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Anyone who has
experienced a long-standing friendship with a dog cannot doubt that
animals other than humans share some of our feelings It will
never be possible to know exactly what they feel (this is difficult
even with members of our own human society), but pleasure, pain,
excitement, fear, anger, jealousy and affection seem to be part of the
essence of being of many creatures. It may be impossible to
definitively prove that animals are conscious
or
can
suffer
both
physically
and emotionally, but it is clearly
impossible also to prove they
lack such feelings, and attempts to
explain their behaviour while denying such sensations seem both
convoluted and unconvincing.
Some decisions are
difficult - for instance if an animal has been
caught by a native predator but still alive: first impulses with animal
welfare in mind may seem to dictate saving the prey, but that will
deprive the predator of a meal, and interfere with ecological
processes.
Usually we simply leave
nature to proceed unimpeded, but there are exceptions. Some allow
any amount
of suffering rather than interfere in any way with natural processes,
but there are cases, such as a badly injured or
disease-inflicted animals, whose slightly-premature removal from the
population would not seem to affect biodiversity conservation in any
way.
Sites
related to helping local wildlife include: