The push to establish personhood for animals comes as society’s fundamental understanding of animal sentience is rapidly evolving. For example, geese fall in love and stay with a partner for life, even at great personal risk and squirrels bury nuts by the position of the stars.
PETA Germany marked its 30th anniversary by rallying outside the New Palace in Stuttgart to call on the Bundestag to change the constitution to recognize animals as individual persons with the right to life, liberty, physical integrity, and the free development of personality.
In the U.S., PETA is preparing a new lawsuit designed to challenge the status quo. This follows earlier civil suits, including its novel 13th Amendment lawsuit, which sought to free orcas from bondage at SeaWorld; its groundbreaking “monkey selfie” copyright lawsuit, which sought to establish the right of Naruto the macaque to own and profit from his own creation; and its first-of-its-kind lawsuit challenging a loophole in the federal Animal Welfare Act allowing for the unconstitutional death sentence of barn owls. PETA’s lead counsel, Jeffrey Kerr, is inspired by the words of civil rights attorney Phil Hirschkop, who said, “First you lose, and lose, and lose, and then you win.”
“Animals aren’t things like pieces of furniture—they’re individuals like us who feel pain, fear, and love and value their lives, and simply because humans can dominate them doesn’t mean that we should,” says PETA President and founder of PETA Germany Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA entities are urging the legal system to recognize that all animals are living, feeling beings who deserve appropriate legal rights and protections for their own sake and not in relation to how they can be exploited by humans.”
The push to establish personhood for animals comes as society’s fundamental understanding of animal sentience is rapidly evolving, with studies revealing the individuality and specific talents and abilities of all species. For example, geese fall in love and stay with a partner for life, even at great personal risk; squirrels bury nuts by the position of the stars; pigeons navigate by low-frequency radio waves; fish “sing” underwater; and elephants use their trunks to send subsonic signals, alerting herds a mile or more away to danger or a source of water.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.
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