Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

animal rights
• The conducting tubes usually form a ring just underneath
the stem surface.
• The flowers usually have parts that are numerous, or in
fours, fives, or multiples thereof.
Phylogenetic analysis has allowed the classification of
angiosperms into the following lineages:
• Basal angiosperms, which include Amborella, plants with
flowers resembling those of water lilies, plants with flowers
resembling those of magnolias, and the monocots
• Eudicots, or true dicots
Therefore botanists now generally recognize that the monocots
are a monophyletic group, while the dicots are not.
The 260,000 species of angiosperms far surpasses the
species diversity of any other plant group. Their importance
in the evolutionary history and the current ecological function
of the Earth cannot be overestimated (see biodiversity).
Further Reading
Ingrouille, Martin J., and William Eddie. Plants: Evolution and
Diversity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Klesius, Michael. “The big bloom: How flowering plants changed the
world.” National Geographic, July 2002, 102–121.
Soltis, Douglas E., et al. Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms.
Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates, 2005.
Soltis, Pamela S., and Douglas E. Soltis. “The origin and diversification
of angiosperms.” American Journal of Botany 91 (2004):
1,614–1,626.
animal rights Nonhuman animal species have some legal
protections, and there is controversy about extending these
protections even further. Modern democratic societies recognize
the equal rights of all of their citizens. They also recognize
that all human beings have equal rights to fairness and
justice, even though noncitizens do not share in privileges
such as the right to vote. Widespread belief in the equality of
all people is quite recent in human history and, while widespread,
is far from universal. In most societies, nonhuman
animal species also have some rights, though far fewer than
do humans. These rights are generally accorded on the basis
of the mental capacity, and the capacity for suffering, that a
species possesses. For example, intelligent animals, such as
chimpanzees, have a greater capacity for suffering than do
dogs and cats, which far surpass mice, which far surpass
insects. Laws govern the use of chimpanzees, dogs, and cats
for medical research; people get into legal trouble not only
for abusing but even for neglecting confined dogs and cats;
nobody gets in trouble for stomping on bugs. In contrast, the
mental capacity of a human being is not used as a basis for
rights and privileges.
Some religions recognize animal rights; for example,
Jainism, a sect of Hinduism, reveres all animal life so much
that people must sweep the ground before them to avoid
stepping on insects. However, the major western religions
still accept a binary definition of rights: All humans have
infinite and eternal value, while animals do not and will simply
die. Although many western people do not recognize the
existence of animal rights, they do have feelings of empathy
toward animals. Many religious people are appalled by cruelty
to animals, but mainly because cruelty to animals reflects
a disturbing attitude within the minds of the perpetrators,
rather than because they have zeal for the rights of the animals
themselves.
The more humans learn about other animal species, the
more they recognize that evolutionary relatedness is not a
sufficient basis for animal rights. Whales and dolphins, for
example, show very high intelligence but evolved separately
from the mammalian ancestors they share with humans.
The controversy over whether it is ever ethical for humans
to kill whales was one of the more strident ethical conflicts
of the 20th century. For the last 20,000 years, Homo sapiens
has been the only human species in the world. However,
when modern humans first evolved about 100,000
years ago and began to spread out of Africa, they were not
alone. They met other species of humans in the Middle East
and Europe (see Neandertals) and perhaps even encountered
other human species in southeast Asia (see Flores
Island people; Homo erectus). It is likely that the ancestors
of modern humans showed these other human species
no “humanity” but treated them as competitors who had
no more rights than any other animal species. This is hardly
surprising, for it is only very recently that the human species
has shown kindness to members of a different race, religion,
or culture. It is interesting to speculate what would happen
in the modern age of ethical enlightenment if Neandertals or
H. erectus still existed.
Even before the 20th century, scholars and statesmen
thought about extending rights beyond humans to even
include trees. Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the American
Declaration of Independence, wrote, “Trees, as well as
men, are capable of enjoying the rights of citizenship and
therefore ought to be protected.” The inability of the new
American democracy to preserve the forests was one of
the few things that made President Thomas Jefferson have
second thoughts about it. He wrote, “I wish that I was a
despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees, that
are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners,
or the necessity of the poor … the unnecessary felling of a
tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime
little short of murder.” Beginning in the 20th century,
some scientists began to call for the extension of some
rights to entire ecological communities of species. Ecologist
Aldo Leopold, who once shot as many wolves as he
could find, gradually came to realize that he had been not
merely unwise but unethical in so doing. He was an early
proponent of environmental or ecosystem ethics, which
he called “thinking like a mountain.” As environmental
awareness spread in the middle of the 20th century, there
were even some court decisions that recognized the rights
of the natural world. One American Supreme Court decision
was called “The Rights of Rocks.” This represented a
rare viewpoint in a society whose economic system defined
the natural world as mere resources, trees as mere sources
of wood, bears as mere sources of rugs, and evolution as
irrelevant.