Is Animal Cruelty Wrong?

Generally, if we see someone on the street kick a dog for no reason, I think most of us instinctively think that they’re a diabolical person. It’s safe to say that we inherently understand that inflicting pain on people or animals for fun makes that person kinda a bad dude.

But just to be safe I’m bringing in some cool philosophy and some cold hard science.

Let’s start with the philosophy! Moral Foundations Theory tells us that humans have evolved a set of moral intuitions that guide our judgements of right and wrong. Care/Harm is one of the core foundations, and it’s what lets us recognise that cruelty is wrong.

Is this biological as well? Potentially, as neuroscience research using fMRI scans found that when people see a dog suffering, many of the same brain regions (empathy-related) light up as when they see a human suffering. Our brains respond to animal distress in the same way they respond to human distress.

And it also looks like people who override that instinct don’t tend to stop at animals. There’s a well-documented association between animal cruelty and violence towards humans, and animal welfare charities like the RSPCA note that communities where cruelty is common often face wider issues of antisocial behaviour and poor wellbeing.

None of this explains what makes cruelty wrong, but it does explain why nearly everyone already agrees that it is, and that shared agreement is the starting point for everything else. Opposing unnecessary suffering isn’t some radical stance I suddenly picked up when I went vegan! It’s a biological and societal baseline that I share with most functioning humans.