why we would believe that humans alone have such capabilities is a peculiar and unfortunate arrogance. That’s one reason why I enjoy studying animals; the smarter we discover them to be, the more humble we should be.’

Now that we know that pigeons can determine if two objects are the same or different, I wonder if pigeons would also be able to tell people from each other that have good or bad intentions. It wouldn’t surprise me!

Sources:

1. Wasserman et al., 2009. Baboons And Pigeons Are Capable Of Higher-Level Cognition, Behavioral Studies Show. University of Iowa.
2. Personal website Ed Wasserman, Professor of Experimental Psychology. University of Iowa.

Image credit: Oktaviani Marvikasari

It seems obvious that it is an unpleasant experience for fish (or any other animal) to be caught on a hook or to die slowly from suffocation. Still, many scientists make a difference between an unpleasant experience and pain, that is for non-human animals but not for humans. The debate on whether fish feel stress and pain is still ongoing despite the mounting scientific evidence. In the debate it is often ignored that pain serves an evolutionary function: the pain experience  is a necessary trait in order for animals to identify and escape from life threatening situations.

A short article on this (in Dutch) was published in Eos-magazine 7/8 (July-Aug. 2009) and can be downloaded here. The English version follows below:

Only recently a friend told me about ‘live sushi’. Google the two words and you may get an idea what this is about, but I warn you for ‘losing appetite’ while watching fish being stripped of their skin alive. It seems not only is live fish considered a delicacy, because fresher than fresh, but lobsters and shrimps are also killed in inhumane ways just before being dished up. What’s in for the customer? Fish that is still slightly moving on the plate and a sense of thrill (just because we humans always want a new, better, bigger, more exciting experience). What’s in for the fish? Pain, stress and suffering.

“Fish can’t cry out their pain or show it through facial expressions.”

Several studies have confirmed that fish do feel pain. A recent study stated that fish feel pain and react to it much like humans do. The only difference with humans and the big disadvantage for fish is that they can’t express their pain; they can’t cry out or show it through facial expressions. That doesn’t mean they can’t feel pain or that they respond to stressful stimuli in a reflex only. American scientists did the test: they exposed two groups of gold fish to high temperatures. The first group got morphine; the second ‘control’ group only got an ineffective salt solution. The scientists supposed the morphine group to be able to tolerate higher temperatures before showing any reaction, but this was not the case. Both the morphine and the control group showed a negative response at the same temperature by wriggling their body. This indicates that the response is a reflex and not an indication for pain. This response is comparable to what we humans do when we touch a burning object; we will drop it automatically before we actually feel pain. BUT, shortly after the experiment the scientist observed a completely different behavior in the two groups of gold fish. The morphine injected gold fish were swimming as usually, because the morphine had suppressed the pain response but not the reflex. The control group however, showed altered behavior, swimming around very defensive pointing towards fear and anxiety. This group of fish had felt pain during the experiment and processed the pain cognitively. As a result they were anxious. The researchers conclude that the fish feel both reflexive and cognitive pain and that this alters their behavior.

Now you may decide live sushi is too cruel to eat, but other humanely killed fish is okay for you. Unfortunately, fish are among the animals that have to endure the most pain while being killed, because they are not sedated. The Dutch animal welfare organization Wakker Dier states that farm fish are often still alive while their intestines are being removed or while they’re salted or put in a deep freezer. It may take the fish minutes to half an hour to fight the pain and die. They urge the government to take steps to enforce sedation before slaughter. They also refer to a study by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) following a request from the European Commission that fish may be able to feel pain.

I would like to conclude by pointing out the evolutionary role of pain to keep an animal – not only human animals – from hurting itself or even dying. Pain has its necessary function. Also, if we adhere to the evolutionary continuity principle of Darwin stating that differences between species are differences in degree and not in kind, we can assume that fish do feel some form of pain. We don’t know if fish feel pain the same way as we humans do, but then the experience of pain differs between humans also; some people having a higher pain limit than others…

Sources:

Nordgreen et al., 2009. Thermonociception in fish: Effects of two different doses of morphine on thermal threshold and post-test behaviour in goldfish (Carassius auratus). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 119 (1-2): 101-107.

EFSA, 2009. General approach to fish welfare and to the concept of sentience in fish. Question number: EFSA-Q-2008-708, 29 January 2009.

Image credit: Ramiro Espinoza

In 2003 I had a close encounter with a Southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) along the shores of Peninsula Valdez, Argentina. I was impressed by the gentle way in which a whale glided along the boat; touching it smoothly and again not, saying hello in it’s own way. If I wouldn’t have been so stunned I could just have made contact with this intelligent and sensitive animal.

The intelligence of dolphins – and other cetaceans – has been well documented and is widely accepted in science. Cetaceans have large brains in relation to the size of their bodies. It is also known that Cetaceans are not only intelligent, but use tools, display a sense of self-awareness, have emotional responses, can master a symbolic language and coordinate social behaviour.

A series as Flipper increased the overall popularity of dolphins and unfortunately created a somewhat malformed image of these

© Helga D'Havé. Southern right whale approaching the boat, Peninsula Valdez, Argentina.

marine mammals. Dolphins are not always smiling, are not happy in water tanks, are not here to entertain us and even less to be eaten. The documentary The Cove takes us to the small Japanese village Taijji, where dolphins are brutally killed in masses, leaving the shore water red. But before the cull, the ‘best’ animals are selected from the masses and sold for big money to dolphin centres all over the world. The Cove follows the film team as they prepare to film the massacre in secret. The documentary is revealing, exciting, inspiring and a must see.

‘Cetaceans are intelligent, use tools, show self-awareness, have emotional responses, can master a symbolic language and coordinate social behaviours.

Simmonds (2006) provides the following list with a summary of evidence for higher cognitive functioning in cetaceans:

1. High level of encephalisation, including very well developed cerebellum in many species
2. Long lives and long periods of parental care (evidence of post-reproductive care-givers)—exploiters of typically patchy and unpredictable prey
3. Ability to learn complex behaviours and solve problems
4. Ability to improvise/innovate
5. Tool use (but not tool manufacture)
6. Vocal and behavioural imitation
7. Ability to learn artificial languages (limited vocabulary but understand grammar and syntax)
8. Many species exhibit closely co-ordinated behaviours
9. Many species have complex social interactions
10. Evidence of self awareness, awareness of others, including emotional responses
11. Cultural transmission of information

In the light of mounting scientific evidence, campaigns against whaling and other removals of cetaceans should be more on the agenda than ever. The conservation of cetaceans should not be the only leading argument, but the potential to suffer should be an even more important argument in the debate.

Sources:

1. Simmonds MP, 2006. Into the brains of whales. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 100, Issues 1-2, October 2006, P. 103-116.
2. Herman, LM, 2002. Exploring the cognitive world of the bottlenosed dolphin. In M. Bekoff, C. Allen & G. Burghardt (Eds.), The cognitive animal: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on animal cognition (pp. 275–283). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Intelligence and rational behaviour in the bottlenosed dolphin. Rational animals?
3. Herman, Louis M., 2006. In: Hurley, Susan (Ed); Nudds, Matthew (Ed). (2006). Rational animals?. (pp. 439-467). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press. viii, 561 pp.