Peter Singer is an Australian philosopher widely regarded as the "father" of the modern "Animal Rights" movement. However, as a Utilitarian, Singer does not agree with rights-based philosophical arguments. Like Jeremy Bentham, who argued that the criterion placing animals on the moral scale was their...
The Wilderness Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3, 1964. The USA system of wilderness areas now includes over 800 areas covering more than 110 million acres. Currently, all but six states—Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, and Rhode Island—have...
Certain foods mark the various seasons of the year, such as mince pies at Christmas, hot cross buns at Easter, matzah at Passover, and harira at Ramadan. One is spoiled for choice in summer as local farmers' markets sell various melons, vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh blackberries...
Author David M. Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D., loves intellectual challenges. Previously, he wrote an article on whether or not animals can commit suicide, which has been downloaded over 44,000 times from the WellBeing International Studies Repository since its publication in late 2017. Now, the author has shifted...
In 1980, Robert Seyfarth, Dorothy Cheney and Peter Marler published a paper in Science reporting that a vervet monkey troop in Amboseli National Park in Kenya used three different alarm calls to signify danger respectively from eagles, leopards and snakes. According to Snowdon, this paper...
How animals migrate reliably from one place to another yearly has been an enduring puzzle. Donald Griffin, the discoverer of bat echolocation, also investigated bird migration to determine how birds could navigate the ocean. He and his colleagues tracked migrating flocks using a repurposed military...
In 2015, Costa Rican government agencies brought seized and rescued companion animals from substandard conditions or illegal activities such as dog fighting to the animal shelter near San Jose. The shelter, run by the Asociación Humanitaria Para la Protección Animal (AHPPA), a partner organization in...
On December 19, 2022, representatives from 188 countries adopted a new agreement on biodiversity, now known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The 2022 GBF aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by adopting four overarching global goals and 23 targets, including conserving 30%...
The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger & Planta Sapiens by Paco Calvo with Natalie LawrenceRecently, two important books were published -- a year apart – and centered on the same topic: reviewing the accumulating scientific evidence that plants can and should be perceived as sentient...
April 22, 2024, will be the 54th anniversary of the first Earth Day.The 1960s decade in the USA was a time of widespread citizen protests and demonstrations. Citizens used protest marches and sit-ins to campaign for civil rights. Women demanded equality in the labor market...
