First, moral considerability is essentially the technical jargon in the field of morals that is used to indicate whether or not one is worthy of moral consideration. As moral people tend to grant moral considerability to all other humans, the term is primarily used in relation to other species.

As an aside, I would point out that religion or other strong ideologies sometimes cause people to treat other humans without granting other groups moral considerability. Anyone who believes it is OK to kill or enslave members of any outgroup is clearly not granting that group moral considerability.

That said, I would try to keep this post to the topic of what species other than humans should also be granted moral considerability. As I have hinted in my title by the use of the word whom for members of other species, I clearly believe, quite strongly, that many other species are worthy of such consideration. I have often surprised people by asking who that bird is, rather than what that bird is or other equivalent. I believe living beings should be referred to as who and whom rather than what. It keeps us from forgetting that they are indeed other beings, not inanimate objects.

So, what species are worthy of moral consideration? Should this be only humans?

Jane Goodall related a story during a lecture she gave at the American Museum of Natural History. I believe she stated that this happened to her, though the lecture was quite some time ago and human memory is far from perfect.

Ms. Goodall was walking through a medical research facility. At the facility, there was a chimpanzee in a cage that had apparently been either home raised or otherwise taught sign language and somehow ended up in medical research. The chimp was sitting and signing over and over again in ASL a single message, ‘Help me.’

If this does not leave a lump in your throat and make you feel like crying, then perhaps you do not believe chimps, despite their incredibly close relationship to humans, should be granted moral considerability. For me, the lump reappears in my throat each time I write or tell this story. I have seen chimps in the wild. I know them to be highly intelligent and wonderful creatures. I have looked in their eyes and seen my cousins.

So, to me, it is clear that at a minimum all sentient creatures have moral considerability.

There are a lot of other things to think about in moral considerability. For example, do members of endangered species have greater moral considerability than members of thriving species? Do species have moral considerability or merely individuals? What about non-sentient or not very intelligent species? Is there a sliding scale where perhaps lab chimps get more than lab monkeys and both get more than lab rats and lab mice? What about the trees in a forest? What about the species that depend on them from the very small to the large?

I even remember some discussion about whether to destroy the last vial of live smallpox virus. One part of the discussion was a practical one about the inability to recreate the smallpox vaccine if necessary without the virus on hand. However, another part of the discussion asked the question of whether it is immoral to deliberately destroy an entire species.

In my research for this post, I even came across a discussion about the moral considerability of extraterrestrial life. Since I’ve heard a bit before, I’m going to guess that this has to do with the risk of infecting extraterrestrial bodies with Earth life during space exploration. There is a huge issue with ensuring that a space ship or even space probe is biologically sterile before sending it anywhere that may have life, for example, Europa.

Sticking with the only life we know to exist, that on Earth, I personally feel that there are many species to which I would grant moral considerability. Beginning with the obvious, I would include all primates and all cetaceans. Less obviously, I have seen high degrees of intelligence (no, I’m not necessarily claiming the same level as for great apes and dolphins on all of these) in all cats, canids (dogs, wolves, etc), bears, pinipeds, sirenians, elephants, and many others.

Birds should get some special mention. Some birds are amazingly intelligent. Crows have been observed making tools in the wild and storing them for later. African grey parrots can be taught English and can play the Sesame Street game of one of these things is different. Prostitution has been observed in Adelie penguins. A green heron was observed fly fishing for hours by repeatedly plucking a feather from the water and putting it upstream and watching for fish that come to check it out.

Then I get a little insane, by many other peoples’ standards. To a lesser degree than the sentiences, I even personally take care not to harm spiders, dragonflies (My wife and I actually rescue rather a lot of these from drowning when paddling our canoe.), frogs (Frogs get three points, one for being cute; one for eating mosquitoes and one for being a great indicator species for the health of an ecosystem.), snakes, crocodilians (interesting factoid: mother alligators care for their young for a year)

In fact, I’m prepared to grant varying degrees of moral considerability to rather a lot of multicellular life. I’m not a big fan of insects and arachnids (ticks) that steal my blood. However, even there, I recognize that they are an important part of the food chain and do feel a mild twinge of regret at wasting food when I slap one.

So, to whom do you grant moral considerability? What do you use to draw the line? Or, like me, do you see it as a sliding scale? If so, who is high on your list?

Now, on to even deeper issues stemming from moral considerability. If other species have moral considerability, does our position as de facto stewards of the biosphere, or at least the multi-cellular portion of it, create for us a moral imperative to care for the environment in ways that respect the rights of other species? I claim yes. How are we doing at this job? I claim very badly indeed.

As the cause of the sixth great extinction event on this planet, already greater than the one 65.3 million years ago (MYA) that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs and some say greater than the previous record holder, the Permian/Triassic extinction 250 MYA, I have to question whether we are a moral species at all.

Perhaps, individuals of our species may have very strong morals, but taken as a whole, our species does not have any morals. Thus far, even in light of political environmental movements, we are making little or no progress in this regard. As someone who cares deeply about wildlife, is it any wonder I have become so misanthropic?

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few to help me show animals with moral considerability. All have appeared on prior posts.

If none of the above do it for you, how about the creature with the largest brain on the planet at an incredible 20 pounds? I just realized that it may not be obvious to everyone. The photo below is a sperm whale.

