While I have not read up on the “rights” of animals, and furthermore I dislike justifying legal human action by saying “it occurs in nature too,” I do find it interesting that there is a concept of property even in nature.
The bird makes the nest, the bird protects its nest. Monkeys make tools and consider them their tools (assumption here, correct me if I’m wrong). Dogs mark up territory.
Am I wrong, or is the concept of property so fundamental that even other animals have it?
Yes, they definitely have the concept of property. They will protect their bodies, food and territories. This is because their ancestors lived under conditions of scarcity, and so those who were best adapted to these conditions were more likely to pass on their genes (i.e. through natural selection). Carnivores, like human hunter-gatherer bands, keep territories to prevent overhunting. Of course, there is often evolutionary gain in violating the ‘property’ of rivals and potential mates.
We don’t respect the property of animals since they can’t trade with us. Better to enslave them or kill them and then take their territory for better uses.
Well, that just seems like projection to me. I don’t really think human institutions can adequately describe how animals behave, and once you make that projection you open up a door to a lot of other things that could be used on the flip side.
There are probably just as many cases of might makes right instances of property in nature, and then there are pack animals and non-nesting animals to be accounted for, some that have hierarchy and some kind of pack order, others that do not, and certainly some that graze a common area rather than have individual “property.”
Perhaps you’d like to support these contentions.
All forms of possession - individual and collective - are necessarily private, in the sense that no one outside of the possessor-group is necessarily permitted by the possessor-group to take/hold possession.