Jamie (00:00:05): Welcome to the Sentience Institute podcast where we interview activists, entrepreneurs, and researchers about the most effective strategies to expand humanity’s moral circle, with a focus on expanding the circle to farmed animals. I’m Jamie Harris researcher at Sentience Institute and at Animal Advocacy Careers. Welcome to our 13th episode of the podcast. In our last episode I had a discussion with Oscar Horta, who is a professor of philosophy at a university of Santiago de Compostela and a co-founder of the non-profit Animal Ethics. In that episode we discussed why you might or might not want to spend your time and resources working to help wild animals, focusing on their individual welfare, including addressing some common objections. Oscar is back in this episode for the second part of our conversation, focusing more on the practicalities of work in this area, such as what nonprofits should be focusing on, how to develop the academic field of welfare biology, and how individuals can use their careers to help wild animals. Jamie (00:00:59): If you’re new to the topic of wild animal welfare and suffering, I strongly advise that you listen to the previous episode before listening to this one, because this might not make much sense otherwise. On our website we have a transcript of this episode, as well as timestamps for particular topics. We also have suggested questions and resources that can be used to run an event around this podcast in your local Animal Advocacy or Effective Altruism group. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you have questions about this and we would be happy to help. Oscar Horta is a professor of philosophy at the university of Santiago de Compostela. He has published articles on a number of topics, especially the problems of speciesism and wild animal suffering. He’s also the co-founder of Animal Ethics and animal advocacy non-profit that is focused on promoting and supporting work relevant to these topics. Jamie (00:01:40): Before we dive into the main focus of our conversation about how animal advocates and effective altruists can most effectively help wild animals, I wanted to ask you about a couple of interrelated topics that you’ve written and spoken about. You take the position that animal advocates should use a general antispeciesist framework, rather than focusing narrowly on particular categories of animals like farmed animals, lab animals, wild animals, or so on. In your academic work you’ve written about the topic of speciesism quite extensively. Do you want to start off by defining what speciesism is, and what the difference is from anthropocentrism? Oscar (00:02:14): Yeah, sure, so speciesism has been defined in different ways. So, I won’t go into all the debate about this, but the definition that I think is the best one is that speciesism is a form of discrimination. And we could define this further saying that speciesism is an unjustified consideration or treatment of those who don’t belong, or are not classified as belonging, to a certain species. It could be one species, or it could be a group of species. Anthropocentrism in turn, would be the view that human interests count for more than the interests of other animals. So, if anthropocentrism is an unjustified view, then that means that it is a form of speciesism. We could call it anthropocentric speciesism. Other forms of speciesism would be, for instance, the ones favoring certain animals that we feel more sympathy for, against other animals. Or favoring, say, dogs against pigs. Or favoring animals that we consider, I don’t know, cute or more scientifically interesting over other equally sentient animals. Jamie (00:03:35): Yeah. You’ve written various papers making the case against speciesism. Do you think there’s still space for more people to write academic ethics papers on this topic? Oscar (00:03:45): Yeah, absolutely. Well, actually, that’s where I think I’ve made probably a more significant contribution. My most cited paper is not about wild animal suffering, but about the definition of speciesism. And, as I said before, there is a lot of debate between different ways of understanding speciesism. And the concept of speciesism is underused, I think. Even among animal advocates, they seldom use it really, which is a shame. In fact, even when you consider animal organizations, it’s not really common to see their message framed in terms of speciesism. And I think this is very problematic because in the long-term, challenging speciesism will have much more significant effect than challenging certain practices, certain expressions of speciesism. And actually this was one of the reasons why we created Animal Ethics to start with. So, our main motivation was to work on wild animal suffering, but we had other motivations. We wanted to further some intellectual work, to research more, you know, technical and theoretical issues. And we wanted to stress what a form of advocacy focused on speciesism would be like. So, and this is not something that just concerns animal organizations as such, [but] also people who want to do research: people who in different disciplines, maybe in social science philosophy and others, want to do work for animals. I think that doing more work on speciesism can help to further the debate about this, and this can really make a difference in the long term. Jamie (00:05:47): Yeah, okay, I’m interested in that. So I guess my intuition, and I’m not a philosopher as I said so I kind of feel this about a lot of philosophy debates, but my interest is just that quite often the argument has been made. It’s there. Like what else is left to debate? Why do you think that it’s a promising area for continuing to have positive long-term effects? Oscar (00:06:05): Well, maybe what you have in mind, the debate you have in mind is the debate about the reasons for and against anthropocentrism. That is, the reasons leading us to consider that anthropocentrism is a form of speciesism or not. But there’s more work there. So, for instance how would you, how do we define speciesism? Just an example of different debates that there are around, many people tend to define speciesism in a narrow way, while other people like, for instance, Frauke Albersmeier and myself have advocated for a wide understanding of speciesism. So the narrow view claims that speciesism is just discrimination made on the basis of species. So, if you discriminate against nonhuman animals because they don’t have certain cognitive capacities, and if that is unjustified, maybe that’s a form of discrimination, but it’s not speciesism, and maybe it can be, say, intelligentism or whatever. And we argue against this. We claim no, no, that’s speciesism as well. And in order to reach this conclusion what we do is we look at what happens in the case of human beings. So, consider, say, sexism. Imagine the case of some sexist people who discriminate against women, claiming that women don’t have the same capacities that males have. Claiming that they aren’t as intelligent, their brain is different, so they aren’t good at certain cognitive capacities, so they shouldn’t be doing some jobs or whatever. We clearly see that this is a form of sexism. So it seems that if we are accepting this, and we are not accepting similar definition in the case of speciesism, isn’t it that by doing this, we are being involved in a sort of meta-discrimination that would occur when you are facing two discriminations? Oscar (00:08:08): And if you think that one [of them] is more serious or more significant than the other, so you are actually discriminating against the second discrimination, right? So, this is why this is a meta-discrimination. So I believe that speciesism is the victim of many meta-discriminations of this sort. Even by people who claim to be antispeciesist. They don’t really take as seriously as they would consider speciesism, if it was some form of discrimination affecting a certain group of human people. And this happens both in practice in how they behave towards nonhuman animals, and it also happens in the theoretical arena, when it comes to defining speciesism. So, this is just an example of a type of debate that may look a bit too theoretical at first, but that may have significant implications when we look in detail at it. And in addition to this I think also that the language of speciesism, speaking about speciesism, framing our message in terms of speciesism… that can make a huge difference. We may think that, well, after all, if you are advocating against a certain form of animal exploitation and you claim that this is unethical, that’s not really that different from claiming that it is a form of discrimination against nonhuman animals, that it’s an instance of speciesism. But it’s not the same thing. The second thing is much more important in terms of shifting attitudes towards how we approach this. And it’s not just important in how we are changing the views that the general public has about this. It’s also very important in