Suffering and the ‘unnatural’ life

Abstract

One of the things that disturbs people most about animals in captivity is that their lives are ‘unnatural’. They cannot move around freely as they would in the wild and, if the animals are kept in very small, bare cages, there is much behaviour that they are completely prevented from doing. So the most obvious method for assessing suffering to consider next is the extent to which an animal is able to perform the behaviour patterns typical of its species.