Nathan Nobis wonders about the ethical position of those who support the hunting of deer with hounds. Apart from the reasons that I gave in my original essay, some of the supporters simply denied that they had anything to worry about. The more thoughtful ones placed high value on the maintenance of tradition and of the field-craft involved in the hunting process. They maintained that the practice generated a healthy herd of deer and many mentioned the economic benefits to the local community. If hunting involved any suffering to the deer, it paled into insignificance compared with all the perceived advantages of the human activity. Theirs was a form of utilitarian argument that recurs frequently in such debates as Adam Shriver notes. I didn’t encounter the type of argument that he mentioned at the end of his commentary, namely that humans have the right to do whatever they like to an animal and this right trumps all other considerations. I am sure that it exists in some cultures, but I am with him in finding it neither compelling nor attractive.

I was delighted that Tom Regan joined in the discussion. He is one of the most articulate and thoughtful philosophers writing about the way humans treat animals. He rightly points out that in my essay I did not go into how humans might justify maximizing the benefit that we derive from animals. It is a matter that I have discussed at length elsewhere, however, because the need to do so is particularly great for somebody like myself who uses animals in research and yet has a great love for them. I wrote about these issues most recently in “Advances in the Study of Behaviour” Volume 35 (200Y5), pp 211-233. I do believe that a clear and strong ethical case can be made for research on animals, but how is that to be reconciled with what is done to the animals. Here I believe the argument is not utilitarian. It is more to do with resolving the seeming conflict between incompatible activities. Everybody would probably agree that if no suffering is involved then a scientific program should proceed if it can be justified on other grounds. Similarly most would agree that if the program is worthless and suffering is likely then it should not proceed. But what about the cases where the program is likely to generate real benefits for understanding and for medicine, but might cause some suffering? Some consensus might be achieved and this then leads to guidance being given to the scientist. All sorts of other issues come into play, like what animals are we talking about? How do we define sentience? Would as much weight be given to an earthworm as to a dog? And does not a human need sometimes trump an animal need? In the famous thought dilemma of the over-laden life boat, even Tom Regan would, I believe, throw overboard a dog in preference to his own child.

The moral tensions are not easily resolved in the abstract since the position that a person adopts will be swayed by the choices they are offered. For instance, on academic appointment committees Candidate A may be preferred to Candidate B because his research is more extensive, Candidate B may be preferred to Candidate C because her work shows more promise, but Candidate C may perform most impressively at interview and be appointed by the committee, with seeming amnesia of what went before. The committee focuses unduly on the personality characteristics of the candidates because the vividness of their recent face-to-face experience dominates the context for making a decision. The human weakness can be met in part by ensuring that the different dimensions on which the final choice depends are made independently and only then are brought together for the overall decision.

In his book “Man and the Natural World” Keith Thomas described how the moral concerns of those who had preached and pamphleteered against cruelty to animals had remained remarkably constant in England from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. He summarised their views as follows:

“Man, it was said, was fully entitled to domesticate animals and to kill them for food and clothing. But he was not to tyrannize or to cause unnecessary suffering. Domestic animals should be allowed food and rest and their deaths should be as painless as possible. Wild animals could be killed if they were needed for food or thought to be harmful. But, although game could be shot and vermin hunted, it was wrong to kill for mere pleasure.”

I felt that this expressed the views that many people, including myself, hold about hunting with hounds.

Patrick Bateson

There has been a lot of progress in recent years in understanding the neuroscience of pain and suffering. Interestingly, there are two distinct pain pathways in humans, a sensory pathway that accounts for our ability to localize and discriminate pain, and an affective pathway that determines how unpleasant we find the pain. This leads to the strange occurrence that in cases where the affective pain pathway is damaged or inhibited people will say that they feel pain but no longer find it unpleasant. Thus, there is a sense in which pain and suffering can be pulled apart.

However, mammals all appear to have the same brain regions that underlie *both* the affective and the sensory dimensions of pain in humans, and thus I think there is strong reason to believe that at the very least most mammals suffer from pain in a way very similar to human beings. Furthermore, recent research has gotten much more precise about the particular types of neurotransmitters and receptors that are involved in pain and suffering, and I think this suggests that we likely will be able to find much more direct ways of measuring suffering from brain tissue in the future. For example, an elevated level of extracellular regulated kinases (ERKs) has been found in key brain regions associated with negative affect (such as the amygdala and the anterior cinglate cortex) in situations where animals have been exposed to noxious stimulation or have learned to avoid aversive stimuli. I don’t think we yet know enough about the brain chemistry to feel confident using such measures to test for suffering, but it looks like we are getting very close to a point where we may be able to have access to more direct measures of suffering than testing stress hormone levels.