terms of how animal activists or animal advocates, however you want to call them, see the kind of work they’re carrying out. Jamie (00:10:09): Yeah, so this general topic of whether advocates should focus specifically on farmed animals, specifically on wild animals, or on a broader anti speciesist framework is something that Sentience Institute has summarized some of the arguments and evidence about, in a page on our website called A Summary of Evidence for Foundational Questions in Effective Animal Advocacy. One of the concerns I have is that antispeciesism as a concept seems very broad and abstract, as you kind of alluded to just there. It feels unclear what the call to action should be. In fact Animal Ethics has a short double-sided leaflet called “Have you ever heard of Speciesism?” And the suggestions in the “What can we do” box are “Decide not to support animal exploitation, learn about veganism, and spread concern for wild animals. And again those all feel quite amorphous and abstract to me. I guess the question is how can we make concrete progress on expanding moral consideration of nonhumans if we use this fairly abstract terminology? Oscar (00:11:09): Maybe the term “speciesism” is very broad and abstract, but other concepts that we are familiar with, “animal rights”, “animal activism”, “animal advocacy”, are just as abstract and even less concrete. But the important thing is that you may go ahead and continue to do a similar work but the language that you use, the way you present you frame the problem, makes a lot of difference. I don’t think that campaigning for veganism really is that abstract. I think it’s fairly concrete. But using a discourse that it is based on our moral considerations, on the appeal to the unfairness, on the lack of justification of speciesism, can have results that as I said on the longer term can make a much more significant difference. Also something that is important here is that the approach that I’m advocating for, and actually the one that Animal Ethics has, is that we focus more on attitudes than on behavior. So we are much more interested in spreading certain memes, certain ideas in society, that are more likely to in the long-term mean that there is more consideration in our societies for those forms of sentience that are different from us. We put much more value on that than on achieving certain behavioral changes in the short-term that will mean that, yeah, maybe less animals are exploited next year. But, yeah, I think those two things really define what having an antispeciesist focus on animal advocacy would amount to. Jamie (00:13:02): Yeah, okay, so maybe I was being a little unkind with implying that it is necessarily more abstract, because as you say, you can, it’s a kind of a framing aspect. So in theory you could offer the exact same interventions and then frame the motivation and the kind of bigger picture as being about antispeciesism rather than something else, like you mentioned animal rights as example. That kind of then feels that the relevant consideration is the sort of concreteness, or not the concreteness, almost like the catchiness and the memorability and how far those different concepts resonate with people. So, yeah, I like the idea of spreading certain ideas as being potentially, just by getting them in people’s understanding as a kind of reference point, being a potentially quite important way of having sort of medium to long-term effects that aren’t immediately, that aren’t particularly measurable in the next few years. I’m interested if you well, so as a specific example I’ve seen a short post by you from a few years ago where you argue that in lectures you’ve given on anti-speciesism, the majority of people who attend those talks accept the arguments for the rejection of speciesism. I’m intrigued as well, whether you’ve sort of experimented much with framing it from these other concepts that you mentioned, like animal rights, or animal welfare, or whatever alternatives, and just like how, I guess maybe that’s the trade off there in terms of the framing consideration is, what is the bigger narrative that it plays into? Oscar (00:14:32): Well, first of all, I didn’t do this in a scientific way, so it’s just kind of anecdotal evidence. But I’ve given many, many talks, I don’t know, hundreds of them probably, during the last decades. And I’ve been testing this also with different kinds of audiences. I’ve done it at the university. I’ve been giving many lectures also to teenagers. And the contrast there, that post that you mentioned was explaining the contrast between addressing attitudes or behaviours. If I was speaking about the arguments against speciesism, then most people accepted the arguments. And then when it comes to presenting after this the arguments for not exploiting animals, then that’s when the objections appear. I’ve tried both approaches many times, but when I start by presenting the case against exploiting animals, and then present the case against speciesism, yeah, the objections against the antispeciesist arguments are a lot. It also makes sense to me to think that once they have accepted that speciesism is wrong they may be more open to accept that animal exploitation is wrong. But, yeah, I haven’t really tested how it would work by not speaking about speciesism but by just speaking about the moral consideration of animals, or being compassionate towards animals and so on. I haven’t done this because I believe that speaking of speciesism can make a more significant difference in the long-term. Even if it’s an attitudinal focused message, if it’s not really addressing speciesism as a discrimination, if it’s just about giving a bit more consideration to nonhuman animals, I think that the potential of this message would be much more reduced. Jamie (00:16:40): So we spent most of the last episode talking about the case for animal advocates and Effective Altruists focusing their efforts on helping wild animals. I want to return to that topic now to ask about some practical and strategic questions about how we can actually do that and make progress. As part of this a key goal of Animal Ethics, the nonprofit that you co-founded, is to develop and support the academic field of welfare biology. Animal Ethics’ online course, just to give a definition, refers to welfare biology as, a proposed field of study that will examine all the factors affecting the wellbeing of animals, especially those living outside human controls. In principle, this includes both animals in and outside of human captivity, but given the vast numbers and uncertainties, it mostly focuses on animals outside of human captivity. So, I mean, obviously as people are probably aware there are fields like ecology and animal welfare science and various things, that to some extent overlap with these goals. So the question is how relevant is that existing research in fields like ecology into the proposed research field of welfare biology? Oscar (00:17:46): Yeah, so there is a lot of research that is very relevant. We would need to, so to speak, translate it in terms of welfare, because the focus so far has been on totally different things. But if you consider, for instance, research having to do with age-specific mortality, life history… we mentioned before how this is very relevant to welfare assessments. Or in more concrete terms, when you consider research on the different causes of harm for animals, on what is the limiting factor that is stopping a certain population from growing. So what are the main reasons basically why animals die in a certain population, well those are also factors that are very relevant to assessing the welfare of these animals. Then also a lot of research on behavioral ecology is also very relevant for this, because how animals behave probably always is very closely related to how they’re feeling. Oscar (00:18:58): So it seems that there is a huge amount of knowledge there, of information. So it seems also to me that due to this, an important part of the work that people are working in this field could do right now, would have to do with not, I mean, not just with research, but also with doing literature reviews, approaching the result of the existing literature from a new light. So this is why this type of research that has been called welfare biology could be seen as a cross-disciplinary field. And a cross-disciplinary field is not exactly the same that interdisciplinary work is. So interdisciplinary work takes place when you combine work from different disciplines in an integrated way, so it goes a bit further than just multidisciplinary work, where you are just like putting it together. There is some integration here, but with cross-disciplinary work, what you are doing is that you are looking at work in a certain field, so to speak, with the eyes, with the glasses, that you would use in another field. Oscar (00:20:13): So, in this case, we want to look at research, at work in ecology and maybe other related fields, wildlife management, for