Happy the Elephant is not a person in New York

June 15, 2022 7:49 AM

By a 5-to-2 vote, the Court of Appeals rejected [NY Times] an animal-advocacy organization’s habeus corpus argument that Happy was being illegally detained at the zoo and should be transferred to a more natural environment.

While the ruling from the state's highest court cannot be appealed, it's not the only elephant case pending:

The case was brought by the Nonhuman Rights Group, an animal-advocacy organization, as part of a long-running legal push to free captive animals. Last month, even as Happy’s fate hung in the balance, the group asserted a habeas claim seeking to have three elephants removed from a Fresno, Calif., zoo.

AP news coverage here and here

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (49 comments total)

I was not happy to hear this.
posted by y2karl at 7:51 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

Can't read NYT article, it's behind a paywall.
posted by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 8:14 AM on June 15, 2022

Knock down that paywall, Happy!
posted by chavenet at 8:22 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Happy should go on the run with Pablo Escobar's hippos.

On a serious note, it does sound (from this armchair) that Happy would be in a more natural environment in the sanctuary, but I don't know if she would be happier there. It sounds as though she's had several traumatic experiences around other elephants -- would she be comfortable living in a herd, which she has never really experienced, or does she now consider her keepers her family?
posted by fight or flight at 8:44 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Is it just me or do the arguments against freeing the elephant sorta give off a "if you say we can't control the elephant, next thing you know they'll say we can't control our wives!" type of vibe?
posted by grimace636 at 8:44 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Captivity for most animals in environments that don't allow for them to have adequate roaming space and a climatic environment suitable for them should be abolished. But arguments of full personhood are neither appropriate to the animals' capability to express, nor, frankly our capability of specifically and discretely understanding their will and choices. Elephants should absolutely live in facilities more suitable for them, but the legal argument from NRG is deeply flawed.
posted by tclark at 8:49 AM on June 15, 2022 [27 favorites]

I will not visit zoos any longer, it's a decision I made a few years ago. It's not something I ever did very often, but I can't in good conscience support them.
posted by rhymedirective at 8:55 AM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

Is it just me or do the arguments against freeing the elephant sorta give off a "if you say we can't control the elephant, next thing you know they'll say we can't control our wives!" type of vibe?

Not wives, but in the article, it's mentioned that Judge Rivera had particular questions about how, if the court were to accept that the cognitive tests performed on elephants demonstrates their personhood, could that argument be extended to cover traditional pets such as dogs? Sure, the average canine probably can't perform as well as the average elephant, but if an exceptional dog were to pass some of these tests, what would that mean?

Getting real "The Measure of a Man" vibes from this case.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:03 AM on June 15, 2022

I will not visit zoos any longer, it's a decision I made a few years ago.

I went to the Woodlawn Park Zoo more decades ago than I want to think about. I have referred to it ever since as the Seattle Animal Prison. A bunch of UofW fratboys snuck in an air horn in to torment the orangutangs and gorilla. Fun times.
posted by y2karl at 9:22 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Getting real "The Measure of a Man" vibes from this case.

Getting real "that article about Google's LAMBDA AI from like three days ago" vibes from this case.
posted by grimace636 at 9:33 AM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

Choosing not to support zoos is of course a personal choice but zoos do HUGE amounts of conservation work. Supporting them is helpful, in my book, as long as they are accredited and in good standing.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:34 AM on June 15, 2022 [35 favorites]

I have verrrrry mixed feelings about zoos. I once heard a zoo director say something along the lines of: you want us to send these animals back to their natural habitats? They don't exist any more. They've been clear-cut. There IS no natural habitat for them.

Which is fucking depressing, but doesn't make it less true.
posted by nushustu at 9:58 AM on June 15, 2022 [20 favorites]

It feels like this reflects the limits of law, not so much the limits of this case.

Elephants are pretty clearly people of some kind. They use tools, they have societies, they remember their dead, they can carry out plans, etc. If we can't assume based on a sustained body of observation over centuries that elephants are self-aware individual subjects, then we can't assume that people are self aware individual subjects - if they are philosophical zombies then so are we.

But they're not human people and we can't [yet] communicate with them in a sophisticated yet also clear way. The law isn't so much about personhood as it is about human personhood, something that elephants can't have because they aren't human. There is never going to be a good argument that an elephant is a [human] person.

