15.1 Introduction

15.2 The Welfare of Other Companions

One starting point for thinking about the welfare of other companions is to return to the Five Freedoms we have discussed before (Chapter 4): the freedom from hunger and thirst; the freedom from discomfort (including the provision of an appropriate environment); the freedom from pain, injury and disease; the freedom to express normal behaviour (including sufficient space and appropriate social interaction); and the freedom from fear and distress. However, as we also discussed in Chapter 4, these freedoms, while important, are all rather negative, focusing on freedom from what is bad, such as suffering and restrictions on normal behaviour. In addition, we should also think about positive welfare, where companions have good lives, with opportunities to flourish, and to carry out enjoyable, engaging and challenging activities.

Many of the welfare issues we have discussed in the case of cats and dogs may also affect other companions – for instance, they may become obese due to inappropriate diet and lack of exercise. However, other companions are often kept in ways that also generate some distinct welfare problems. For example, most other companions live in cages, and do not generally have freedom to move about the house. They may be allowed to run or fly indoors or outdoors on occasions, but most of the time they are closely confined, which (as we will discuss below) raises questions about their ability to perform key normal behaviours. Relatedly, partly on account of being confined (and in some cases, also nocturnal), other companions run the risk of being neglected and forgotten by their owners. While, as Sainthouse (2011) notes, cats and dogs can and do loudly pester their owners if they are hungry and thirsty, small mammals, rabbits and birds normally lack this ability. More generally, especially where other companions are small, and do not interact much with their owners, any health problems they have may be less noticeable than in the case of cats and dogs.

Another common factor shared by at least some of the other companions (mainly the small mammals and rabbits) is that, as noted in the Introduction, they are often recommended and acquired for children as ‘starter pets’ because they are supposed to be easy to care for (the ASPCA (n.d.), for instance, recommends guinea pigs as an excellent ‘starter pet’ for older children). As we will note next, however, it is not that easy to care for these animals well; the difficulties of doing so are exacerbated if, in order to teach children responsibility, the animals are left largely or solely to children’s care, which rarely happens with cats and dogs.

Finally, a major issue shared by most of the other companions concerns social contact with conspecifics. Cats and dogs are usually socially integrated into their human households, and have significant interactions with their owners. Cats may do well, or better, as solitary felines within a household; while dogs normally benefit from contact with other dogs, they are typically taken out for walks and play in dog parks where these conspecific socialising opportunities exist. However, many of the other companions, including some of the large birds, are frequently kept alone, even though they are often highly social. As we will discuss, even though they may have some contact with their owners, being kept alone means that they lack any opportunity to express important social behaviours with conspecifics.

Many different species of animals may be kept as companions, and we are unable to discuss them all here; for instance, we will not be discussing chinchillas, ferrets, and semi-wild/wild companions (such as wolf-dogs, monkeys, and exotic or tamed wild mammals), as the numbers of these animals kept as companions are comparatively small. We will focus here on the most common of the other below: small rodents, rabbits and birds.

15.3 Wild-Caught Birds and the Pet Trade

15.4 Ethical Approaches to Other Companions

We begin with human-centred ethical approaches such as contractarianism (see Chapter 5) where human interests and concerns are of primary importance and animal welfare and the environment matter only in as much as they matter to people. Even from these approaches, the issues raised here are of ethical significance. An unsuitable companion animal (such as a nocturnal hamster for a child, that bites when woken in the day) or a companion animal that is listless, performs stereotypical behaviours, or is fearful or aggressive because its welfare is poor, can cause its owners’ distress, and is likely to reduce their enjoyment in having an animal companion. An owner may be upset when, because he or she does not know what a companion needs to flourish, significant welfare problems or premature death occur. On most human-centred ethical views, it would be better if these outcomes were avoided by improved welfare for the animal.

It is worth noting, though, that in some cases animals may suffer welfare problems without them having noticeable behavioural effects in the early stages – as with dental disease in rabbits, or some forms of malnutrition in birds. Here, as the welfare issues do not impact on human relationships to the animals, they do not matter ethically from a human-centred perspective. In other cases, improving an animal’s welfare sufficiently to avoid problems for the animal may entail sacrifice by an owner – for instance, of household space – that the owner does not want to make. From a human-centred perspective, if the owner values household space more than their companion’s welfare, then there is no ethical responsibility to give the space up.

