The predation problem or predation argument refers to the consideration of the harms experienced by animals due to

predation Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

as a moral problem, that humans may or may not have an obligation to work towards preventing. Discourse on this topic has, by and large, been held within the disciplines of

animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage in ...

and

environmental ethics In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resourc ...

. The issue has particularly been discussed in relation to

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sam ...

and

wild animal suffering Wild animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals living outside of direct human control, due to harms such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, a ...

. Some critics have considered an obligation to prevent predation as untenable or absurd and have used the position as a ''

reductio ad absurdum In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical arguments'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absu ...

'' to reject the concept of animal rights altogether. Others have criticized any obligation implied by the animal rights position as environmentally harmful. Responses from animal ethicists and rights advocates have been varied. Some have rejected the claim that animal rights as a position implies that we are obligated to prevent predation, while others have argued that the animal rights position does imply that predation is something that we should try to avert. Others have asserted that it is not something that we should do anything about now due to the risk that we could inadvertently cause significant harm, but that it is something that we may be able to effectively take action on in the future with improved knowledge and technologies.

Historical views

Problem of evil

Predation has historically been viewed as a natural evil within the context of the

problem of evil The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encycloped ...

and has been considered a moral concern for Christians who have engaged with

theodicy Theodicy () means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the problem of evil "to make the existence of ...

. Natural evils have been sometimes thought of as something that humans should work towards alleviating, or as part of a greater good which justifies the existence of this type of evil.

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known w ...

advocated the latter view, arguing that "defects" in nature such as predation led to the "good of another, or even to the universal good" and that if "all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe". Within Christian and

Hebrew Scripture The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

e wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." In his notebooks (written between 1487 and 1505), Leonardo da Vinci questioned why nature was not structured in a way which meant that animals were not forced to consume each other to survive.

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...

made several observations about predation and suffering experienced by wild animals in ''

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'' is a philosophical work by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, first published in 1779. Through dialogue, three philosophers named Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes debate the nature of God's existence. Whet ...

'' (1779), stating that the "stronger prey upon the weaker, and keep them in perpetual terror and anxiety".

William Paley William Paley (July 174325 May 1805) was an English clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work ''Natural T ...

, in ''

Natural Theology Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of theology that seeks to provide arguments for theological topics (such as the existence of a deity) based on reason and the discoveries of science. This distinguishes it from ...

'', described predation as being the most challenging of God's work to establish the utility of, nevertheless, he defended predation as the means to deal with the potentially catastrophic effects of animals producing more offspring than can possibly survive. The debate around predation and the problem of evil was significantly increased by the popularization of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

's theory of

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charl ...

. Some earlier Christians argued that violence in nature was a result of the

fall of man The fall of man, the fall of Adam, or simply the Fall, is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. * * * * The doctrine of the ...

, but evidence that predation has existed for millions of years before the evolution of humans and the concept of sin, indicates that while life has existed, there has never been a time where nature has been free from violence. Darwin himself questioned how the fact that the

Ichneumonidae The Ichneumonidae, also known as the ichneumon wasps, Darwin wasps, or ichneumonids, are a family of parasitoid wasps of the insect order Hymenoptera. They are one of the most diverse groups within the Hymenoptera with roughly 25,000 species curr ...

prey on the bodies of living caterpillars could be reconciled with the idea of an omnibenevolent God.

Criticism of moral judgements

Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ' ...

criticised the labelling of

carnivorous A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other so ...

animals such as lions, tigers and snakes as barbarous because for them killing is a necessity while for humans who can live off of "nature's beneficent fruits" killing is a "luxury and crime". The writer Edward Augustus Kendall discussed predation in his book of moral fables ''The Canary Bird'' (1799), in which he argued that predatory behavior by animals should not be judged by human moral standards and that "a prejudice against particular creatures, for fancied acts of cruelty is absurd".

Philosophical pessimism

Giacomo Leopardi Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (, ; 29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of ...

, the Italian poet and philosopher, in '' Operette morali'' (1827) engaged in a dialogue with Nature in "Dialogue between Nature and an Icelander", which uses the inevitability of predation—such as a squirrel fleeing from a rattlesnake, only to run into the snake's open mouth—as a moral indictment on nature's cannibalism of its own offspring. The inevitability of such cycles of destruction and creation was a cause for Leopardi's

philosophical pessimism Philosophical pessimism is a family of philosophical views that assign a negative value to life or existence. Philosophical pessimists commonly argue that the world contains an empirical prevalence of pains over pleasures, that existence is ontol ...

. In '' Zibaldone'', published posthumously in 1898, Leopardi argued that predation is the ultimate indication of the evil design of nature. Similar to Leopardi, the German philosopher

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

, in 1851, used the pain experienced by an animal being devoured by another as a refutation against the idea that the "pleasure in the world outweighs the pain".

