Most vegans are bigots. At least, that’s the implication of the latest “scientific” discoveries reported by Vox. According to Vox, fish have decent proficiency at human face recognition. That doesn’t just make fish one step ahead of iPhoto. Although it may be a tough hook to swallow even for current ethical vegetarians, Vox concludes, fish probably have rights too.
Last week, our nation’s enlightened media covered the death of a gorilla six times more than it covered the ISIS beheading of Christians and fifty-four times more than the shooting of 69 humans in Chicago. When Cecil the lion died last year, it wasn’t much different. Animal rights are all the rage. With this new trend and a potentially politically correct Pixar flick on anthropomorphized fish just out, no one should be surprised that fish are the next to claim rights.
According to Vox’s Brad Plumer, “One of the most astounding things that humans can do is recognize faces.” The ability to reason, which allowed for the writing of Hamlet or construction of New York City, would seem more astounding than the face-recognition function dogs and even laptops possess, but Vox knows best.
As Plumer reports, recent scientific research has discovered that fish, like humans, can recognize faces with the accuracy of a B student (86%). If readers accepts Plumer’s starting point that face recognition is among the most astounding features of humans, then fish are at least close to as astounding as humans. Should they get rights too?
To answer the question, Plumer consulted the biologist Culum Brown. Brown reports that the astounding-ness of fish doesn’t stop with face recognition. Plumer summarizes, fish “can learn from each other. They can recognize other fish they've spent time with previously. They know their place within fish social hierarchies. They remember complex spatial maps of their surroundings.”
According to Brown, the question of fish rights ultimately comes down to whether fish can feel pain. (Plumer never questions this utilitarian assumption.) “But for some reason, a lot of people refuse to believe that fish can feel pain.” (Plumer never asks who these unnamed deniers are.) Whoever they are, according to Brown, they deny the cutting edge science of the last thirty years, which has discovered that fish do in fact feel pain. Aristotle would have been shocked.
Brown goes on to describe the brutal way in which fish are captured and killed by “massive commercial” fishing. If animal rights groups will advocate for other sentient animals, then it seems they should advocate for the brutally mass-murdered fish as well. As Brown complains, “Nobody’s ever asked what does a fish want? What does a fish need? . . . I think, ultimately, the revolution will come. But it will be slow because the implications are huge.”
Vox’s Brad Plumer hasn’t renounced eating fish by the end of the article. “But,” he concludes, “it’s certainly a challenge to many of our usual notions of animal rights.”