So we're left with the need for animal personhood, but first, what does that look like? And second, whatever it looks like would seem to totally challenge how humans run the world. Even if animal personhood were somehow capped at dolphins, whales and elephants, we treat dolphins, whales and elephants in ways that are obviously not in their best interests - their best interests may not be 100% clear, but what we're doing isn't it.
posted by Frowner at 10:03 AM on June 15, 2022 [15 favorites]

But arguments of full personhood are neither appropriate to the animals' capability to express, nor, frankly our capability of specifically and discretely understanding their will and choices.

This is a statement that is emphatically disagreed with in this field. II don't need to go out of my way to tour how poorly misapplied this argument has been historically in legal cases about humans who cannot express themselves. It is not beyond the scope of caretaking to responsibly, appropriately justify an understanding of the will and agency of non-communicative persons. This is a matter of routine. Building on this, legal structures like the US Animal Welfare Acr and the European Directive 2010/63/EU already do this. The latter uses language that I find relevant here... it addresses animals' fate, which humans often determine whether or not we make any attempt to determine their will and choices.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 10:16 AM on June 15, 2022 [9 favorites]

The law is cruel and hostile to most humans that end up in its clutches, the elephant never stood a chance in this legal environment.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:19 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm a member of the Nashville Zoo. They have huge areas for the animals and do a lot of conservation work. I don't think all zoos should be painted with the same brush.

I would have been shocked if this case had gone another way. We can't recognize any sort of animal rights let alone personhood, then we'd have to do something about climate change and unchecked development and so on.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:24 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

We have made huge swathes of the planet nearly or totally unlivable for the species that once lived there. For every one beautiful BBC/NatGeo doco about this wonderful planet, there are hundreds not made about “this place that was the home for thousands of species,” which is now near-dead so we can have cars, iPhones, HVAC, and also wildly overpopulate the planet.

Zoos are not good things, but for Happy and the presumably millions of other animals whose homes we destroyed, they’re a critical part of the infrastructure for them having a future. Of any kind.
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:24 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

The line that stands out for me in this is, "She’s a depressed, screwed-up elephant." NAMED HAPPY. *facepalm*

The law isn't so much about personhood as it is about human personhood, something that elephants can't have because they aren't human. There is never going to be a good argument that an elephant is a [human] person.
So we're left with the need for animal personhood, but first, what does that look like?

Yup, this.
I recently read "Truth of the Divine" and this reminds me of the "Third Option" discussion in the book as to whether or not to grant aliens full "human" rights or that they should have their own category somewhere in the middle by virtue of being a different species. I can see the point of that argument because other species would have their own definition of "person"hood probably anyway (seems true for the aliens in that series, anyway) and I'm not sure if we should really hold anyone to the same standards as a particular species. BUT that series also argues that a "Third Option" would be akin to 3/5 of a personhood during slavery times, which is also a legit argument, given how humans operate.

Hell if I know, but I don't think animal personhood is going to happen as a recognized thing in my lifetime.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:37 AM on June 15, 2022

Zoos are not good things, but for Happy and the presumably millions of other animals whose homes we destroyed, they’re a critical part of the infrastructure for them having a future. Of any kind.

If I was kept alone in a 12x12 room or whatever for the rest of my life I'd honestly rather be dead.
posted by rhymedirective at 10:39 AM on June 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Happy the Elephant, Inc. would probably have some rights.
posted by TedW at 11:05 AM on June 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Here's an excellent New Yorker article about the case from not so long ago.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:24 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don't like zoos myself, but if zoos is a part of breeding, conservation, and reintroduction program then it may be a part of necessary evil.
posted by kschang at 11:25 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I feel like this case, or a similar one, was covered here relatively recently, and not to rehash extensively what was said at the time, but in our legal system, "personhood" serves more as a structure to which various rights adhere, including the right to have one's rights considered individually and enforced in a court of law, than as a philosophical construct. A master limited partnership isn't even sentient, but it's a person, for U.S. legal purposes.
posted by praemunire at 11:29 AM on June 15, 2022

Hm, you're right, there was a post in early March: The Elephant In The Courtroom
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:40 AM on June 15, 2022

I don't need to go out of my way to tour how poorly misapplied this argument has been historically in legal cases about humans who cannot express themselves.

I contend actually that your point and my point are far better aligned than you think -- for human persons who by age or other reason are not able to communicate or advocate for themselves, they legally have (or are assigned) guardians who have a duty of care and legal requirements to treat the person in question humanely and in their best interests.