Animal rights

Lewis Gompertz Lewis Gompertz ( – 2 December 1861) was an English writer and inventor, and early animal rights and veganism advocate. He was a founding member, in June 1824, of the English Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; later the RSPCA. Gom ...

, an early animal rights advocate, and one of the first contemporary authors to address the problem of wild animal suffering, in the fifth chapter of his 1824 book '' Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes'', engaged in a dialogue, in which he asserted that animals devouring each other can be judged as wrong by the rules that we use to govern human lives and stated that "should I witness the attempt in any animal of destroying another, I would endeavour to frustrate it; though this might probably be wrong." He went on to argue that the extinction of carnivorous species would not be bad, claiming that the species of one animal is not more important than an equal number of another and that it would be possible for some carnivorous animals, like wolves, to instead sustain themselves on vegetables. The American zoologist and animal rights philosopher

J. Howard Moore John Howard Moore (December 4, 1862 – June 17, 1916) was an American zoologist, philosopher, educator, humanitarian and socialist. He is considered to be an early, yet neglected, proponent of animal rights and ethical vegetarianism, and was a ...

, in ''

The New Ethics ''The New Ethics'' is a 1907 book by the American zoologist and philosopher J. Howard Moore, in which he advocates for a form of ethics, that he calls the New Ethics, which applies the principle of the Golden Rule—treat others as you would want ...

'' (1907), labelled carnivorous species as "criminal" races whose "existence is a continual menace to the peace and well-being of the world" because the "fullness of their lives is dependent upon the emptiness and destruction of others". In the pamphlet '' Why I Am a Vegetarian'', published in 1895, Moore described the

Carnivora Carnivora is a monophyletic order of placental mammals consisting of the most recent common ancestor of all cat-like and dog-like animals, and all descendants of that ancestor. Members of this group are formally referred to as carnivorans, ...

as "relentless brutes", whose existence is a travesty for ethics, justice and mercy. In ''Better-World Philosophy'' (1899), Moore argued that carnivorousness was the result of excessive egoism, a product of natural selection, stating "Life riots on life—tooth and talon, beak and paw". He went on to claim that the irredeemable nature of carnivorous species meant that they could not be reconciled with each other in his ideal arrangement of the universe, which he called a "Confederation of the Consciousnesses". In 1903, the Scottish philosopher David G. Ritchie in response to Henry S. Salt's 1892 book '' Animals' Rights'', claimed that giving animals rights would imply that we must "protect the weak among them against the strong" and to achieve this, carnivorous animals should be put to death or slowly starved by "permanent captivity and vegetarian diet". He considered this proposal absurd, stating that the "declaration of the rights of every creeping thing sto remain a mere hypocritical formula to gratify pug-loving sentimentalists".

Contemporary views

Animal ethics

In 1973, Australian philosopher

Peter Singer Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, ...

argued that if humans were to try to prevent predation, such as from stopping lions killing gazelles, that it would likely increase the "net amount of animal suffering", but asserted that if hypothetically we could reduce suffering in the long-term, then it would be right to intervene. The English philosopher Stephen R. L. Clark's "The Rights of Wild Things" (1979) is considered to be one of the first ethics papers to explicitly engage with predation as a problem. In the paper, Clark argues that the concept that humans are obligated to aid animals against predators is not absurd, but that it follows only in the abstract, not in practice. Animal rights philosopher,

Tom Regan Tom Regan (; November 28, 1938 – February 17, 2017) was an American philosopher who specialized in animal rights theory. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he had taught from 1967 until his reti ...

in his 1983 book, ''The Case for Animal Rights'', argued that humans have no obligation to prevent predation because carnivorous animals are not moral agents and as a result cannot violate the rights of the animals that they predate. Along these lines, Julius Kapembwa argues that "intervention in predation is neither required nor permitted by animal rights theory". Steve Sapontzis, in his 1984 paper "Predation" argues against the idea that the problem of predation is a ''reductio ad absurdum'' for animal rights, instead, he claims that if we accept the view that we have an obligation to reduce avoidable animal suffering, then predation is something that we should work towards preventing if we can do so without inflicting greater suffering. Sapontzis concludes that whether humans choose to fulfil this particular obligation, or attempt to reduce other forms of avoidable suffering, is a question of where humans can do the most good. In a 2003 paper, the economist

Tyler Cowen Tyler Cowen (; born January 21, 1962) is an American economist, columnist and blogger. He is a professor at George Mason University, where he holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in the economics department. He hosts the economics blog ''Marginal R ...

advocates, from a utility, rights and holistic perspective, for the policing of nature to reduce the predatory activity of certain animals to help their victims. The transhumanist philosopher David Pearce, in his 2009 essay, "Reprogramming Predators", claims that predation is an immense source of suffering in the world and that a "biosphere without suffering is technically feasible". He argues for the phased extinction of carnivorous species using immunocontraceptives or "reprogramming" them using gene editing so that their descendants become

herbivores A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpar ...

