General Article How do we weigh the moral value of human lives against animal ones?

Topic Selected: Animal Rights
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How do we weigh the moral value of human lives against animal ones?

Daniel Crimston, The University of Queensland; Brock Bastian, University of Melbourne; Matthew Hornsey, and Paul Bain, Queensland University of Technology

Imagine a unique set of scales that measures the value of life. If a single human were on one side, how many chimpanzees (our closest genetic relatives) would need to be on the other side before the scales tipped in their direction?

This may seem like an abstract, irrelevant or even offensive question to some people. But it was made horrifically real by the death last week of Harambe, the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was shot after a young boy fell into his enclosure.

Zoo handlers were faced with the agonising decision to take Harambe’s life to ensure the young boy would not lose his. The response to this event online has varied from anger, to sadness, through to considerations of how much choice the zoo’s staff really had. How do we decide what our own lives are wo...

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