Sentient
In December 2019, the Australian Capital Territory amended their Animal Welfare Act to include a recognition that “animals are sentient beings”, the first jurisdiction in Australia to do so.
A law does not make a fact, it is a fact regardless of the law. It is also hard to define ‘sentience’ in any certain way and the ACT’s Animal Welfare Act does not provide a direct definition of the term, only through interpretation of the subsequent points. Sentientism describes a sentient animal as “any being capable of experiencing, particularly experiencing suffering or flourishing”. However, there are even within human experiences those who don’t experience, suffer, or flourish. And there are some organisms which biologically have both ‘plant’ and ‘animal’ attributes.
If we are to include all living organisms who, say, are alive and able to move on their own we would have trouble excluding mushrooms from being animals. However, coral are animals but do not move on their own. There really is no hard line or easy definition of what an animal is.
We could agree, though, that a human is an animal and a cacti is a plant. It is only when we get closer to the middle that it becomes difficult. But, even for those creatures who we can agree embody even the vaguest definition of sentience, how far do we extend the courtesy?
In September 2020, during the Sydney Olympics, Bogong Moths became the nuisance mascot of the games. They landed on singers during the closing ceremony and their swarms dulled powerful stadium lighting during night matches. By 2020, their numbers had astoundingly fallen by 99.5% due to severe drought.
While new evidence suggests that moths may fall into the vague definition of ‘sentience’, they are generally not high on most people’s priority animal list. However, it may be that their connection to more definitively sentient creatures boosts their importance. Bogong Moths are the primary source of food for lizards, frogs, birds, and, crucially for most people’s empathy, mammals. In particular the critically-endangered Mountain Pygmy-Possum.
The Mountain Pygmy-Possum is certainly sentient by any definition. Under ACT law, it is now legally defined that sentient animals have an intrinsic quality of life and that people have a duty of care for the physical welfare of animals. So then, does the ACT legal definition of sentience now include protections for the Bogong Moth, as it is essential to the physical welfare of the Mountain Pygmy-Possum? If the Bogong Moth is essential to the Mountain Pygmy-Possum, then is the physical welfare of the Bogong Moth protected under ACT law? How does this protect the flower nectar and plants that a Bogong Moth eats? It may depend on how the law is interpreted.
To consider protection of definitively ‘sentient’ creatures we must also consider protection of those which they consider essential to their physical welfare, regardless of their sentience. The definition of sentience, when it is defined by law, by extension enacts protection for the not-definitively-sentient creatures on which the sentient creatures rely.
The depth of sentience in law extends indefinitely and these vague definitions may be a gateway to enacting protections for those fringe creatures which are hard to define, but still need our empathy and protection. Even if it is forced by a vague law.