instance. But you want to look at that work with the eyes of animal welfare science, right? So, all that research that is already done, you want to translate it in terms of how the animal is affected by all this that we have researched already. So, yeah, we’ve been promoting some work of this kind. For instance, Animal Ethics published a report, a literature review on how fires can affect nonhuman animals, from the point of view of their welfare. And of course the whole body of the literature wasn’t really concerned with the welfare of animals. It was concerned with something else. But nevertheless, the results can definitely be applied to inform interventions that can be helpful for animals. Jamie (00:21:15): Yeah, so Animal Ethics’ online video course mentions that to understand wild animals lives we need 1. wild animal welfare science, 2. the science of ecology, and 3 they have this category for other related fields. To what extent do you think more philosophy and ethics is needed for welfare biology as a field specifically? And how could it continue to contribute? Oscar (00:21:35): Yes, so, to be sure the work of ethicists is important in that it raises concern about this. And actually, during the first almost 10 years from the end of the decade of the 2000’s, till very recently, I would say all, or if not all, mostly, almost all that has been done on this, had to do with the ethical reasons to be concerned, or with the political reasons to be concerned with wild animal suffering. And for sure that’s a role that we need to go on fulfilling. And also there could be some other philosophical work to be done there. So, work for instance in the philosophy of welfare biology, right? Work on philosophy of science clarifying the concepts. For instance Asher Soryl, who is a graduate student in New Zealand, is doing work along these lines. But anyway, as I said before, the main work that really needs to be carried out here is work in the intersection of animal welfare science and the science of ecology and other fields in life sciences. That is the actual work. The other is kind of meta-work. Jamie (00:23:00): Yeah, I had a look at Animal Ethics has a great list of publications about wild animal suffering from a couple of years ago now, and my impression was that most of the works on there are mostly philosophy and ethics papers. Although Animal Ethics has also published a more recent library of scientific references, relevant to welfare biology, which has two or 300 references on there. Would you agree that most of the relevant work to date has been mostly philosophical? Oscar (00:23:25): Yeah, yeah, so that needs to change. The thing with that, what you mentioned the other library of references relevant to welfare biology. Those were not really references in welfare biology. Those were references on previous work, on different sciences that, you know, those working on welfare biology could use. Jamie (00:23:48): So with that in mind, then what are the highest priority research questions that people should be working on, if they’re interested in welfare biology? Oscar (00:23:56): I think we should make a distinction there between different questions, because some people sometimes get confused about what priority really means. They tend to think of priority in terms of the more foundational questions. [But] this really doesn’t need to be the case. So, for instance, in welfare biology, the most foundational questions would be those related to how to assess the total amount of positive and negative welfare in different populations, and in different species, and in different ecosystems. Again, as I said, mainly in [different] types of ecosystems, although in some cases in token ecosystems as well. And then also on what are the best ways in which we can transform a certain situation, a certain ecosystem, where there is a certain amount of suffering against wellbeing, positive wellbeing. How we can transform that into a situation in which there is less suffering. So those would be the most basic questions. But those are not the ones that have more priority, because those are not the ones that we should be asking ourselves in order to further the field right now. Then there are these other questions that are probably the ones that have more priority. But those aren’t really questions in welfare biology, they are meta-questions. And they are the questions that we considered before, for instance, what are the forms of interventions that are more likely to be supported by the general public, and by other targeted groups, such as scientist, life science students, animal advocates. What are the forms of interventions, or what are the lines of research concerning wild animal suffering and welfare biology that are more likely to be interesting, appealing to scientists. As I said, these are meta-questions. So the questions that have more priority for those wanting to work in actual welfare biology right now, in actual work in the intersection of animal welfare science, and ecology, those would be the questions that need to be asked in order to carry out the research that these meta-questions point at as being particularly promising. Jamie (00:26:28): So if someone is a researcher in a relevant discipline and interested in supporting welfare biology, doing some of that more concrete research, what do they do now? What are the steps they should take in order to support the development of the field? Oscar (00:26:39): Yeah, so the main thing they could do is to do actual research. It doesn’t necessarily need to be field research, it could also be things like literature reviews. But to do research on the field and publish on the field, try to publish on good journals, influential journals in the area journals, in ecology, journals in animal welfare science… That would be the most important thing probably that they can do. Also try to spread concern about this in other ways. So, they can help to organize things like seminars, speak with colleagues, and so on. Some of them may try to become influential in their area. So then, when they speak about these issues, they’ll have more power to influence other people. And something else they could do is, they could collaborate with the organizations that are working on this field as well. They could collaborate with Wild Animal Initiative and Animal Ethics because their help can be very valuable. Even if they just spend a few hours collaborating with us that could be very helpful. Jamie (00:27:52): Are there any types of research that academics are not well incentivized to work on that nonprofits should focus on in order to fill those gaps in terms of the kind of foundations of this field of welfare biology? Oscar (00:28:05): Sure, so the fact that something is important doesn’t mean that someone will work on it. And it definitely doesn’t mean that academics will do work on it. So, it seems to me that there is a clear set of questions that we should be doing research on, and that academics are not likely to do. Which are the meta-questions about what are the most important issues that we could be researching right now. And also what are the research topics that academics themselves will find interesting and useful to research that have to do with the development of the field. The former kinds of questions are foundational ones. But for the sake of the actual development of the field, the questions that are more relevant are those of the second type. This is because in order to end up attaining the highest impact for wild animals, the kind of research that we should be doing right now is not the one that addresses the most important issues; rather it’s the one that is more likely to get attention by academics. Oscar (00:29:16): But this doesn’t mean that if a topic is not worked on in academia then the cause is hopeless. Well, even if it’s not researched right now maybe you can encourage researchers in academia to work on it. Maybe they could be happy to work on it; it just so happens that they haven’t until now because the prevalent paradigm in their field hasn’t included the kind of problems that we want them to work on. But we need to be reminded that academics can have an impact that independent researchers can never have, both because they have more resources to work on, and also because they have the capacity to influence other researchers and new generations of students and because they have more prestige in society. It is scientists that policy makers are going to pay attention to, not advocates generally, and certainly not independent researchers. And the problem here is that academics seldom pay attention to independent research. They are not really that impressed by research done outside academia. It has no prestige for them, and also the fact that things are discussed outside academia are no guarantee that they will have an impact there. So, an example of this can be seen in the case of Effective Altruism, which has obviously reached a huge group of people. I mean, there are many, many