I’ve been reading The Onion since about 1996 and love it!! Here are a few classic onion articles that never fail to amuse me no matter how many times I read them.

Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs: ‘Oh Shit,’ Says Humanity

Pope Admits: ‘God Ain’t Said Shit To Me’

Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over’ – Too true to be good. And, quite prescient as well; check the date.

Voice Recognition Software Yelled At — This one is short and not politically or religiously charged. Just plain funny.

That’s probably enough for one day. I have to keep reminding myself to add humor to my blog. I keep getting too serious.

From 12/1999-1/2000, my wife and I went to New Zealand with another couple, our closest friends. We were all together for parts of the trip, especially the millennium new year’s eve, and split up for parts of the trip since we have slightly different interests. They are less interested in wildlife than we are.

My wife and I are strongly of the belief that it is better to see a few places well than to race from place to place to place and see none of them well. To that end, we not only did NOT combine this trip with Australia, we did not even make it to the North Island of New Zealand other than to fly through it.

This trip will serve as a good example of how my photographic skill and equipment have improved with time. I probably considered these photos very good at the time. I no longer do. Looking at them, I just downgraded the rating I gave them on my voting page for the next travel write up. I hope these do not disappoint too badly. Of course, these are the best. I hope you’ll find them interesting.

Our trip started with about 32 hours of air travel and airports before landing in Christchurch. After this time, we arrived a tad tired and had a 3.5 hour drive to Kaikoura ahead of us … on the wrong other side of the road. Since it has been almost 8 years since I was there, it is possible that I will be incorrect on a scenery photo or two. If any Kiwis see this, recognize the places, and correct me, good on you and kia ora.

Kaikoura is the best place in the world for viewing sperm whales. In toothed whales (taxa odontocetes), the males are larger than the females. The steep drop off to deep water here causes a huge upwelling that attracts the large males. I’m not sure whether the information about the diving behavior of the sperm whales has been updated. Certainly they can dive for well over an hour to depths of over a mile. And, these animals have the largest brains in the world, at 20 pounds. They dive for giant squid in the depths of the oceans.

Their behavior at the surface is typically not nearly as exciting as humpacks. They lie on the surface for a while, 20 minutes or so, reoxygenating their muscles for the next dive. Then it’s three deep breaths and a push forward into a deep dive and find another whale to watch because that one isn’t coming up for over an hour.

This is a typical view from a boat as the flukes go up during the start of the deep dive.

This is the view that you may get if you take a helicopter to see them from the air.

Also at Kaikoura, one may go swimming with dusky dolphins. Unfortunately, the dolphins with whom we attempted to swim were essentially just passing through rather than feeding in the area, so did not pay much attention to us. I’ve heard it can be quite interesting if they do pay attention to you. One trick is to bring a pregnant woman. They can, through sonar, see the baby. Some women have learned of their pregnancies this way. Duskies are extremely sexual creatures. They mate 7-8 times a day for their entire adult life. They will even mate with other dolphin species. Here is a scenery photo with a dusky doing a major flip in the center.

We also saw some very interesting interactions between the sperm whales and a small pod of killer whales. The large male sperm whales got together and drove off these three killer whales. Of course, the distances between them made any photo of the interaction impossible. But, it was clear to us and to our guide that this was happening. Note that the high dorsal of the closest (rightmost) killer whale indicates that he is a male. The other two are females (or possibly immature?).

We also saw a fur seal swim by while we were at sea.

We had seen keas in the Mount Cook area. However, on the road to Fiordland we got our closest photo. These are incredibly interesting, intelligent, and playful birds. We saw adult birds rolling around on the lawn playing like kittens. They have a habit of stealing shiny objects. One of our guides was 3 days out on an 11 day hike watching keas and forgot to keep count. One went around the back and stole her only spoon.

There was also a case of people attempting to sleep at the major hotel (Mount Cook Hotel, I think) with a corrugated steel roof. The keas were playing early in the morning by rolling pebbles down the roof. The guests, trying to scare them off so they could go back to sleep, banged on the roof with a broom handle. The keas were curious about the noise. So, one continued to roll pebbles while the other hung upside down from the eaves to look in the window and find where the noise was coming from.

On a cruise in Doubtful Sound, we saw bottle nosed dolphins. This was a thrill for me given their status as having the second highest EQ in the animal kingdom (or tied for highest, depending on who you ask and whether you include their blubber layer).

Here’s a scenery photo that I think is from Doubtful sound, though it could be from somewhere else in the region.

And here is one from the next fjord over, Milford Sound.

Next we went back toward the East Coast, a city named Dunedin that is one of several that claimed to be the first to see the new millennium. This obviously applies to local time only since everyone sees the new millennium at the same time in GMT anyway. A short drive up the coast, we saw the little blue penguins at Oamaru. It would have been nice to have a big fast lens, but with my lenses and skill level, this was the best I could do.

In Dunedin, there are a couple of other good locations for wildlife viewing, one for royal albatrosses, which look very similar to the wanderers in my Antarctica log, where the photos came out much better, the other for yellow eyed penguins, like this adult head shot and chick full body shot.

I’m not sure exactly where we saw this waterfall.

At the end of the trip, we went to Fiji for three days of relaxing and snorkeling on Navini Island. There we saw this beautiful sunset and some amazing fish.