That being said, I find Sir Patrick Bateson’s interpretations of these high levels of stress hormones to be convincing. We know that increases in such hormones are correlated with terror, and I think Sir Patrick Bateson and Christine Nicol have put forward very strong reasons for doubting that the increase in these hormones is due to pleasure or exhilaration. If being hunted is at all an unpleasant experience (and I think everyone above has agreed that it is), then being pushed to the absolute physical limits of that experience for an extended period of time is very likely to be extremely aversive. Thus, even if the measure is not perfectly direct, it still provides a strong case for the idea that the deer are suffering greatly.

So, it seems to me that the “negatives” side of the scale has a lot of weight on it; what about the “positives?” Not being from a hunting background, I can’t say that I understand
what the pleasure is that people derive from it. I am particularity far removed from the type of hunting described here. However, I personally have a hard time seeing why such pleasure could not be replaced by some other equally pleasurable or challenging or natural or whatever type of experience. If such experiences can be replaced, why not replace them with something that does not cause large amounts of suffering? But even if such experiences couldn’t be replaced, it seems to me that suffering should be given far more weight in ethical considerations than enjoyment. That is, in general, I don’t think it’s justified to cause a great amount of suffering in one sentient being for the sake of great pleasure in a number of of others. So I don’t see the benefits in this case as being able to outweigh the costs.

While we’re on the topic of utilitarian considerations, I think philosopher Gary Varner has had some interesting things to say about hunting. First, Varner has suggested the possibility that while sentience is sufficient for a certain kind of moral considerability (for example, sufficient for us to say that we should not cause unnecessary suffering), an awareness of the past or present might provide additional moral significance. In particular, humans’ awareness of the past and future along with corresponding future-oriented desires and life plans might support a claim that there is something wrong with painlessly killing a human being but not with painlessly killing an animal that lives “merely” in the present. Thus, if we think that deer live mostly in the present, this might support the view that relying on professional sharpshooters is a vastly preferable option.

Finally, I wanted to mention an argument that I don’t agree with but which I thought would be motivating a lot of the opposition to Sir Patrick Bateson. Many people believe that human beings have certain rights that act as trump cards against utilitarian arguments. That is, if you have a right to not be treated a certain way, then no particular outcome of a cost/benefit analysis would provide moral justification for someone treating you that way. Quite a few people hold, for a variety of reasons, that human beings but not other creatures are endowed with such rights. And if you thought that humans have rights (such as the right to live one’s life with minimal interference from others) but deer do not have rights, then it seems like you could argue that all of this cost/benefit analysis is really irrelevant to the moral situation. On this line of reasoning, interfering with people’s right to hunt is an unfair intrusion into their personal business, and whether or not the deer suffers is largely irrelevant. I don’t find such an argument compelling, but I’d be interested to hear what Sir Patrick Bateson and others think about it.

Some there are who will find this mode of argument question-begging at best. If we should not be slaughtering farm animals or using other animals in research (if, that is, acting in these ways is morally wrong), then it is difficult to see how we can appeal to their treatment in these contexts as a satisfactory basis for determining the morality of interacting with them in other ways, including hunting deer with hounds. Granted, Sir Patrick was not asked to explore these matters in detail; granted as well there is no consensus on these matters at this point in time. That said, Sir Patrick glosses over issues one wishes he would have explored, at least to some extent, when he says he hopes “to find an acceptable space in which suffering [caused to animals] is kept to a minimum and humans maximize what they can get out of the use of the animals.” After all, whether humans should be trying to “maximize what [we] can get out of the use of animals” is not a question that can or should be ignored.