The market in wild-caught birds is also of ethical concern from a human-centred perspective. While people who engage in the trade benefit from it, as noted earlier, these benefits are unlikely to be sustainable; while much of what owners enjoy about keeping birds as companions could be equally well produced by captive-bred birds, which also carry less risk of disease transmission to people. So, the human gains from the trade, in the long term, are small, if they exist at all. Meanwhile, many people value bird species, ecosystems, and the biodiversity they partly comprise, because they are extremely useful in providing long-term services to people (for instance, they may contribute to new drugs, they help to purify freshwater and so on) and/or because they subjectively value their existence (what economists sometimes call ‘existence value’) and deplore their loss. From this human perspective, the wild-caught bird trade is ethically unacceptable. Human-centred ethical views of this kind underpin international laws banning the capture of many species of wild birds, and national laws forbidding the importation of wild-caught birds for the companion animal market.

Other ethical approaches take animal welfare directly into account. A utilitarian might begin by asking whether, in any particular case, better welfare overall could be achieved by changing the way an animal companion is cared for – for instance, by giving animals more space, a better diet, environmental enrichment, or a companion. These changes may cause less suffering and enrich animals’ lives, and may also improve the owner’s enjoyment in the companion, especially if the change comes at minimal cost to the owner, such as switching from all seed to pelleted food for parrots. However, other changes – such as sacrificing household space for the companion – may come at a greater cost to the owner. Utilitarianism, unlike human-centred approaches, then must weigh the owner’s feelings of inconvenience, negative aesthetic experience and so on, against the benefits to the animals’ welfare. In most cases, although changes in space or companionship may be a nuisance for an owner, they make major differences to the welfare of an animal, and so the benefits to the animal will usually outweigh the costs to the owner.

One difficulty with the weighing process from the perspective of a utilitarian is that, (as we noted in Chapter 4), in practice, it is hard to work out what ‘good welfare’ actually is, even when there is agreement on how to define and measure welfare. This is because different aspects of welfare can be in conflict (as in the case of letting a cat outdoors). For example, keeping a cage very clean may reduce an animal’s risk of disease, and so make suffering less likely, something a utilitarian cares about. But it may also create a barren environment for an animal, lacking sufficient interest and enrichment, leaving the animal bored and frustrated – and a utilitarian cares about these negative experiences too. So, a utilitarian not only has to weigh human interests in relation to animal interests, but also to make a judgement about what would actually be best overall for the animal or animals concerned.

A utilitarian approach would also be concerned about the wild bird trade, in as much as it impacts on human and animal welfare. Suffering inflicted on the traded birds and other animals would be of high significance, as would the overall benefits to humans (those engaged in the trade) and the costs to humans (where welfare is impacted by the loss of the services ecosystems provide, or people are distressed by the suffering of birds or the loss of species and systems). It is worth noting that from a utilitarian perspective, the loss of species (for instance) only matters inasmuch as it impacts on human or animal welfare; it is not ethically important in itself. Given the high level of bird suffering the wild companion bird trade produces (likely to be much more than birds would experience in the wild; certainly mortality rates are higher), and other negative outcomes, from a utilitarian perspective, the trade is almost certainly unethical (though there is certainly room for debate about the best practical and policy responses to the trade).

Contextual approaches to ethics, such as an ethics of care, are concerned with questions about what is owed to a companion animal, given the animal’s relationship to the owner, and how to make the relationship between the animal and owner more fulfilling and mutually engaging. Most contextual approaches to ethics will maintain that once an animal is in the home, it has been made dependent on the owner, and as the owner has placed it in this situation of dependence, there is a moral responsibility to care for the animal and to ensure that its needs are met.

For contextual views on which the flourishing of relationship matters, given that poor welfare can lead to fear, aggression and stereotypic behaviours that inhibit flourishing, the animal will need to have good welfare (although this may not be true of welfare compromises that do not have behavioural manifestations). One particularly interesting issue here concerns bird rearing and companionship. It has traditionally been argued that both hand-rearing companion birds (which means early maternal separation, and in parrots, a higher risk of disease (Romagnano, 2003)) and keeping social birds singly, encourage birds to bond with their human owner. If this were correct, there might be a conflict between the ethical goal of developing a strong bond between the owner and the bird, and a goal of good, species-specific welfare. However, recent research suggests that, in the case of parrots at least, parent-rearing, with some human handling, creates birds just as tame as does hand-rearing (Aengus & Millam, 1999); while housing in same-sex pairs improves, rather than undermines, bird–owner relationships (Meehan, Garner & Mench, 2003).

Finally, we will consider a rights view. First, it is clear that an animal rights view would unequivocally condemn the trade in wild birds, as it infringes on every right a bird might be thought to have, and no benefits to humans could be thought to outweigh such rights infringements. Assuming that a rights view claims, most basically, that animals have negative rights such as a right not to be seriously harmed, and not to be imprisoned, concerns about keeping other companion animals also exist. Keeping rabbits in small hutches and birds in small cages are likely to be seen here as rights infringements, and significant adjustments called for in order to provide companion animals with basic liberties. As an example of a view like this, we could consider the House Rabbit Society (HRS), an organisation committed to protect the rights of companion rabbits and, more generally to ensure that they have good lives.

