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| Why we should consider the privacy of animals |
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Brett Mills
guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 April 2010 14.53 BST
The Russian bear: Vladimir Putin (right) and scientists measure a polar bear on the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Photograph: Alexey Nikolsky/AFP
I seem to have kickstarted quite a furious reaction with my suggestion that wildlife documentaries might not always take into account questions of privacy concerning animals. My aim in my original article was not to say that it's easy to prove that animals demand privacy, nor that it is easy for us to know when they do, if they do so; it was simply to note that there are a wealth of ethical debates that come into play when humans are filmed for documentaries, and I wondered why it is that such debates do not arise where animals are concerned.
These questions seem important to me because they examine the ways in which humans interact with, and treat, other species. By wondering whether it's appropriate to think about animals having rights is not to suggest that all species are identical, or to think that there isn't something that distinguishes humans from other species. In that sense, wondering whether animals have a right to privacy, in terms of being filmed, is a question about human behaviour, not one about animals themselves.
These debates are important because the decisions we make about how we treat other species are connected to the ways we think about the environment as a whole. That is, is the environment, and those other species that exist within it, simply there for us to view whenever and however we like? Or is it assumptions such as this that have led to the ecological problems we now face?
Perhaps thinking about how we treat animals in documentaries could help us think about our relationship to the whole world around us, which can surely be no bad thing.
So, here's the question again: are there types of animal behaviour, or places where such behaviour takes place, where it might be right for humans to ponder whether or not it is appropriate to film them? For example, when animals are in burrows or nests, should documentary makers debate the appropriacy of filming – because, at the moment, it seems the key debate at times such as these are not whether other species should be filmed, but how such filming can be completed with minimal intrusion and disturbance.
After all, we can't possibly know whether animals consent to be filmed. But, significantly, when we don't whether consent is forthcoming for humans, the likely ethical response is to decide that filming is inappropriate. In wildlife documentary-making, this ethical quandary is usually ignored. If we don't film humans when we don't have consent to do so, how come we don't follow the same logic with other species?
Let me reiterate that there is, of course, a value to wildlife programme, and they often fulfil a useful educational function. Questioning whether, at some times and in some places, animals have a right to privacy is not to say that animals can never be filmed, or to say that wildlife documentary-making is inherently flawed. After all, the ethical considerations within which such filmmakers work are to be applauded. Indeed, it is within such a strong ethical framework that I raise the question of animal privacy.
Wildlife documentary makers are already highly ethical people, so what's the problem in encouraging debate about ethical matters usually ignored? |
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