Fergus Cassidy

Animal rites

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. -- Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

Little did the great man know that 350 years later there would be another advantage that animals had over man. The right to privacy.

In a spat that has - ahem- set the cat among the pigeons, the zoo at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington has withheld information on a giraffe because it would be an intrusion into its rights to privacy. Ryma was a very popular giraffe and after her death, a reporter from The Washington Post applied to get the medical records and pathology reports on all the animals in the zoo.

In defending her decision zoo director Lucy Spelman said: "One reason is privacy. Certainly, the privacy rules that apply to human medical records, and the physician-patient relationship, do not apply in precisely the same way to animal medicine at a public institution like the National Zoo. But we believe they do in principle".

Of all people, for a zoo to come out and say that would drive the Laughing Hyena into complete hysterics. The Smithsonian Zoo has a PandaCam where millions can watch as Tian Tian and Mei Xiang attempt to 'get it on'. There is also an ElephantCam where Shanti can be seen minding her newborn calf and the poor Naked Mole Rat has a lump of glass through his warren with a camera positioned on one side. Some privacy.

Then there are the domestic animals. Dogs, for example, have to relieve themselves in the full public gaze. Telephone numbers etched on their collars reveal their names and where they live. Birds are forced to learn their name and then repeat it to any stranger that happens along.

Cows and sheep are grazed near major motorways where tourists can ogle and photograph them with no consideration for their privacy. And look at all those documentaries on National Geographic television. Camera crews going right into the homes of animals and filming their every move. Or the sharks that get radio transmitters pinned to their fin, so they can be tracked and profiled.

And what lies ahead? Breakthroughs in DNA testing to tell which dog left its 'mark' on the pavement? Or enabling a paternity order to be served on Felix, whose Casanova nights would be brought to a swift and sharp end.

Show business is always on the look-out for fresh and gullible talent. There could be a Big Brother for animals. Put a pig, a dog, a cat and a snake in a room together and just film it. And everyone would be amazed that the snake seemed very nice behind it all, and the dog would would win and get his own television show.

Somebody has to stand up for animals' right to privacy and now the animals themselves are beginning to stir. The elephant in the Rolo ad gets to administer long overdue justice to an annoying human. A lizard, frog and ferret have become icons to millions around the world. In Dublin Zoo, there's a particular chimp who reminds human visitors that he needs his space by flinging the contents of his bowels through the bars. Then there's the crocodile who hasn't moved in 20 years and ignored all atttempts to bribe him with money.

Animals have progressed over the years. They can now have the same names as humans. They have health insurance, beauty parlours and holiday homes. Some of them have even earned the right to a home with central heating, where they may sit on the couch or fall asleep on the bed.

But they have a long way to go to catch up on the king of the animals. Homosapiens have information. So much of it that there's even information about information. We have cameras on every street corner and in every shop. Mobile phones that can tell our position down to a few feet. Gadgets that tell us what the number of the last telephone caller was. Store cards that can tell what we buy, how much we spend and how often we spend it. There are acres of computer storage space filled with the minutiae of our personal lives.

So if the animals are relying on the human of the species to uphold and protect their privacy rights, they shouldn't hold their breath. At the beginning of May last, eight people in the US were injected with silicon chips about the size of a grain of rice. They were all people with Alzheimer's and the chip contains detailed medical information about the person. They are designed for an emergency situation. The chips comes from Applied Digital Solutions and their next product is one that is able to transmit a person's location by GPS.

This could be a big hit in the teenage market. Parents could keep an eye on their whereabouts without having to buy them mobile phones and top-up credits. They would literally become the chip off the old block. Teenagers meanwhile could enter puberty knowing they indeed had a chip on their shoulder.

No the animals better start looking out for themselves because the humans are on the threshold of deciding that privacy is just not that important. If it is, it's only because it can be traded for some vouchers or some free something or other.

All is lost for the animals if the humans start deciding that there is a price value on privacy and it therefore becomes a tradable commodity. Animals may have to go in another direction.

Like the two monkeys who escaped from the circus and hit the nearest bar. After consuming large quantities of whisky, they saw themselves on the Six O'Clock News. Fearing capture, one turned to the other and said: "Let's get out of here quick". To which the other replied: "Nah, by the time anyone finds us we'll be elephants".

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LINKS

United States Online Privacy Act
This proposed Bill is on its way to the Senate. The New York Times has encouraged the Senate to give the Bill priority PDF ONLY [100kb]

The Electronic Privacy Information Centre
EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington DC. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. SITE