It might be hard to imagine what our lives would be like without all the seemingly necessary commodities provided by animals. We have come to take their use for granted as if it was ordained. But were animals placed on this earth for our unbridled use, pleasure, and nourishment, or were they placed here as part of the complex web of nature, with a role to fill as vital, living creatures in support of humans in a different way?
Humans alone have been responsible for nearly every loss of species in the past few thousand years. At the rate we are going some scenarios predict we will lose nearly 50 percent of all living species by the year 2050.1 According to biologists surveyed by the American Museum of Natural History, we are now in the midst of our sixth extinction, the fastest in Earth's history. Some believe that our civilization, due to the elimination of species and subsequent ecological breakdown, will complete the sixth extinction by the end of the century.
Humans have the capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought, good judgment and sound sense. Let's use these gifts we have been given to reconsider our perception of animals so we won't qualify as the term we use for them: “dumb animals.”