people around the world who are aware of it, of its key ideas, but then if you do a search in Google Scholar, for instance, if you type at Google Scholar Effective Altruism you will find that there are not really that many academic references. This may not be a problem for Effective Altruism, for instance, but it could be for welfare biology, if it were to develop by the work of independent researchers. Because that could put in serious risk the options that this field could eventually develop in academia, because scientists may identify it with a discredited field, something that has no prestige. And that could harm not just its present, but also its future development. Jamie (00:31:33): Yeah, interesting, the comparison to Effective Altruism as well. I guess it depends the extent to which you think that this needs to be something driven by academia, as opposed to, by external forces and advocates and that sort of thing. Like Effective Altruism certainly has been growing and growing in interest in that more kind of public facing audience. But arguably that’s a more important focus for Effective Altruism in the sort of short to medium term, than it is for the field of welfare biology. So I can definitely see that that’s either a much higher priority for the wild animal welfare movement. Oscar (00:32:04): Yep, I agree. Jamie (00:32:05): Okay, so imagine somebody is working in one of these adjacent disciplines. To what extent do you think that individuals should focus on research that is most likely to advance their academic credibility and influence relative to research that is directly relevant and useful to the needs of the growing field of welfare biology and the wild animal welfare community? Oscar (00:32:40): Yeah, this is an interesting and tricky question, and I would say that it really depends on what that person in particular can really aspire to. And this is kind of problematic because you may not know, or you may misjudge what you can really achieve in academia. But if you are a graduate student at a top university, then it’s probably going to be better if you establish your career, because the odds that you will become a top scientist in your field are going to be high enough to try. But if you have a lot of uncertainty about that, if you think it would be difficult to become that influential, then it’s probably better to not try and just focus directly on doing research on this field. Of course you can try something kind of in between, which is you want to become established as a scientist by doing work that is mainstream. But you want that work that is mainstream, to be relevant to welfare biology. And then also, well, maybe you can’t be influential at a world top university, but you may become very influential in your particular context. So for instance, you may be at the top university in Bulgaria, or maybe in the French speaking world or the Spanish speaking world. So you may have all these things in mind and make some trade offs there. But yeah, I’m afraid that here there is no general rule. This needs to be decided on a case by case decision. If someone is in this situation and wants me to provide some feedback, I’ll be happy to. Or that person can contact any other of the people who are working on this field. But yeah, it’s tough to give a general rule on that. Jamie (00:34:29): Yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned prestigious journals as a kind of target. Are there particular journals that you’re thinking of, that people should be looking to publish in? Or is it essentially just, it’s in order of prestige within the fields that they’re most established in already? Oscar (00:34:44): Yeah, I would say the latter, yeah, absolutely. Of course, I think it’s going to be easier to publish papers about this in animal welfare science journals than in ecology journals. But we need to have papers in ecology journals as well. Prestige really is what matters here more than affinity. Jamie (00:35:04): I guess we’ve checked out a couple of ideas of most relevant academic disciplines. Wild Animal Initiative has a short post about careers in wild animal welfare, where they recommend several. Let me just list out in case there’s any that you’d add. They’ve got wildlife management, restoration ecology, community-based conservation, natural resource management, animal welfare science, evolutionary biology, urban ecology, stress physiology, comparative epidemiology, or immunology. God there’s a lot of ologies! Disease ecology, comparative neuroscience, remote monitoring, there’s tons. Do you have any thoughts on that list? Like anything you’d add, or anything like that? Oscar (00:35:40): I mean, ecology has lots of different branches. Many of these branches will have in different degrees relevance to the field. So if someone is already a scholar in this field or a graduate student in some of these fields and that person can have an impact in helping welfare biology to develop. And not just in ecology, I mean, in animal welfare science, same happens, and also in other related fields like some of the ones that you mentioned. So yeah, there’s plenty of room. And also bear in mind that you just mentioned scientific branches, scientific work. You could also build a career, not as a scientist, but, say, in public administration or government or whatever, and you can reach a position in policy making that that can be relevant for the field as well. So yeah, there are plenty of different options there. Jamie (00:36:38): Cool, yeah. I recently wrote a skills profile for the other organization I work at, Animal Advocacy Careers, about policy, politics, and lobbying. And in theory lots of the arguments that I outlined there and the same logic, although the focus was on farmed animals there, much of it would apply to wild animal stuff as well. Actually one of my interviewees was an interviewee who worked for the USDA and they mentioned that the wildlife services branch of the USDA could be a really promising place, saying that they’re very thoughtful about welfare impacts to wild animals. They kill a lot of animals, but they also do things that cause animals to be killed in more humane ways than they otherwise would be killed. I guess I I’m interested if you’ve got any further thoughts on that sort of policy option and whether it’s -- especially given the sort of need for more research -- is it premature to take these kinds of policy options? Or is there substantial value in getting people with that sort of policy expertise, even if it’s unclear what the asks should be at the moment? Oscar (00:37:35): Well lots of things to say about this, so I’ll have to summarize a bit. So yes, I agree that this is really relevant for wild animals as well. There are different organizations that have been doing lobby work concerning wild animals. The only thing is that they have been focusing on how animals are harmed rather than on how we could help wild animals, or how we could reduce natural harms that animals are suffering. But sometimes the border is thin between, you know, preventing harms done to them or helping them. And there can be cases where both things overlap. Remember the example I gave before, when it comes to either killing or vaccinating animals in Yellowstone, vaccinating them against brucellosis, or [vaccinating] badgers against tuberculosis. It’s either killing them or vaccinating them. So it’s either harming them, or not just leaving them alone but actually doing something that helps them. Those are cases where it may be particularly interesting to do some lobby work at the beginning. And actually at Animal Ethics we are considering these cases and are actually looking for similar cases. So if someone else is aware of similar cases and they can get in touch with us, we would appreciate that. And this is just in the immediate future. Further in time, of course, getting other interventions accepted and implemented would require a significant lobby work. And that’s why having people, for instance, if you have people who are sympathetic to this and they are working in, say, national parks administration or whatever, the people working in key specific positions, working with the agricultural authorities, forest authorities or whatever, these people could really make a significant difference there in making lobby efforts of animal organizations and others much more likely to succeed. Jamie (00:39:45): If somebody already works at an animal advocacy organization that isn’t focused on wild animals, is there anything that they can do to help at the moment? Oscar (00:39:53): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, of course that depends on whether it’s, you know, under their control to decide what campaigns they could be doing. But we definitely need more mainstream animal organizations, so to speak, to start doing things, even if it’s the tiniest things only about wild animal suffering. And I think where the most interesting opportunities for campaigns there could be, is where there are conflicts