If Elephants Are People, and Bees Are Fish, Are Bees People?

Part One: A Happy Story?

So, I gotta’ say something before I start. I never think that I have the final answers to any of the questions that I think about. A lot of the things that I teach and write about still puzzle me. This is one of them. In fact, my opinion changed a bit as I wrote this… And, I’m still ambivalent. Maybe you can help me figure it out.

Here goes. There were a couple of interesting legal decisions about animals this week. You may have noticed them… but you might not see them as related.

In this Part One, I want to ask you what you think about Happy the elephant. In Part Two, I want to talk about another animal and see if your opinion about Happy the elephant changes.

Happy is a 51-year-old Asian elephant that lives at the Bronx Zoo. Last week, the New York Court of Appeals ruled 5 to 2 that Happy is not actually a “person” and, consequently, is not entitled to the fundamental right of bodily liberty, or freedom from imprisonment. In other words, Happy can remain in the zoo.

Happy the elephant. Photograph by by Bebeto Matthews, AP

The legal case began when a Florida-based animal civil rights organization argued that Happy should be recognized as a “legal person,” be freed from unlawful “imprisonment,” and be sent to a sanctuary where she would have more room and the company of other elephants.

Their reasoning was that elephants are autonomous, social, cognitively complex animals and, therefore, are worthy of all the rights reserved in law for human people.

In response, the Bronx Zoo argued that Happy is neither illegally imprisoned nor a person, but a well-cared-for elephant "respected as the magnificent creature she is."

For the majority, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore wrote "while no one disputes that elephants are intelligent beings deserving of proper care and compassion," a writ of habeas corpus is intended to protect the liberty of humans and doesn’t apply to nonhuman animals.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Jenny Rivera, argued that being an animal doesn’t prevent Happy from having legal rights. She went on to say that Happy is being held in an “unnatural” environment “that does not allow her to live her life… Her captivity is inherently unjust and inhumane [and] an affront to a civilized society… every day she remains a captive… we, too, are diminished.”

That just goes to show you how much well-educated people can differ in their points-of-view.

In any event, as always, I’m not taking a hard stance on either side in this particular issue, although I’m pretty sure an elephant isn’t a person and I’m not that crazy about zoos.

What I am interested in, however, is how people interpret biology in support of their social agendas.

So, let’s think about this one for a minute. This legal (and ethical) issue really revolves around what you think is going on in Happy’s brain. Is she really “depressed” as some claim? Or, is she content and happy living in a safe, familiar environment, cared for by zoo personnel who interact with her for “hours every day.”

In other words, is Happy better off emotionally at the zoo where she is free from disease, competition, poaching, elephant-on-elephant aggression, and an unstable food and water supply? Or, should she be at a sanctuary? I’m not really sure.

To add some context, you should know that Happy has been living at the zoo since she was just one year old. So, she doesn’t know much else. She arrived in 1977 with another elephant named Grumpy. Unfortunately, Grumpy was fatally injured in 2002 “from being beaten” by two other elephants at the zoo. Elephants can be quite aggressive.

Now, Happy lives in her own enclosure separated by a fence from her elephant neighbor, Patty. Apparently, the two elephants can’t be housed together because they don’t get along, “like sisters who don’t want to share the same room.”

This issue is getting more complicated than I thought it would.

So, here’s the crux of the matter as I see it. The animal rights advocates argued that Happy is a “person” based on two beliefs: Elephants have a rich social life, and they’re really smart.

Well, Asian elephants like Happy and Patty are social creatures. In the wild, they establish flexible hierarchies among both males and females, and they display complex social interactions. Although — as it is for you and me — there’s a lot of individual and group variability. For instance, Asian elephants tend to be less social than African elephants. They have smaller family units and looser social bonds. Research suggests that female Asian elephants don’t always need close relationships or frequent interactions with other females, and that they actually need enough room (especially in captivity) to avoid such interactions. They also tend to interact within family groups and try to avoid elephants from other groups. Their social interactions and group affiliations also change with age and ecological factors like food and water availability.

So, maybe at her age, Happy is quite content with the daily routine of her caretakers, and her occasional over-the-fence interactions with Patty. And, maybe that’s why Happy and Patty don’t like to be in the same enclosure. Everybody needs their space.

What about the intelligence issue? Any social animal has to have a certain level of cognitive ability in order to interact and trade signals (like vocalizations) with other members of the group.

Research suggests that elephants are pretty smart.  Asian elephants can discriminate up to 14 call types, and can keep track of out-of-sight family members. They can also use whatever knowledge they acquire when wandering around their environment for later navigation. (That’s a talent that I seem not to have evolved.)

In addition, Asian elephants can figure out how to use sticks and other tools to get at out-of-reach food, discriminate between various visual symbols, and use long-term memory recall.

So, all of this seems to suggest that Happy is special in some ways.

But, I don’t want to paint an unrealistic, romanticized picture of elephants. They can be quite aggressive (especially young males), and they do a lot of damage to the environment by toppling, uprooting and debarking trees which disrupts a lot of other animals’ ecological niches. Also, like most animals, they’re opportunistic eaters and a bit sloppy… they can uproot and scatter as much vegetation as they consume (which is as much as 150 kg per day). Obviously, this ecological damage is embarrassing to conservationists and park managers, and (unfortunately) leads to lethal “culling” of the herds.

So, maybe Happy is better off in the Bronx Zoo.

All of this may seem like a trivial issue. But it’s really not. What we think is going on in another organism’s brain is the basis on which we make decisions about abortion, euthanasia, how we treat our children, how we treat each other, how we treat our pets, and how we treat animals in general, like Happy.

You can’t really make a thoughtful decision about any of these issues unless you’ve actually thought about them.

So, is Happy like a person in any way?

I’m still not sure.