Should Animals Have Rights?

In “A Change of Heart about Animals,” Jeremy Rifkin states that scientists are finding more similarities between humans and animals. He starts off with how animals can experience feelings such as stress, affection, excitement, love, etc. Rifkin then provides research and examples showing the development of the animals and the way they handle situations. He explains how a bird uses her beak to bend a wire for food, and how the gorilla, Koto, has mastered more than one thousand signs and understands several thousand words. Based off of these examples and a few others, Rifkin has come to the conclusion that animals need better treatment. He believes that animals should be treated with care and respect because of the strong similarities they share with humans. In response to Rifkin’s view about animals, Bob Stevens provides a reason of why we shouldn’t have “empathy” for animals. Stevens explains how other animals naturally kill each other and how they don’t care about the feelings of their prey. Because of this fact, he believes that humans shouldn’t be any different. Stevens then goes on to show how Rifkin believes that pigs need to be provided with toys for social contact, and he compares it to “human children” who don’t have toys. Stevens uses Rifkin’s information to show that humans are more important than animals; therefore animals don’t need rights. According to these different views from Rifkin and Stevens about animals, I would have to agree with Rifkin that animals should be treated better. If animals have feelings then we should not abuse them. What do you think?