The HRS rests on a clearly outlined ethical position, on which all domestic rabbits are valuable as individuals; they ‘should be afforded at least the same individual rights, level of care, and opportunity for longevity as commonly afforded to dogs and cats who live as human companions’. As domestic rabbits have been produced by humans and are dependent on them, it is a ‘human responsibility that these animals be cared for in a manner appropriate to their needs’ (HRS, 2013). Interestingly, this view combines a rights perspective with a contextual ethic of special responsibility for animals produced and owned by humans. Among the ethical responsibilities that the organisation defends are neutering rabbits (though there is recognition within the HRS that neutering is an ethically serious decision), ensuring that they receive veterinary treatment, keeping them in groups of two or more, and providing spaces and opportunities for their mental and physical stimulation. This last responsibility may require significant adaptation of human homes for rabbits, either creating very large and complex interior cage structures, or allowing rabbits freedom to roam within some, or all, of the home.

Julie Smith, founder of a chapter of the HRS in Wisconsin, proposes what she calls a ‘performance ethics’ of living with rabbits in the home, where to the greatest extent possible with continued human occupation, ‘physical and mental space’ is made available for ‘animal agency’ (Smith, 2003). For Smith, this meant significant changes to her physical domestic environment:

Rabbit-proofing meant that most of the furniture was made of metal, electrical cords were fastened behind furniture or covered in hard plastic or metal tubing, and protective wood strips were tacked on to wood baseboards and wood trim around closets and windows. In addition, linoleum replaced carpet – or the carpet was abandoned to shredding – and fencing enclosed bookcases. So-called “litterbox training” primarily meant capitalizing on the rabbit habit of urinating consistently in one or two places. We simply put litterboxes where the rabbits decided to eliminate.

(Smith, 2003)

This description of making a home suitable for the free movement of rabbits is just one example of how difficult it can be to live with many other species in the ways we usually live with cats and dogs. In addition, in the case of rabbits, as with cats, there are also questions about the freedom to have outdoor access.

From all of these ethical perspectives, then, even human-centred, contractarian ones, it is normally better if the animals we keep as companions are cared for in ways that protect and promote, rather than undermine, their welfare. For some of the animal species discussed earlier, good welfare is possible, but the owner may have to be more accommodating to the animals’ needs than is often recognised. However, achieving good welfare, in the case of some species, just may not be possible in an average home. This raises the question whether some species should not normally be kept as companion animals at all, or whether ownership of some species should be restricted (through a ban or by requiring a licence).

15.5 Should Ownership of Some Species Be Restricted, or Completely Prohibited?

We have seen so far in this chapter that keeping companion animals other than cats and dogs can raise significant welfare and conservation concerns. Previously in the book, we also considered other issues, such as the spread of zoonoses and companion animal invasiveness (Chapter 14), and aggression, particularly in dogs (Chapter 9), which can also be problematic in the case of other companions. If an animal combined enough of these characteristics (being aggressive, being a member of a threatened species, wild caught, a carrier of zoonotic disease, potentially invasive, and very difficult to keep in a state of good welfare) or manifested even one of the characteristics in a sufficiently extreme way, we might think that keeping it as a companion is unethical, and should not be legally permitted. For example, domestic ownership of some big cat and primate species is not permitted in some countries.

Schuppli & Fraser (2000), and Schuppli et al. (2014), have developed a useful framework for assessing the ethical suitability of different species as companion animals. They suggest a series of questions that should be asked about each species, concerning knowledge about a species’ welfare and the difficulty (or otherwise) of achieving good welfare in the home, the impacts on the welfare of others (human and non-human) from attack and disease, and the environmental risks posed both by procuring and releasing the animal. They then propose a rough categorisation of pets and animal companions into (see Box 15.1) the following groups, reflecting the required level of owner commitment and expertise.

Schuppli & Fraser (2000) place golden hamsters and mice into Category A (though as we have seen, even these animals can pose welfare challenges, and, according to Schuppli & Fraser (2000), require enriched cages and regular handling). Most cat and dog breeds are placed into Category B: cats and dogs are fairly demanding in terms of welfare, can create problems of noise, disease, and injury, but they can be procured from responsible sources, are reasonably well understood, many people have expertise in caring for them, and they thrive as companions. Rabbits and guinea pigs probably fall into Category B too, as they do not pose environmental hazards nor strong zoonotic threats, their procurement is not a problem, and they can have good welfare as companions, though this does require ‘substantial’ owner education.