A petition of habeas corpus is entirely in the wrong direction legally speaking to contest the custody of a person who is being taken care of by their legal guardians -- in this case Happy is in the custody of her legal guardians, namely the Bronx Zoo. You have to demonstrate that the guardians are failing in their legal responsibilities in order to make a change.

So to expand my comments and to follow on from what Frowner said, we urgently need to have policy discussions regarding what nonhuman personhood entails, and we need to change our policy and legal structures to account for this, not just say that on its face an animal in captivity (or a pet in the care of its guardian) is an animal imprisoned, because it's not that simple.
posted by tclark at 11:43 AM on June 15, 2022

...okay, I'll say it:

I think zoos are good things, actually. Generally speaking, they do a shit ton of work--as mentioned earlier--for conservation and research, as well as captive breeding and reintroduction. They widen up access to and therefore investment in a large number of species for the general public, and they generally spend substantial portions of their budgets on doing work outside the bounds of the zoo itself.

And I don't necessarily think that sanctuaries are better than zoos, nor do I think sanctuaries necessarily provide a higher standard of care than zoos do. Certainly zoos have a lot more oversight and are far more visible than most sanctuaries, meaning that failures of care are much more quickly publicized and discussed when they do happen. What are the standards of care at the specific sanctuaries it has been proposed Happy go to? What plans have those places proposed for her care in the long term?

I don't think animals are the same as disabled humans, not least because I emphatically reject the tendency of animal rights groups to anthropomorphize the needs, desires, and interests of animals to align with human interpretations. That shit is all over this story. How do we know whether this elephant is distressed or not? She has opportunities to engage in species-specific behaviors, although she doesn't have a lot of space to travel long distances. The only other elephant at the Bronx Zoo, which is moving away from elephant care and will not take in new elephants, has an aggressive history with Happy that means they cannot be co-housed. She does have access to social interaction with Patty over the fence. (She almost certainly has long term interactions with her human keepers and care staff, too; she's been at that zoo for her entire adult life.)

Elephants are like humans in that their relationships and interactions are individual-specific. You can't just release Happy into a herd of elephants and watch her shamble away into a loving, cohesive social bond, any more than you could release me into a north Toronto volleyball club and watch me melt into the native land of the volleyball courts. I don't know those people. They aren't my family. I have a lot of sympathy for the arguments that certain species, like orcas or elephants, can't ethically be kept in captivity because they naturally travel long distances and have densely packed, extremely important social relationships with many long-lived individuals that can't be supported in a zoo environment. But for many of these species, the current state of affairs is an aging population of animals with histories that are varying levels of fraught, and which cannot be herded together into a functioning social unit or even simply released together in a big enclosure without creating new and fucked-up social dynamics that can result in terrible deaths of animals in their own right. We have a greater responsibility to these animals than to drop them awkwardly and run away because we can't confront the evidence of our own previous decades of failures.

And we have to have the humility, as humans, to understand that what is most comfortable for animals may or may not be the most comfortable to us. That the way the elephant perceives the world may be different than the way we initially consider her situation. We have to think about the nuts and bolts of the way tht elephant is going to live. Where are the details?

(Incidentally, I am further pissed off at the analogy to disabled humans because it's generally easier to get support for animal welfare than for human welfare, not the other way around, and the dehumanization of actual disabled human people is not helped by the comparison. People tend to reject support for disabled humans when we awkwardly stop acting like cute stories with heart-warming punchlines and start saying things. Conveniently, animals can't do that shit, and they're real easy to project onto.)
posted by sciatrix at 11:46 AM on June 15, 2022 [35 favorites]

Happy is in the custody of her legal guardians, namely the Bronx Zoo

Unless I've missed something, Happy doesn't have legal guardians. Happy has owners. These are two very different concepts, even if we impose certain restrictions on what the owners of certain kind of animals can do with/to them. My dog's trainer refers to me as his guardian, which is a good catchall term given that people use different terms for themselves in this role, and I like it because it represents the kind of responsibilities I think I have morally, but I don't have the responsibilities of a guardian legally.
posted by praemunire at 11:56 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I won't forget this decision.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:04 PM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don’t know what the right thing to do for this elephant is. It sounds like the animal’s current caretakers have developed a relationship with it and that for a social creature that has been in this environment for decades a move could be harmful to the creature’s emotional and physical well being. For me the goal should be to figure who are the best advocates for this animal with the goal of minimizing future harm and providing for its welfare. I don’t think we should be having more elephants ending up in this situation in the future.
posted by interogative mood at 12:18 PM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Is it just me or do the arguments against freeing the elephant sorta give off a "if you say we can't control the elephant, next thing you know they'll say we can't control our wives!" type of vibe?

