All animals are minor variations on a very particular theme.

Our intuitions on animals are incoherent; the same people who condemn branding of cattle may dock the ears and tails of their dogs. The law is of no help--in the eyes of the law animals are property, either private property or community property. The Animal Welfare Act, reflecting irrational social prejudice, does not consider rats, mice, or domestic farm animals to be animals; for the purposes of the act, a dead dog used in research is an animal, a live mouse is not. And traditional moral philosophy is of no help either, since for most of its history it was virtually mute on the subject of our obligations to other creatures. More has been written on this subject, in fact, in the past ten years than in the previous three thousand.

Everywhere animals are in chains, but we image them as free.

It is in hunting that the special relationship with animals is clearest. In Siberian belief, animals are thought to give themselves of their own free will to a hunter who respects them. Animals are equal in status to their hunters, and in myths often change into humans or marry them. The brown bear, considered to be Lord of the Forest, has a soul-force of immense power which can be dangerous, but can also be used for healing. Even today, injuries are healed by stroking the affected part with a bear's paw or rubbing it with bear's fat. A bear hunt is surrounded by taboos, and in many areas the soul of a killed bear must be appeased by an elaborate rite. For example, the eyes are sewn up to prevent the bear from pursuing the hunter.

Animals are like little angels sent to earth to teach us how to love. They don't get angry or play silly games. They are always there for us.

Animals are like people because people are animals.

Even as we try to think objectively about what animals are like, we are burdened with the need to justify our moral relations with them. We kill animals for food; we use them as experimental subjects in laboratories; we exploit them as sources of raw materials such as leather and wool; we keep them as work animals--the list goes on and on. These practices are to our advantage, and we intend to continue them. Thus, when we think about what the animals are like, we are motivated to conceive of them in ways that are compatible with treating them in these ways. If animals are conceived as intelligent, sensitive beings, these ways of treating them might seem monstrous. So humans have reason to resist thinking of them as intelligent or sensitive.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

If zoos are like arks, then rare animals are like passengers on a voyage of the damned, never to find a port that will let them dock or a land in which they can live in peace. The real solution, of course, is to preserve the wild nature that created these animals and has the power to sustain them. But if it is really true that we are inevitably moving towards a world in which mountain gorillas can survive only in zoos, then we must ask whether it is really better for them to live in artificial environments of our design than not to be born at all.

Animals are God's creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness.

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside. Whenever we humans enter their world, from our farms to the local animal shelter to the African savanna, we enter as lords of the earth bearing strange powers of terror and mercy alike.

Animals are not property or "things" but rather living organisms, subjects of a life, who are worthy of our compassion, respect, friendship, and support.

We animals are like the best person and it behooves you--I like that word, behooves--to model yourself after us. The main difference between humans and animals is ego, not brain, as they are led to believe. You watch us animals and we love, we play, we take care of ourselves in unity. We live our lives as you humans strive to live your lives. We are the ultimate. We want you to do as we do. We are the models. We are what you should be striving for. Can you see the value in humans that act like animals and also have a brain to make things happen?

Animals are like humans, only more openly carnal and sexual, more openly and therefore more disarmingly absurd.

Zoos teach us that animals are like machine parts: separable, replaceable, interchangeable. They teach us that there is no web of life, that you can remove one part and put it into a box and still have that part. But that is all wrong.... Zoos teach us implicitly that animals need to be managed, that they can't survive without us. They are our dependents, not our teachers, our neighbors, our betters, our equals, our friends, our gods. They are ours. We must assume the interspecies version of the white man's burden, and out of the goodness of our hearts we must benevolently control their lives. We must "rescue them from the wild."

Animals when in company walk in a proper and sensible manner, in single file, instead of sprawling all across the road and being of no use or support to each other in case of sudden trouble or danger.

Animals are like little children a bit. They're simple. They don't have politics driving them.

Our many domestic animals have played an important role in the civilization of man. Without them--especially the dog, the horse, the cow, and the sheep--man's development onward and upward would have been slow and uncertain. Thouse countries in which the problem of domestication did not enter remained ever near to barbarism.

Animals are like autistic savants. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that animals might actually be autistic savants. Animals have special talents normal people don't, the same way autistic people have special talents normal people don't; and at least some animals have special forms of genius normal people don't, the same way some autistic savants have special forms of genius. I think most of the time animal genius probably happens for the same reason autistic genius does: a difference in the brain autistic people share with animals.

Most animals are like the unfortunate Gregor Samsa after metamorphosis. They are Kafka-creatures, organisms with rich thoughts and emotions but no system for translating what they think into something that they can express to others.

Why are we so concerned about whether other animals are like human beings or not? Because we are worried about whether we should consider them kinfolk of ours, relatives. If they are relatives of ours, then we should treat them with more respect than if they are not.

Animals are simply sophisticated machines created by the infinitely skilled artisan, God.

Society grants animals rights not because animals are like us or because animals would demand them, but because we humans feel empathy with animals. We attribute to them that they can suffer and that they deserve as living creatures not to suffer.

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