between, for instance, the interests of human beings and the interests of certain animals. And the different solutions at hand are, either you harm the animals or you do something that may end up being beneficial for the animals, so for instance, vaccination against tuberculosis among badgers. Yeah, so this being one option and the other option being killing those badgers, as it has been debated in the UK. This is a clear example of a campaign in which if your organization is against hunting and having actually been doing work against hunting, here you have an excellent opportunity of presenting an alternative to hunting, which is vaccination. Oscar (00:41:08): And it’s going to be a good example of how a campaign towards reducing wild animal suffering would look like. And there are other similar examples. So this is something that, yeah, you could be doing if you are in an animal organisation that hasn’t done anything about wild animal suffering so far. Also, even if you are not involved in any campaign, in your messaging you could also start to introduce ideas that let people think a bit more about this. Even if you don’t explain the whole case for wild animal suffering, or against wild animal suffering, you could start to convey the idea that it’s not just that we should stop harming animals, but that helping animals is also important. You could also spread more widely concern about wild animals as individuals, because many people tend to think of wild animals just as representative of their species. Even people who can recognize domesticated or exploited animals as individuals fail to do so in the case of wild animals. So even if you’re an organization that’s not going to be working on wild animal suffering, you could nevertheless in your messaging try to stress these tiny pieces of information that can eventually help people to be more concerned about wild animal suffering. Also, my last piece of advice here would be: I would encourage those people to just get in touch with other people who are working on wild animal suffering. It can be Animal Ethics or it can be any other people who are involved in the field. And ask them for ideas, for advice, because maybe depending on what your organization is doing, there can be other ideas that you could develop. Jamie (00:42:55): Yeah, okay, so that’s exciting opportunities there potentially in farmed animal groups. Another potentially adjacent question, especially given the relative lack of funding at the moment and the lack of nonprofit roles in this space, if somebody is keen on a nonprofit path in general, for instance, do you think there’s value of seeking work at conservationist organizations that do work sort of compatible with wild animal welfare, but don’t prioritize it? It seems there could be some advocacy value of taking roles at those organizations, but you could also just end up wasting time working at an organization that does work that is essentially unrelated to wild animal welfare. Oscar (00:43:32): Yeah, I think the latter rather, but it really depends on what do you mean by “organizations”. If you mean like a private organization as against, for instance a governmental body, so if it’s a governmental body where you can influence policy and so on, then I would say, yeah, definitely go ahead. Even if that body is mainly concerned about conservation, your being there may influence some policies that can be beneficial for animals, and that can spread interest in wild animal welfare. But if it’s just a private and independent conservationist organization, I think that the amount of good that you can do there is not going to be worth the time you’re going to be spending doing all the things that are not going to be going in the right direction. So yeah, I think it’s better to do other kinds of work, yeah. Jamie (00:44:32): All right, so beyond policy then, do you have any other recommendations of non-research careers or at least non-academic careers that people can take? For instance, if somebody is a nonspecialist, but they want to help in growing the community of people interested in wild animal welfare or developing the field of welfare biology, are there full-time opportunities in this space? Oscar (00:44:50): Well, I wouldn’t say that there are a lot mainly because there is no money basically, because, well at Animal Ethics, as I said before, we have very little money. It’s very tough to do fundraising for this cause because it’s relatively unknown [and] because animal advocates tend to donate to other areas of work. Other people, for instance, among Effective Altruists they have other concerns. And especially, it’s actually difficult in the case of Animal Ethics, because we have this very pragmatic approach. So even though we have this very hardcore longtermist viewpoint and hardcore antispeciesist viewpoint, and we would never do anything in the short term that can be harmful for our long-term goals (I mean we may, but not if we know of!), we put our considerations for the long-term above our considerations for what can be successful on the short term. But we have this very strategic approach. Oscar (00:46:00): So we want to be very pragmatic going step by step, step by step in following our theory of change towards our final goal. So that leads us to work on things that people like Effective Altruists concerned with more abstract themes, may not recognize as being especially important, even if they really are. And I see this for instance when we publish stuff about particular interventions, so for instance reducing the harm of animals in fires. People who are interested in abstract idea of prioritization and so on, tend to think, well, this is not something very important. It will be much more important if they published something about “aggregate estimations of suffering”... So we sometimes are tempted to do some of this other work, just for the sake of getting more funding. Because people who care about these abstract things are not really aware that that’s not really the most effective thing, but because in order to be effective you need funding, you need to do these things, is the issue. Anyway, the conclusion is that we don’t really have a lot of funding to hire people who are really already very well-prepared in this field. So yeah, in our end, not lots of career opportunities, just because there is a lack of funding, but there is a lack of work as well. So if we did have the funding there are a lot of things that people could be doing. If there were people who have a background in science, for sure that would be optimal, but even if they don’t have that background, if they are people who have some experience, for instance in animal advocacy, in other organizations, there is a lot that they could do focusing on wild animals. Oscar (00:47:55): Then, of course, there is something else that they could do, for instance they could work in other animal organizations. So this is another challenge we have here, which is to get people working in other animal organizations to be concerned about this, and to recognize that wild animal suffering is an issue that deserves attention and to encourage them to work on this. And then, if what we are talking about here is not working opportunities but just volunteer work, there is a lot that people can do. So people could just collaborate with animal organizations, could help to spread their publications, could speak with other influential people to get them on board. So well, nothing really special here, the kind of work that they could do for other causes as well, only that in this case it could be more helpful because this is a field that is less known. Jamie (00:48:53): I was planning to ask you about the extent of the funding constraints anyway, and I think that’s a pretty resounding answer. That the priority to make this work happen on a larger scale is give money to the relevant nonprofits, if you’re in the position to do so. So that’s useful as well. All right, so for impact focused animal advocates in 2020, or the coming few years, what proportion of resources do you think should be spent on research or academic field building? And what proportion should be spent on actually directly implementing interventions that help wild animals, maybe on some of the sort of smaller scale movement-building type interventions that we were speaking about? Oscar (00:49:32): Well, the problem with that question is one that is, it’s an interesting question, but I don’t think it has practical meaning for one reason, which is we are not in this God-like position to determine this. So unfortunately, what’s going to happen is that there will be certain funding available for some things and certain funding available for other things. And even if you are an organization that has a certain focus and would like, for instance, to focus exclusively in one of those things, you may not be able to do it, because in order to get the funding to do that, you are going to need to do some of the other things. Having said this I think