Obviously there are analogies to be made between animal rights and human rights, and people who would wish them to be contiguous, even, but there’s a gap there in the history of… pretty much everything. The most infamous codification of chattel slavery in U.S. history still used the term “other persons.” So it’s not really surprising to me that a court doesn’t wish to undertake explicitly to bridge that gap, even if they are sympathetic to the idea that there should be some framework that better recognizes the rights of elephants.
posted by atoxyl at 12:37 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

When this decision came down my teenage son came to me and demanded: "Dad, if bees are fish, how come elephants aren't people?"

I looked at him for several seconds and then carefully explained: "Bees aren't fish. Don't be an asshole."

I am a lawyer, and I understand the canons of statutory interpretation and the reasoning behind both the New York decision and the California decision. But the important take away for most people is that you shouldn't troll your dad until you've gotten into college and he's not paying for your meals anymore.
posted by The Bellman at 12:38 PM on June 15, 2022 [10 favorites]

There's a lot of argument in this thread which is basically saying "we have destroyed habitats so if we don't keep animals in animal jail they'll disappear forever, so zoos are good" when honestly? We as a species fucked the fucked up. But we should emphatically not double down on the fucked-upness by saying that we have a right to drastically, dramatically do harm to individual animals so that we feel better about destroying their collective habitat/society/whatever.

Sometimes you gotta own the results of your actions. Now, if we want to give Montana to elephants or something, that's a different conversation, but I'm not seeing a lot of that. It's another way of insulating ourselves from the results of our actions and making ourselves feel better. "See, we still have elephants! They live in elephant jail!" Who is this good for? Certainly not the animal in animal jail.
posted by rhymedirective at 1:24 PM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

It's another way of insulating ourselves from the results of our actions and making ourselves feel better.

I get what you're saying, but I cannot agree that extinction is better for the individual animals or for the planet. Extinction is irreversible.
posted by praemunire at 1:27 PM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

I get what you're saying, but I cannot agree that extinction is better for the individual animals or for the planet. Extinction is irreversible.

I mean, the individual animals are already living in animal jail. So to them their species is functionally already extinct, because they will never see another of their own species for the rest of their lives.

Think about it like this: if the Earth becomes uninhabitable for humans, would it be better for us to continue to live in small climate-controlled habitats, living greatly diminished lives? I would argue no.
posted by rhymedirective at 1:33 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Even in that world, I would not have the audacity to decide that the human place in the ecosystem is so obsolete that we could discard the last humans without any future implications for the entire planet.
posted by praemunire at 1:45 PM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

The argument that zoos or other engineered, enclosed habitats are prisons makes a judgement about the animals relationship with their dwelling that isn’t necessarily based on the animals own perception of it. The wilderness isn’t intrinsically good and does not necessarily provide a better qualify of life for an organism.

I’m uncomfortable with the anthropomorphic projection where zoos are prisons and animals are slaves. It also makes a moral judgement that is often unjustified. What if instead of a prison, a zoo is like an elephant apartment.
posted by interogative mood at 1:51 PM on June 15, 2022 [11 favorites]

would it be better for us to continue to live in small climate-controlled habitats, living greatly diminished lives?

Would it be better for YOU to live in a small climate-controlled habitat, living a greatly diminished life? You say no. But you can't speak for me. And neither you nor I can speak for the elephants.

Fortunately, we don't live in a world where your arbitrary scenario obtains. To the best of our ability we can assess whether an animal which may not be safe in the wild (or whose habitat no longer functionally exists) is exhibiting overtly negative or stressful behaviors and adjust their environment to alleviate that. We currently are not able to ask them their inner thoughts, so absent the ability for a demonstrably conscious animal to ask to be euthanized, we choose to err on the side of supporting their lives in as comfortable and enriching a way as is feasible.
posted by tclark at 1:53 PM on June 15, 2022 [7 favorites]

What if instead of a prison, a zoo is like an elephant apartment.

Maybe it is! Would you care to live the rest of your life inside an apartment?

Look, I don't know what elephants want. But neither does anyone else. I'm not saying we should shoot Happy and Patty in the head and turn the elephant enclosure into a parking lot. I'm saying that we shouldn't kidnap or breed wild animals and put them into captivity. That doesn't seem that insane to me.
posted by rhymedirective at 1:54 PM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

Think about it like this: if the Earth becomes uninhabitable for humans, would it be better for us to continue to live in small climate-controlled habitats, living greatly diminished lives?

