In Ontario, ownership of pit bulls is restricted and the importation of “new” dogs is banned by the Dog Owner’s Liability Act. The legislation is meant to protect people from dog attacks by ridding the province of all pit bulls. The law is discriminatory because it targets a dog for its breed, not its deed. A pit bull found to be in the province illegally will be seized. A judge must order the dog to be destroyed if it bites a person or animal. A pit bull will not get a second chance, though dogs of other breeds could get several.

Many argue that breed-neutral “dangerous dog” legislation should be implemented to replace Ontario’s breed-specific legislation (BSL). Dangerous dog legislation would be marginally better than our current system because it would apply to all breeds and so it would not place pit bulls at an unfair advantage. But, the legislation would not challenge the legal status of animals. Animals would still be mere “property” in the eyes of the law and dogs would continue to be destroyed.

Any suitable alternative to BSL needs to strike a balance between protecting the rights of animals and protecting members of society. The best way to do this may be to treat domesticated animals similarly to the way children are treated in society.

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No doubt, no awakening.

—C. C. Chang

World-renowned giraffe researcher Anne Innis Dagg (University of Waterloo) wrote a commentary for The Globe and Mail last year in which she said she was wrong. Her early research (and that of colleagues), based on observation of giraffes in the wild, had cast doubt on whether giraffes form friendships due to the apparently random nature of the observed physical groupings of individuals. Recently it has been discovered that giraffes, like elephants and rhinos, can communicate long distances using vocalizations undetectable to the human ear. With this new understanding scientists have revised their interpretation of giraffe behaviour, recognizing that giraffes may indeed form friendships, and that these bonds can be recognized in patterns of infrasound communication amongst animals even when they are not physically proximate. Dagg’s public acknowledgement demonstrates the character of a true scientist – committed to vigorous examination of her own blind spots and errors, and to open sharing, interrogation, and re-evaluation of research practices and findings, especially as it concerns our chronic tendency to underestimate the inner lives of animals. Her most recent book is called Animal Friendships.

Philosopher Michael Allen Fox (Professor emeritus, Queen’s University) published a book called The Case for Animal Experimentation in 1986 in which he argued that humans are cognitively and ethically superior to nonhumans, and therefore it is okay for us to use them in harmful research to benefit ourselves. Animal researchers lauded the book, which was widely reviewed and cited. But then Fox realized he was wrong. It must have been tempting to ignore his misgivings, and to continue to accrue accolades from the research community, but instead he publicly disavowed and challenged his earlier arguments, and since then has published widely on vegetarianism and animal ethics. Continue Reading