Executive summary: Selective contraception of wild animals could substantially improve wild animal welfare in the near-term by reducing population sizes and increasing lifespans, thereby breaking evolution’s pleasure-pain symmetry.
Key points:
Pleasure and pain serve as evolutionary reward/punishment mechanisms, but producing them has a neurological cost. In a stable population, most species experience close to net zero utility.
Without major genetic engineering or ecosystem redesign, contraception may be the best way to achieve positive utility for wild animals by “tricking” evolution.
Sterilizing a portion of a population would decrease the birth rate, leading to reduced competition and increased lifespans. Longer-lived individuals would experience net positive utility.
This is analogous to the demographic transition in human societies from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates via contraception.
Compared to interventions for farmed animals, contraception for wild animals may face less political opposition since there are no vested economic interests.
Ecosystem-wide effects need further analysis, and non-utilitarian philosophical perspectives may object to animal contraception on various grounds.
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Executive summary: Selective contraception of wild animals could substantially improve wild animal welfare in the near-term by reducing population sizes and increasing lifespans, thereby breaking evolution’s pleasure-pain symmetry.
Key points:
Pleasure and pain serve as evolutionary reward/punishment mechanisms, but producing them has a neurological cost. In a stable population, most species experience close to net zero utility.
Without major genetic engineering or ecosystem redesign, contraception may be the best way to achieve positive utility for wild animals by “tricking” evolution.
Sterilizing a portion of a population would decrease the birth rate, leading to reduced competition and increased lifespans. Longer-lived individuals would experience net positive utility.
This is analogous to the demographic transition in human societies from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates via contraception.
Compared to interventions for farmed animals, contraception for wild animals may face less political opposition since there are no vested economic interests.
Ecosystem-wide effects need further analysis, and non-utilitarian philosophical perspectives may object to animal contraception on various grounds.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.