. Pearce lists and argues against a number of justifications used by people who think that suffering caused by predation does not matter and that it should be conserved in its current state, including a "television-based conception of the living world", " lective realism" and " aptive empathy deficits". In 2010, Jeff McMahan published "

The Meat Eaters "The Meat Eaters" is a 2010 essay by the American philosopher Jeff McMahan, published as an op-ed in ''The New York Times''. In the essay, McMahan asserts that humans have a moral obligation to stop eating meat and, in a conclusion considered to be ...

", an op-ed for the ''New York Times'' on predation as a moral issue, in which he argued that preventing the massive amounts of suffering and death caused by predation would be a good thing and that the extinction of carnivorous species could be instrumentally good if this could be achieved without inflicting "ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation". McMahan received a number of objections to his arguments and responded to these in another op-ed published in the same year, "Predators: A Response". He later published his arguments as a chapter titled "The Moral Problem of Predation", in the 2015 book ''Philosophy Comes to Dinner''.

Peter Vallentyne Peter Vallentyne (; born March 25, 1952, in New Haven, Connecticut) is Florence G. Kline Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. He holds dual citizenship in the United States and Canada. Biography Vallenty ...

argues that it is permissible for humans to intervene to help prey in limited ways, if the cost to humans is minimal, but that we should not eliminate predators. In the same way that we aid humans in need, when the cost to humans is minimal, humans might help wild animals in limited circumstances.

Martha Nussbaum Martha Craven Nussbaum (; born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosoph ...

asserts that the predation problem and what should be done to solve it should be the subject of serious discussion, also arguing that there should be research into future solutions. Nussbaum draws attention to a need to convince people that predation is a problem and to challenge the common conception of predation as exciting and enthralling, which she believes has a negative impact on human culture. She goes on to challenge the idea of animals, who are preyed upon, as existing to be food for other animals, rather than being made to live for their own lives. Nussbaum concludes that humans, who have extensive control over animal lives and habitats, need to face up to their responsibilities towards wild animals and work towards their flourishing, rather than harming them. Some ethicists have made concrete proposals for reducing or preventing predation, including stopping the reintroduction of predators in locations where they have previously gone extinct, and removing predators from wild areas.

Environmental ethics

In 1984, the British ecologist Felicity A. Huntingford published "Some ethical issues raised by studies of predation and aggression", in which she discusses ethical issues and implications regarding the staging of artificial encounters for studies of predator-prey interactions. In the context of

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps w ...

, predation is considered to play a crucial and necessary role in ecosystems. This has led some writers, such as

Michael Pollan Michael Kevin Pollan (; born February 6, 1955) is an American author and journalist, who is currently Professor of the Practice Non-Fiction and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University. Concurrently, he is the Knight Professo ...

, to reject predation as being a moral problem at all, stating "predation is not a matter of morality or politics; it, also, is a matter of symbiosis". Under Aldo Leopold's

land ethic A land ethic is a philosophy or theoretical framework about how, ethically, humans should regard the land. The term was coined by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) in his ''A Sand County Almanac'' (1949), a classic text of the environmental movement. Th ...

, native predators, as crucial components of biotic communities, are considered important to conserve. The environmental philosopher

J. Baird Callicott J. Baird Callicott (born 1941) is an American philosopher whose work has been at the forefront of the new field of environmental philosophy and ethics. He is a University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the Department of Philos ...

asserts that the implication of animal rights theory, namely that we should protect animals from predators, would " t only esult inthe (humane) eradication of predators destroy the community, it would destroy the species which are the intended beneficiaries of this misplaced morality. Many prey species depend upon predators to optimize their populations."

Holmes Rolston III Holmes Rolston III (born November 19, 1932) is a philosopher who is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is best known for his contributions to environmental ethics and the relationship between scien ...

views predation as an essential natural process and driver of evolution, that is a "sad good" to be respected and valued. Ty Raterman, an environmentalist, has argued that predation is something that can be lamented without implying that we have an obligation to prevent it. The environmental ethicist William Lynn has argued that from a welfare perspective predation "is necessary for the well-being of predators and prey" and essential for the maintenance of the integrity of the ecological communities. Larry Rasmussen, a Christian environmental ethicist, has argued that predation is "not a pattern of morality we praise and advocate".

Other uses of the term

"Predation problem" can also refer to the predation of animals who belong to species considered valuable to humans for economic reasons or conservation, such as domestic sheep predation by

coyotes The coyote (''Canis latrans'') is a species of canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecological nich ...

, farmed salmon predation by seals, the predation of animals who are hunted for sport or food and cat predation of wild animals;

culling In biology, culling is the process of segregating organisms from a group according to desired or undesired characteristics. In animal breeding, it is the process of removing or segregating animals from a breeding stock based on a specific tr ...

or removal of predatory animals may be carried out to reduce such incidents.