Introduction: Animal Protection in an Interconnected World

In our increasingly interconnected and wired world, some of the biggest global stars have been nonhuman animals. On blogs, on Facebook and all around the Internet, claws and clicks go hand in hand or paw in paw, with the furry claiming cyberspace. In 2014, one of the most emailed stories on The New York Times’s website was about the biology of cats. According to media reports, there has been a sharp rise in the proportion of American dog and cat owners with provisions in their wills for their pets, with nearly one in every ten now making such arrangements. One of the most fervently embraced documentaries of 2013 was Blackfish, shown over and over on CNN. And these are not just “feel good” stories about cute and cuddly animals. They are about animal suffering, animal science, animal intelligence and cognition, animal behaviour and social life, animal welfare and law, and above all, animal dignity, rights and justice. For instance, in a New York Times’s op-ed piece, the commentator writes about “according animals dignity”. These topics are not academic jargon but increasingly entering the popular cyber parlance. In the meantime, apart from stories and images of animals going viral in traditional and social media around the world, significant legal battles are being fought on behalf of animals, for instance, in the International Court of Justice in the Hague and in the courtrooms of New York. At the end of 2013, a team of lawyers was filing writs of habeas corpus in New York on behalf of four captive chimpanzees as part of the Nonhuman Rights Project. At the other end of the world, in Australia, a group of animal lawyers, scientists and scholars was gathering to discuss animal law and animal welfare, the result of which is this edited book.