that the amount of resources that are going to be used in creating a new field of study on this are going to be less undesirable. But I also think that where we would need more money right now, and we are not going to get enough money for that, wouldn’t be for directly creating a new field of research here, but to raise concern about the importance of creating such a field of study. Jamie (00:50:43): Okay, that’s interesting, yeah. So a couple of thoughts, one is that like if there is a situation where we have the godlike control of the movement’s resources, the growing wild animal movement is probably pretty close in the sense that it’s a small number of organizations that are quite effectiveness focused, thinking about where to allocate their resources. But the other thing is, I’m also just interested in, on that practical side. If you mentioned that funding is going to be more or less available, do you have a, are you comfortable talking about in a general sense, which of those types of intervention you think funding is more readily available for? Oscar (00:51:17): Yeah, so I would say that right now if you apply for funding for, I don’t know, studying how well the animals suffer under certain conditions, it’s going to be easier for you to get funding for that than for raising awareness about the issue among those who are more likely to join the cause, so to speak. Jamie (00:51:40): I guess, given the funding constraints are available, how many staff are actually working at Animal Ethics at the moment? Oscar (00:51:46): We’re a small group of people and most people are working part-time. And, because our budget is very low, it’s much lower than that of other animal organizations, what we do have is lots of volunteer work. So for instance, I have my own job outside of Animal Ethics, but I volunteer a lot of hours there, and so do other people. I think we have five people working part-time at the moment, if I recall correctly. Jamie (00:52:14): Oh, okay that’s interesting, yeah. And by comparison I think Wild Animal Initiative, looking at their website, it looks like there’s about nine people involved in that organization. And given that these are essentially the two main organizations working on this field, I guess it just emphasizes just how small this is and how much extra funding in this space could be really foundational and driving that work forward. Oscar (00:52:33): Yeah sure, I mean, well there are other groups that have expressed some interest on this. And for instance, Rethink Priorities, they have done some research on wild animals, even though, you know, it’s just a small part of their work. And I hope we will manage to get other people involved. And we hope to get other organizations to start doing what Rethink Priorities does. Which is, you know, start doing some work, even if it’s just a minority of what you do. But, yeah, that shows how really, I mean, neglected the field is. And then it’s interesting because I don’t think that this is a proportional to the interest on the field. So, ten years ago, for sure, we were just a small group of people interested in wild animals, and most people didn’t know about wild animal suffering, but at this point, I think even if it’s not mainstream, this is something that many animal advocates know about and I’m for sure many Effective Altruists as well. So I don’t think that this small attention that the field eventually gets. Yeah. It’s just proportional to awareness about this at this moment. Jamie (00:53:54): Yeah, interesting, I guess we could sort of hypothesize lots of reasons why that may or may not be the case, but probably not worth doing now. Yeah, really interesting. Yeah, you mentioned before Rethink Priorities and the work they’ve been doing on this. One thing that they have been working on, which is adjacent if not the key focus, is some of their work on the topic of consciousness and sentience of various animals. How high priority do you think that that work is for the kind of overall understanding of, what, well I guess non-profits and also just the sorts of interventions that we need to do, in how to help wild animals in the future need to be? Like how urgent is it to work on those sorts of tasks? Oscar (00:54:38): Right, so here I am more agnostic, and my position is not really representative of that of Animal Ethics. Because I tend to think that this kind of work shouldn’t be really a priority for us. And there is a reason for this, which is that at this point we are in a position that is similar to the one that maybe the ancient Greeks had concerning astronomical problems. So they could only make some guesses, informed guesses, on the basis of very rough observations. And the same happens in the case of consciousness. And until we are able to solve the hard problem of consciousness, there is no way we can get some knowledge of about which animals really are sentient. We are just going to be providing more evidence that some people are going to take more seriously than others. And also, I don’t think that the probabilities that you may assign to animals being sentient or not to, I mean, to certain animals being sentient or not, I don’t think that those probabilities will shift, will change a lot, on the basis of new pieces of evidence or on the basis of the new, I don’t know, literature review on one issue or another. As I say, this is my own position. I think that maybe Animal Ethics as such has a less agnostic or skeptical view on this. So, because of this, I think that there are resources that are being used now to address this question, or should be used to for other purposes. There is something that I do think it’s interesting, which is learning a bit more about the development of animals when they are very young. To learn a bit more about the probabilities that animals are sentient when they are very young. But still, I mean, even in this case, I am quite skeptical about this. We are not going to get any conclusive results. But then, and this relates to something that you were asking before concerning funding, I think that it’s going to be easier for an organization to get funding to address this question, than to address other issues, that for me have more priority. And that is probably because if we were able to solve the question, the question would be very important, but that’s not really what’s at stake here. What’s at stake here is whether, at the end of the day, we’re going to get some information that will allow you to make a difference in the policy and in the practical advocacy you would carry out. Jamie (00:57:22): Yeah, so more of an argument for not getting too hung up on the potential theoretical importance of discoveries if making further discoveries is quite intractable in general. I guess another question that some people may be interested in is if you have any particular advice for that kind of how people can most effectively build support for this as a priority amongst, either other animal advocates or amongst Effective Altruists or just generally, if you’ve got any advice about how best to build support for this area. Oscar (00:57:56): Different things, there are two different ways of responding to your question. So, one has to do with what is the best way maybe to argue for this so people get on board. And the other has to do with more strategic ways of getting people to actually support it; not just to agree with it, but to actually support it. So, I will say that in general people wanting to express concern about this would be better to frame their message in terms of helping animals, in terms of looking at concrete cases as well, rather than an abstract case for intervention. So, I don’t think that the term “intervention” is very good here, and I think there are alternatives to that. “Helping”, “reducing the suffering”, “improving the situation of animals”… that’s something that most people agree with. Then also, as I said before, look at the concrete. So, this is something that is very interesting, and again, this is anecdotal evidence what I’m going to say, but something we’ve seen is that you will ask someone: “okay, so would you agree with helping wild animals, and changing the situation in which they are to reduce their suffering?” And they are kind of reluctant or they disagree with it. But then you come up with this specific intervention. “Okay, we’re going to vaccinate wild animals, for instance, against coronaviruses that may potentially harm humans, not necessarily SARS-CoV-2, I mean some other coronaviruses that haven’t jumped yet to humans, but that could in the future, but that are very, very harmful for those animals. Would you agree with this?” And most people will say, “Well, yeah, I think that’s a great idea”. “Okay, do you agree with rescuing these animals that have been affected by, I don’t know, this fire? Or these floods?” and many people say, “yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that”. “Do you agree with rescuing these orphan animals? There is this rescue center where