I am grateful to Nathan Nobis for focusing on the key issues of this debate. I’ve never really thought about what criteria I would use to evaluate whether a piece of biological/behavioral evidence would be enough to conclude suffering. I am left to conclude that, for myself, scientific evidence may not ever be enough to conclusively prove beyond doubt that the deer is suffering. An exception might be if we were able to somehow determine whether the biochemical activity in the deer’s brain is the same as when humans experience psychological stress that we generally consider as suffering. If we were able to isolate this experience to certain activities in the human brain and compare it to the brain activity of deer hunted by hounds, then we could say with some certainty that the deer is experiencing something close to what a human does when he or she suffers. In my view, the comparison of mental processes would be more sound since any physical process (with the exception of brain chemistry) can easily be refuted by saying “Deer wouldn’t feel pain like humans would if muscles were damaged, temperature was elevated, or cortisol levels increased.” And rightly so, for we cannot claim that a deer would feel pain because we do not have the experience of being a deer. And it is hard to argue that deer would experience everything exactly like humans, except if brain activity during these stimuli is the same. But even then, I think such evidence might not be conclusive since it assumes brain chemistry is the same across sentient species.

As for discussing that deer do not anticipate their deaths, I did not make that comment to discuss whether or not hunting should be banned altogether. It was my understanding from Bateson’s entry that we were discussing whether hound hunting in particular should be banned given that there is a need to cull these deer and that there are other alternatives with the potential to avoid causing fear in deer due to being chased by hounds specifically. In this context, I made that comment to argue that there is no conclusive piece of evidence that deer are fearing for their lives as Bateson dramatically proposes.

However, despite my reservations about the conclusions that Bateson has made, I believe that he has brought up sufficient cause for concern about whether deer are suffering. Since stalking by a professional sniper seems to be a quicker death for a deer, it seems reasonable to think that the amount of suffering would be lessened if not eliminated.

The Relevant Empirical / Scientific Facts
+
Moral Principles
=
What We Should Do.

I would have liked to have heard more from advocates of hunting deer with dogs to better understand their assessment of the relevant facts and the relevant moral principles so we might better understand the argument for their view.

Mr. Bateson reports that “Hunt supporters have believed sincerely that very little suffering is involved in hunting with hounds.” Sincere belief is not necessarily true belief or belief supported by strong evidence, so what is the evidence in favor of the pro-hunting perspective? Is the pro-hunting view that there is strong evidence that hunting causes few and/or minor harms to deer? Or is it the claim that there is not strong evidence that hunting harms deer, i.e., that cases like Bateson’s are weak?

Mr. Kornahrens’s response might suggest the latter. His response, however, made me wonder what, on his view, would amount to strong evidence that deer are harmed by being hunted: what is his criterion for assessing such matters? What biological and behavioral evidence (scientific evidence) could show that deer are harmed or not harmed (a moral category)? This was not explained; perhaps he would?

Mr. Kornahrens notes that it’s unlikely that deer anticipate their own deaths. This is a scientific claim, but is of moral interest — and supports deer hunting — only when combined with a principle like this: if a being does does not antipate his or her own death, then it’s permissible to kill that being. But surely this principle is false, and we see this clearly when we think about the many human beings who do not, and cannot, anticipate their own deaths. So why does Mr. Kornahrens discuss this aspect of deer psychology, since this seems to be an unsound argument for hunting.

Mr. Bateson also reports that hunt supporters think of deer hunting as an “entirely natural process.” But do they think that all “natural processes” are morally right? While there are many definitions of “natural,” it’s hard to see how any of them mean or entail “morally right”: e.g., selfishness and violent responses are surely sometimes “natural,” but selfishness and violence are surely sometimes wrong. So this argument for hunting is also unsound since it relies on the false principle that if an action is “natural” then it is morally permissible.

Finally, Mr. Bateson reports hunt supporters as arguing that, “Wolves chase deer, the argument runs, so deer should be adapted to being hunted by hounds,” and hunting deer is not wrong. Does this argument suggest that we should act like wolves? Or that if wolves, or animals in general, act a certain way, then it is morally OK for us to act that way? Again, that seems to be a generally false moral principle that if an animal acts in a certain way, then it morally permissible to act in that way also*. Counterexamples to this principle are easy to find.

These are a few quick reactions to the discussion above: there is much interesting to comment on. Again, a careful case in favor of hunting, made on the basis a careful investigation and assessment of the scientific facts and a critical evaluation of moral principles for their plausibility, would surely be appreciated here.

