Discover how you can become an advocate for animals . Information for newcomers to animal rights, human rights, environmental protection or humane education. Animal rights means that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration, consideration of what is in their own best interest, regardless of whether they are cute, useful to humans, or an endangered species, and regardless of whether any human cares about them at all.
Animals have the right to equal consideration of their interests.
For instance, a dog most certainly has interest in not having pain inflicted on him or her unnecessarily. We therefore are obliged to take that interest into consideration and respect the dog's right not to have pain inflicted upon him or her. However, animals don't have the same rights as humans, because their interests are not always the same as ours and some rights would be irrelevant to animal's lives. For instance, a dog doesn't have an interest in voting and therefore doesn't have the right to vote, since that right would be as meaningless to the dog as it is to a child. Go to human rights information directory.