they are, you know, providing them help and so on”. “Oh yeah, yeah, totally agree with that”. And you go on and on and on and on. And the same people who objected to the abstract idea will agree to every single example that you give to them. So single example, and try of course to choose the less controversial examples, seems to be a good way of promoting concern about this. Oscar (00:59:57): As for getting people, not just to agree but to consider seriously getting involved, and especially I’m thinking not just of individual people but groups of people, so for instance animal organizations or other organizations. Well, I will say, first, it’s very important to be able to communicate, that this is not an idea we want to address just directly, that there is some strategic thinking, some theory of change behind that, and that it’s driven by the practical importance of each step. So it’s not out of curiosity that we are going to research about how we can help wild animals. No, we’re going to research how each step is going to best promote that end. And we can also let, or people can also let, others know that there has been some work done already. So, for instance, these studies that I mentioned before concerning the attitudes of scientists towards different ways of helping animals, I mentioned that the ways of helping animals that they favored were vaccination, helping animals affected by weather events and [helping] urban animals. But then that study also showed that a majority of scientists were favorable to us researching these things. So, against what people may think, we have some pieces of evidence supporting the view that this is something feasible. So the idea of feasibility and presenting a concrete strategy to achieve that aim, and showing that that goes in line with the values that these people have, and showing that in doing some work in wild animal advocacy, you wouldn’t really be doing something that different from what you’ve been doing so far. That’s how I think you can build more support for the cause among animal advocates, but also among other people as well. Jamie (01:02:34): Cool, that’s really exciting. Concreteness being the summary takeaway I think there really. Focus on the specific things that people would agree with and showing how that can lead to outcomes that they also agree with. I guess also on that topic of strategy and actually you mentioned there the idea, like kind of each step of how to promote the outcomes that we care about. One important thing that I feel uncertain about is the strategy for actually creating and growing an academic field from scratch. And this applies to welfare biology, but it also applies to other things we might care about. Like for instance, we mentioned artificial sentience stuff before, like a research field around that. Other people in Effective Altruism are very interested in developing a research field around global priorities research, and the same considerations might apply. I guess, do you have much, do we have much of a sense of what the optimal strategy for building an academic field should be? So I can think of, for example, plausible priorities might be putting on conferences, setting up a dedicated research Institute within a prestigious university, creating specific academic journals to publish relevant studies, publishing handbooks for students, creating a grant making body that offers funding for relevant research. I’m trying to write some kind of foundational public facing academic book, along the lines of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, or Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, or just working on concrete publications relevant to the topic like we were talking about before. I guess there are so many different options it’s unclear to me how important these different factors should be. Do you have any thoughts about what the focus needs to be? Or if we have any evidence about which of these strategies is most important? Oscar (01:04:15): Yeah, so actually that connects also with some other work that at Animal Ethics we have been doing, and it’s been very disappointing. So, we were studying different ways in which academic fields were created in recent decades. So we consider different fields, and then we focused on three that would be close to welfare biology, such as animal welfare science, conservation biology, and the cognitive ethology. So these are fields with different degrees of success, and with totally different stories. And what we found is that there is no like magical recipe or favourite strategy. So it seems that there are many different factors involved. And depending on what the field is, you may want to promote something rather than all the things. So for instance, in the case of animal welfare science, what you find is that there weren’t really scientists or many scientists interested in this. Oscar (01:05:17): So why did animal welfare science appear? Just as a result of public pressure. So public pressure triggered political action, and this eventually drove significant amounts of funding to get into the area. And now it’s already a well-established field. In the case of conservation biology, for instance, there were lots of different things together. So there were lots of scientists, or at least a significant group of scientists relevant enough interested in the area, in different fields. But then there was lots of external support. So, the strategy there is not too different from the first one. Then in the case of cognitive ethology you have certain scientists interested in this, but they failed to communicate to the public, how this is relevant, so they don’t have external support. It’s just, they, you know, doing their thing, what academics typically do, which is something that you mentioned, publish certain books relevant within the field, you know, organizing conferences and so on. But we didn’t get any clear idea of what of all these things were more useful really. And it seems that it depends really on the level and kind of support that the field is getting. So it may well be that in the case of say, I don’t know, AI alignment, for instance, what you need, or the best strategy would be totally different from the one in the case of welfare biology. So, yeah, we don’t know really. So that’s why we are trying different things. Also, different people working on this are also working in different ways. So, for instance, Wild Animal Initiative is focusing their work getting people who are already working in the relevant fields for welfare biology, to do work that is closer to welfare biology. Animal Ethics is doing lots of educational work, for instance, our video course. And we also publish this e-book, which is called Introduction to Wild Animal Suffering: A Guide to the Issues. Oscar (01:07:30): And we’re investing a lot, not just on promoting welfare biology, but on growing awareness about this issue. Because we think that among other things this can also lead us to reach scientists, for instance, that are interested in animal advocacy and to get them to do some work on this. So there is not the only reason why we’re doing this, but we think that it can also have this effect. And then there are other people who are working or who have done work in wild animal suffering. For instance, Rethink Priorities has been doing some research that, I think their research is especially influential among Effective Altruists. So it can raise some concern maybe, if someone is interested in it is into Effective Altruism, and it happens to be that person who is, I don’t know, a science student that can also help this to take place. Or it can encourage people to donate and donations can be used to encourage people to work on this via grant. So as you can see, yeah, I don’t have, or we don’t have any particular suggestions of what can work best, because there is a lot of uncertainty here. But there is something though I would like to say, just so people don’t get the wrong impression. Even though we have this step by step approach, there are moments at which you have to make a decision, and sometimes there can be ways in which you can encourage more scientists to work on a certain problem. And in this way, you can accelerate the speed at which the field is growing. But the way in which you do this would imply also increasing the risks that in the future you are not going to be able to succeed in the way you want. So, for instance suppose that we presented welfare biology as something that goes in line with conservationists ideals. That would allow us to present our case in a more successful way in the short term. But in the longer term it could be problematic in that it could help to establish this work in a way that would make it less likely to support interventions that for instance mean changes in the way in which ecosystems are. So, when we have to make these decisions we always prioritize at Animal Ethics, what the long-term expected effects will be rather than what seems to be more practical in