Better LCDs Trump an Animal's Right to Live and Be Left Alone?

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-10-28 07:16:00 UTC
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Researchers from the University of Queensland, University of Bristol, and University of Maryland have determined that "the Mantis shrimp possesses the most complicated visual system of any known animal." What and how they can see is amazing. One of the professors explains in more detail:

They have more receptors for seeing colour than any animal on the planet - their visual system is really most like a satellite. . . . The animal has to scan space to build up an image sequentially much like a radar. They have this scanning system which contains a lot of information such as polarised light, circular polarised light, colour in 12 channels and ultraviolet in six channels.

One of the arguments that animal rights advocates put forth consistently is that other animals aren't inferior to human animals but different from us. In many cases, they have skills and abilities that we don't have, that we can only dream of, abilities that should (and sometimes do) awe us and earn our respect for who they are. But typically, though we may be impressed by what they can do, respect is something we still refuse to give because we're too busy trying to figure out how we can benefit from what they do -- in other words, how we can benefit from experimenting on them, killing them, and dissecting them.*

The discovery of this shrimp's remarkable eyesight is no exception. We're not content to stop at this point -- to share with the world what we now know, write it up in science journals and National Geographic, develop a healthy respect for the species, and then let the animals be. Instead, we're going to continue capturing and killing these shrimps so that we can study them. And for what higher purpose shall we do this? To create better LCD screens and DVD technology -- you know, very necessary life-saving, life-affirming, life-improving stuff.

The examples of how most human animals view all other animals as nothing more than tools, here only to serve our purposes, available to be experimented on and killed at our whim, for whatever reason, are all around us, always. And this is just yet another instance of that. We don't need better screens and better DVDs (seriously, whose life is going to fare notably better or worse depending on whether we get a great new screen or DVD technlogy -- other than the people who stand to gain financially from developing and selling the technology?). We don't even really need to know how the shrimps' eyes work or why.

We need to leave them the hell alone.

Links:

*And yes, crustaceans feel pain.

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Photo by Jens Petersen of peacock mantis shrimp retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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