But decades of scientific research has yet to reveal a single attribute of the human brain that sets it apart qualitatively from the rest of the animal kingdom. Moreover, there is an ongoing influx of findings on cognitive abilities in other animals showing that so-called uniquely human capacities are dimensional and distributed across many species. So all of the recent data converges on the fact that other animals are also sentient beings. This doesn’t mean we are all identical but rather – comparable. The problem is that we refuse to reject the old hierarchical notion and remain mired in obsolete arguments about the presence of emotional distress, suffering and awareness in members of other species.

I appreciate the fact that Sir Patrick Bateson brings empirical study to bear on the issue at hand and also the importance of scientific data for guiding our interactions and treatment of other animals, including other humans. That is why, in light of what we now know about other animals, it seems somewhat nonsensical to continue the incessant argumentation over which particular physiological trait or mode of killing is better or worse. The fact is that if we accept what current evidence is telling us about the mental life of other animals we should not find any discussion of killing tolerable. I hope that we can adopt a more progressive view of other animals given that we now have abundant evidence for psychological continuity between humans and other animals. Such a philosophy requires abandonment of the ancient scala naturae philosophy that allows us to objectify other animals as biological units to be “managed” or “culled” in favor of the more scientifically-valid view of other animals as fellow beings who share an interest in the life they lead – even if that life is a bit different than ours. Honest acceptance of the current evidence would make it unthinkable to suggest killing them or interfering with their lives. The new evidence demands that we take a moral stance towards beings that happen to be of another species and, at the same time, provides the knowledge needed to maintain a respectful relationship with them on their terms.

I appreciate Mark Rowland’s perspective on this debate, but want to pick at one of his claims. If we restore predators and they do the killing of deer, then although we do not kill them directly, we are still in part responsible for their deaths.

The larger issue I’d like to see this discussion address is the suggestion that we control deer populations (when they need to be controlled) by the use of contraceptives. This is a way of respecting individual deer who are living, preventing the suffering of and the need to kill future deer, and protecting the habitat as well.

I would like to hear from the scientists about how feasible a solution to the problem this is and from the ethicists, whether or not they think this is the correct solution. I believe this suggestion will push the discussion toward environmentalists’ concerns about the integrity of natural systems–a topic I think needs to be brought into the discussion.

I fully accept Joel Marks’ point that the fate of a small number of deer seems utterly trivial compared with the massive mistreatment of sentient animals all around the world. The brief for my study was not, of course, to deal with the global matter. I was asked whether the hunting of red deer with hounds raised serious welfare issues. I shall return to the scientific side of the study shortly, but suffice to say that the ethical concerns raised by hunting with hounds do remain an interesting topic for discussion. Scale is not central. The murder of an individual is trivial compared with the civilian casualties of war. Nevertheless, no one is going to suggest that the wholesale inhumanity towards fellow humans implies that the police should not investigate a suspicious death. A quite different ethical problem is raised by the question of whether or not killing animal should be lumped with causing suffering to an animal. Those who generalize the concept of human rights to animals would claim that killing an animal is as bad as being cruel to it. I do not agree with them.

I was disappointed by the hostile response of Joshua Lucas and his reliance on the opinions of Wise. Public reactions to my report were sharply divided and those who did not like the conclusions used every weapon they could find, not all to disparage the research but also to discredit me. One of Wise’s tactics was to produce alternative explanations to those that I had used. Anybody who has lived in an academic community will be familiar with the sleight of hand. “I can think of a different interpretation to yours, therefore you are wrong.” If a different explanation is produced for every line of evidence, as was the case with Wise, then not only is the logic wrong, but the whole critical stance is ramshackle.

The study conducted by Elizabeth Bradshaw and myself was followed by another study commissioned by the pro-staghunting organizations and led by Roger Harris. In addition to repeating many of the physiological measurements that we had made and obtaining remarkably similar results, they measured the body temperature of the deer soon after they had been killed by the hunts. Some of the deer were hotter than the upper limit of the clinical thermometer (above 42°C). Deer are big-bodied animals poorly adapted for endurance running and they quickly over-heat. Those involved in both studies agreed that the hunted deer consumed their carbohydrate reserves in the chases by hounds and were forced to switch to a reliance on fats in order to power their muscles. Behaviourally the change is obvious when this happens. The tired deer do not hold their heads so high, they run more slowly and they have difficulty in jumping fences. Even my critics agreed that a welfare problem arose if hunting continued after this happened, but they argued that the deer was always caught and promptly killed when it was in this state. I was able to test this because we had a number of cases where the deer was observed in a tired state and we could calculate the time between the observation and subsequent death. The lapse in time was never immediate and could be more than two hours.