the short-term. Jamie (01:10:09): I’ve been enjoying following the videos of a YouTuber called Humane Hancock, who is a sort of Earthing Ed style vegan activist, who debates meat-eaters and tries to create viral videos. But he also has a few videos specifically about the need to consider wild animal suffering, such as one called the vegan blind spot, which has around 14,000 views at the moment. I thought that the arguments were pretty well summarized and articulated, but a lot of the comment responses are really negative on the video. One of the most liked comments, from someone who I know is vegan, reads, “Conclusion: species going extinct, reduces overall animal suffering.” And I took that comment as trying to suggest that if Humane Hancock’s perspective is carried to its logical conclusion, that it seems counter-intuitive. And another highly liked comment reads, “Did you actually just propose contraception for wild animals, like birth control for tigers?” So I guess with these sorts of risks of backlash and surprise and all those sorts of things, the question I’m getting at is to what extent do you think public facing advocacy, even if quite well articulated, is desirable at all at this point? Oscar (01:11:14): Yeah, so there are two different types of considerations there. So, the thing is that the kind of language that is going to be good for certain people is not going to be good for others. So I would say that when you are addressing the general public you should be stressing non-controversial interventions, and you should be pointing out ways in which we are already helping wild animals, things that most people will agree with rather than the abstract case, and also rather than presenting them with very controversial forced interventions. However, when you are speaking with other people like, I don’t know, people who are already into animal advocacy, people who have been thinking about these issues for a long time, it may work best to get a bit deeper into other arguments that nevertheless may not work for the general public. So that’s one consideration that when you are addressing the general public you have to be extremely careful, because otherwise you may be doing more harm than good in terms of public support for the cause. On the other hand, of course, there is always a risk when you are addressing a certain group of people, that others will also join the debate. So there you may want to do some calculations. Maybe it’s worth it that some people from the general public will dislike what you say and will oppose what you say, if that’s the price to pay in order to reach some other people who will agree with you. So, whether just a minority of them, and maybe a tiny minority of them, get a bad impression of what helping wild animals is, it’s not really that problematic. If on the other hand that allows you to reach a significant group of people among those who are more ready to listen to a bit more nuanced and developed arguments. Jamie (01:13:16): Yeah, so no hard and fast rule there, I guess you have a sense to which, I mean, obviously the field is fairly small at the moment. But do you think the field is operating about right, in terms of the degree to which people are doing public facing advocacy at the moment? Or do you think we should be a bit more risk averse? Or a bit less risk averse? Is there more public advocacy needed now? Or are we getting the balance about right for the time being? Oscar (01:13:40): No, well, first of all, I don’t think that there is any significant public outreach. So I don’t think that’s really problematic. I think that most of the discussions about this really, I mean, there may be some exceptions, of course, but most of them are addressing people who are already into animal advocacy or Effective Altruism, or you know related areas. I do think though that nevertheless most people who are interested in wild animal suffering have not really been thinking a lot about what their arguments towards the general public should be, and aren’t really that trained into what kind of interventions are noncontroversial and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, I don’t think that there is a huge risk at the moment, but nevertheless I think that there should be more training into the different sorts of messaging that we should be using, yeah. Jamie (01:14:37): On that note, my impression is that there hasn’t been any research testing various messages to see which is most effective at encouraging moral consideration of wild animals, or systematic efforts to help wild animals. But the topic of wild animal welfare is one that seems especially susceptible to these sorts of framing variations, by audiences as well that we’ve been talking about. Some of the arguments seem highly counter-intuitive and some of them seem pretty uncontroversial. Does that suggest that more empirical research on the optimal message framing is a high priority? Oscar (01:15:10): Maybe doing this kind of research is not the top priority right now, because right now the top priority is not to reach the general public. But it’s nevertheless something that would be definitely useful to do, if not right now, a few years from now. We’ve done this at Animal Ethics with scientists but we need to do this, or someone else needs to do it with other groups. Either different groups within the general public, like students, young people. Also having animal advocates in general as a target group. Yeah, there should be more work about this. Jamie (01:15:48): Yeah, so something that has been done, sort of related to this topic, is that a few years ago Animal Charity Evaluators ran an online experiment that suggested that rather than thinking of attitudes towards wild animal suffering as a uni-dimensional construct. Where people either support or oppose reducing wild animal suffering. It’s more accurate to consider that multiple distinct dimensions underlying attitudes towards actions that reduce wild animal suffering. Do you think that sort of further empirical testing to tease apart those different dimensions would be helpful? Or does that fit into that same category of potentially really useful, but not the highest priority? Oscar (01:16:25): Yeah, so these results make perfect sense and I would be very surprised if they had been different. And then they also go in line with things we’ve been speaking about. So for instance, with this distinction in the attitudes of people, when you present to them the abstract case of reducing wild animal suffering, and concrete ways in which this can be done. I think that yes, doing research on this is important, but I will qualify this answer. Because yes, as we also spoke about before, it’s simply that addressing the general public doesn’t seem to be the best strategy right now. Rather than that we should be addressing specific target groups, like scientists and also animal advocates and others. But yeah it would be very useful to learn more about what are the attitudes that people in these different groups have about the topic, that are depending on how you present it. So the research we’ve done about the attitudes of scientists and students about this goes in line with this, but more work on this would be surely useful. So not all work on this would necessarily be a priority, as I said before, it depends on what is the group of people that you are actually researching. Jamie (01:17:48): As usual with these podcast episodes, I have about a hundred questions I could keep peppering you with. But in the interest of not making this interview last all day, I think I’ll just say thanks very much for joining us Oscar. Oscar (01:18:02): Yeah, thank you very much for having me and for being interested in this topic. Jamie (01:18:06): Great, and just any, have you got any final requests or suggestions for how people can get involved and support your work, and Animal Ethics’ work? Oscar (01:18:13): Yeah, well I think that during the conversation we’ve covered most of them. I would suggest that people get informed about this. Don’t rush to make your mind up about wild animal suffering and the importance of wild animal suffering, before you’ve gone a bit deep. So I suggest you read more about the issue. You read more about what, not just Animal Ethics but, other organizations have published about this. If you want a useful resource, I will suggest the texts that I mentioned before that you can find on our website. You can just Google Introduction to Wild Animal Suffering: A Guide to the Issues, which has different parts on wild animal suffering, ways to help animals, the ethics of helping animals in the wild, and also how to encourage work in academia about this. Or you can just watch the video course on YouTube. So, yeah, I think that would be it, thank you very much again. Jamie (01:19:19): Thanks again Oscar. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. You can subscribe to the sentence Institute podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, or other podcast apps.