Odd choice of thought experiment on its face, since I have no doubt that this is what many people would end up doing, effectively, if the means to do so were available to them. You mean, what if some aliens kidnapped a small number of humans and preserved the species in captivity? Because self-determination is really the you know what in the room, as far as making this analogy make any sense.
posted by atoxyl at 3:11 PM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another complication is that in many places, the quality of the environment is actually becoming better, leading to successful reintroductions of previously functionally extinct species.
posted by kaibutsu at 3:55 PM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

The Montana thing is not without precedent.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:35 PM on June 15, 2022

if the Earth becomes uninhabitable for humans, would it be better for us to continue to live in small climate-controlled habitats, living greatly diminished lives?

Bold of you to presume that isn't exactly what many of us have been doing during the pandemic
posted by ockmockbock at 6:50 PM on June 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

It's weird that we spend so much time pondering whether animals or machines can be "like us" and so little on the fact that we don't even really live up to our own hype.
posted by klanawa at 8:03 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm saying that we shouldn't kidnap or breed wild animals and put them into captivity. That doesn't seem that insane to me.

It's not insane! It's also totally irrelevant to this legal case, which is about the continued care and maintenance of a 47-year-old elephant who has lived her entire life in captivity to this point. No one is talking about capturing a new wild elephant and throwing them into this enclosure. The zoo has already announced it will not take any new elephants. So why is the question of whether we capture new elephants even coming up?
posted by sciatrix at 8:46 PM on June 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

Also, I gotta say: lol at the notion that we're going to fill Montana with elephants any time soon. It's very easy to say "well, just don't live where the elephants are!" when they're not setting up camp in your back yard. In North America, we barely manage to deal with black bears in any sane way when coexisting with local human populations! Now imagine the black bears were much, much brighter; that they are twice as big and possessed of a tendency to view your food crops as tasty snacks or a useful place to roll around; and that they view you as a dangerous threat that might need squishing to keep the herd safe. Imagine that, say, having an elephant break into your kitchen to snag a bag of rice is a real thing that could actually happen to you.

It's not impossible for humans and elephants to coexist, but there are very real logistical concerns and you have to get buy-in for something like that from the majority of the human community which is being asked to put up with the less enjoyable consequences of having wildlife in their homes. It is easy to be all for elephants existing in an imaginary wonderful space that could exist if only humans were done being so gosh-darn mean, but when you look closely at the details things suddenly stop being so airily philosophical and start getting messy.
posted by sciatrix at 9:08 PM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m not keen on rights that have to be exercised on your behalf by someone else. If we give elephant rights on that basis, we’re more likely to treat human rights the same way - then we’re all Britneyed.
posted by Phanx at 3:05 AM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

But we should emphatically not double down on the fucked-upness by saying that we have a right to drastically, dramatically do harm to individual animals so that we feel better about destroying their collective habitat/society/whatever.

It's not clear to me that we are doing more harm to this specific elephant to move her from her existing animal jail/zoo to another larger animal jail/sanctuary. And in fact, despite the obvious conflicts of interest, the keepers at the zoo she is living in are probably best placed to understand her needs and whether she ought to be moved or not.
posted by plonkee at 6:26 AM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m not keen on rights that have to be exercised on your behalf by someone else.

All children are in this position.
posted by praemunire at 7:34 AM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

There's a lot of argument in this thread which is basically saying "we have destroyed habitats so if we don't keep animals in animal jail they'll disappear forever, so zoos are good" when honestly? We as a species fucked the fucked up. But we should emphatically not double down on the fucked-upness by saying that we have a right to drastically, dramatically do harm to individual animals so that we feel better about destroying their collective habitat/society/whatever.

The purpose of a (good) zoo is not to make people feel better about destroying habitat, but to help educate people about the consequences of destroying habitat and other harmful human actions, elicit positive feelings towards the animals affected so people give a shit when new harms are proposed, and attempt to ameliorate or even reverse those harms through conservation and repopulation efforts.

I mean, my local zoo has a lot of signage about how we fucked the fucked up. It's cool to watch the animals but if you read literally anything in the place you can end up getting pretty bummed about how shitty humans are. Nobody is going to this zoo to feel better about destroying habitats.
posted by joannemerriam at 8:57 AM on June 16, 2022 [5 favorites]