As for Joseph Lucas’ image of the lucky, carefree deer that escape from a hunt, Lucas is obviously unfamiliar with the phenomenon of myopathy, well known in red deer, whereby an animal that has been severely stressed dies shortly afterwards. Nor is at a pretty thought that a deer exhausted by a chase having to recover on a cold winter’s night.

William Kornahrens clearly missed the irony in my reference to Bambi when I contrasted those who wept in the Walt Disney film with those who love hunting with hounds. I was interested in the polarity of views that generated so much passion on both sides. Those who “know” what it is like to be a deer castigate the hunters. For my part, I subsequently felt the virulence of those who regard the red coats and the baying of hounds as part of an English tradition that should be protected at all costs.

After the hostility of Lucas and Kornahrens, I was grateful to Becky Hotherstall for returning to the matter of animal welfare. In the 12 years since I wrote the essay under consideration the techniques of assessment of improved enormously. I continue to like a combination of approaches each of which invites a different subset of interpretations. The ambiguity when using one approach can then be greatly reduced by using another.

Without serious natural predators, deer eventually suffer from starvation if they are not culled by humans. Mark Rowlands semi-humorously suggested that wolves ought to be reintroduced to do the job for us. Some people have seriously proposed this in Scotland but have been furiously opposed by the sheep farmers. In lieu of natural predators, the most effective way of killing a deer is to shoot it. I was unimpressed by most of the ways of assessing how much wounding from shooting occurred and, worse, by the bogus ways of combining unweighted averages. I tried various ways of improving on the assessments and they all seemed to suggest that the professional stalkers were good at their job and took very seriously their responsibility to ensure that deer were not allowed to escape with a wound.

The method of killing a deer, however. is surely irrelevant to the broader ethical issue raised by hunting with hounds. Those who follow the hunts enjoy themselves. If it is known that the hunted animal is likely to suffer, is this practice morally different from the baiting of bulls or any other deliberate act of cruelty? I completely agree with Christine Nicol that science can and does play a role in the ethical stance taken by the public. In the case of hunting deer with hounds, some people argued that the deer enjoyed the experience. The deer were “playing” with the hounds. The evidence from the combined studies of behaviour, physiology and ecology argued against strongly against such a view. The ethical question is then clearly posed. Should a human cause suffering in a sentient animal because the process gives him or her pleasure?

Why contrast the manner of death of a deer hunted by dogs with one hunted by wolves? It suggests the cases are morally equivalent, and should be differentiated only by way of the amount of suffering they occasion. Sir Patrick claims that wolves inflict less suffering: ‘The ancestral habitat of red deer is woodland and, in such habitats, wolves do not chase them for long distances. Instead wolves rely on stealth, short bursts of speed and ambushing to catch the deer.’

Even if correct, this is irrelevant. When a wolf kills a deer, it is doing nothing morally wrong – irrespective of the suffering it inflicts on the deer. If it inflicted more suffering than dogs, it would still be doing nothing morally wrong. We need to distinguish necessary from unnecessary suffering. The wolf does nothing wrong because (among other things) the suffering it inflicts is necessary for its survival.

If humans inflict necessary suffering in this sense, that is not wrong. Most of the suffering we inflict, however, is not necessary. What is wrong is the inflicting, by a creature who understands the difference between necessary and unnecessary suffering, of unnecessary suffering. If deer need to be culled (I’m not sure this is true but accept it for the sake of argument), and if that can be done in two ways, one of which involves more suffering than the other, then, all things being equal, it is morally repugnant for us to choose the method that involves more suffering.

Some people think of morality in terms of the elimination of suffering (conversely, increase of happiness). This is a utilitarian idea. I prefer to think of morality in terms of the elimination of activities that are morally wrong or questionable with ones that are neither of these.

Therefore, I suggest we reintroduce the keystone predator species – the ones we eradicated because they were inconvenient. What they do is not wrong. Therefore, in re-introducing them we do nothing wrong. We thereby regulate deer numbers and, with suitable additional action on our part, facilitate the transition of the habitat back to ancestral form.

Of course, it probably won’t happen – not in a sustained way. We humans will do pretty much anything to avoid being inconvenienced. It’s a story as old as we are. We won’t share, and because of our selfishness we find ourselves up to our ears in morally questionable activities.