Moral illusions and wild animal suffering neglect

Abstract

Despite the significant suffering endured by wild animals, the importance of this issue is largely neglected due to various moral illusions. These illusions include speciesism, which values humans over other animals; the naturalistic fallacy, which assumes that natural processes are inherently good; status quo bias, which favors the current state of nature; scope neglect, which disregards the vast number of suffering animals; the just world hypothesis, which views suffering as a deserved punishment; and futility thinking, which dismisses efforts to address large-scale problems. These illusions contribute to an underestimation of the problem and a reluctance to intervene in nature to reduce animal suffering. Tackling wild animal suffering requires more scientific research, debiasing of moral judgments, and a re-evaluation of speciesism. – AI-generated abstract.