Residents of the small borough of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, were shocked recently when they learned that one of their neighbors allegedly baited fish hooks with food in order to lure stray cats into swallowing them. One cat had hooks in his mouth, tongue and throat; he was trapped and rushed to a local veterinarian's office for surgery. Two other cats were spotted with string, believed to be attached to hooks, hanging out of their mouths, but they disappeared before animal rescuers could secure them.
The veterinarian who treated the first cat said, "The people who do these things should be severely punished." A local animal rescuer put it more bluntly: "This man should be in jail. This is sick."
No doubt, you agree. But ask yourself this: If impaling cats with baited hooks is morally reprehensible _ and it is _ why is it considered acceptable to do the exact same thing to fish? After all, cats and catfish are both sentient beings; they both feel pain and fear and value their lives.
The answer is speciesism, the misguided belief that one species is more important than another.
From the time we're young, most of us are conditioned to view certain species as worthy of care and compassion and others as unworthy _ all based on arbitrary human preferences. We grow up with the message that puppies and kittens are "friends," fish and chickens are "food," and rats and pigeons are "pests."
As a result, we learn to ignore our own conscience, which tells us that it's wrong to inflict harm on others. We convince ourselves that the enjoyment we get from casting a baited hook into the water matters more than the pain fish experience when they're pierced through the lip and yanked into an environment in which they can't breathe.
Worse, because fish seem so different from us (they're not), many people are certain that they don't feel pain at all and can't possibly suffer (they do).
As University of Texas fisheries ecologist Brad Erisman says, "People just look at fish as something to be put on a plate."
But research on fish sentience has revealed that fish have excellent long-term memories, are savvy social learners and even use tools. Cichlids glue their eggs to leaves and small rocks so that they can carry them to a safe place. Orange-dotted tuskfish, a type of wrasse, repeatedly toss clams against rocks in order to crack open their shells.
Fish live in complex social groups, learn from other fish, form friendships and develop cultural traditions. They can count and tell time, they think ahead and they "talk" to one another underwater. Catfish warn each other about predators by making squeaking sounds (which we humans can hear only with special equipment). Pearlfish go a step further and use oyster shells as speakers to help amplify the volume of their communications.
In other words, fish are every bit as complex as the cats and dogs who occupy our hearts and homes.
The first step in rejecting speciesism is to recognize our moral blind spots when it comes to other animals. Yes, it's cruel and "sick" to trick cats into swallowing fish hooks. But if you wouldn't do it to a cat, you shouldn't do it to a fish, either.
Fish and members of all other animal species are fellow sentient beings who deserve to live free from unnecessary pain and suffering _ regardless of humans' opinions of them.
