Are Parrots Persons?

Pictures: A mating pair of African Greys and a mother chimp with her 1-month old son


Since we humans are moral animals, every relationship we take seriously forces us to grapple with questions of right and wrong. We have moral relationships with our parents, our life partners, our children, our peers, our government, our earth and —hopefully— our companion animals.


When we treat people like objects and see them as an alien other rather than as a brother or a mother, we fail morally. We stereotype and prejudge, empathy atrophies, and our worst xenophobic, sexist and speciesist sentiments emerge. We abandon creation and become “monsters.”

Taking Shanti seriously as a fellow being raises moral questions I’ll explore on the blog from time to time.

My point of departure—the first item of serious business—is to ask myself if Shanti is an object.

If my answer is yes, there is "nobody home" inside Shanti, then I suppose I might as well cook him for dinner. If animals are mere objects of our dominion designed for our recreation, experimentation and commercialization, they why not hunt the foxes, dissect the chimps, chain up the circus elephants, militarize the dolphins, and use all the spare parts for feathered hats, fur coats and perfumes?

But if my answer is no, somebody is home, I also have to ask the question. Who? And how shall that somebody be treated?

I wonder about that sacred quality of animal someoneness. (A sense of wonder is, I think, a good start. That’s where children start with animals and where I —a half century from childhood— have ended up.)

The philosopher Thomas Nagel explored animal “someoneness” in his essay, “What is it like to be a bat?” He concluded that although we can’t really know what it’s like, it’s like something: Somebody is home.

Peter Singer, who co-founded the Great Ape Project, suggests our fellow apes – the bonobos, gorillas, oraguntans and chimpanzees – deserve the status of “persons.”

Spain recently passed legislation protecting the rights of great apes to life and liberty, a giant step toward recognizing our primate cousins as persons.

All subsequent questions about ethics and animals are, I think, derived from the fundamental one that someone else is home. Not just us humans.

In my short relationship with Shanti, hard ethical questions have already come up. Should a bird from the African rain forest ever live in captivity in California? Should I acquire a baby bird from a parrot breeder when so many unwanted adults parrots need rescue and rehabilitation? Do breeders do good by discouraging the illegal poaching and smuggling of endangered species of native birds? Or do breeders do harm by marketing birds they know will often be mistreated, abandoned or neglected?

I don’t have the answers. But sometimes just asking the right questions helps us do the right thing. What do you think?