-

We are currently observing the sixth Pleistocene-Holocene great extinction. Climate change is one of the significant factors contributing to the dramatic decline in wildlife diversity. Humanity took up the fight against climate change in 1992 by adopting the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. Unfortunately, these efforts have not produced the expected results. Rising greenhouse gas emissions will lead to the extinction of half of the species on Earth by the end of this century. Limiting the temperature increase to 2°C by 2100 will mean a 25% reduction in species diversity. For most animal species, the race against progressive climate change is difficult and even impossible to win. Scientists warn that if we do not take immediate action, we will face a catastrophic loss of biodiversity. Wild vertebrate animals already account for no more than 4% of the biomass of all vertebrates, which is dramatically lower than the biomass of farmed animals.

The article contains an overview of arguments that occur in debates around recreational hunting. The author analyzes the postulates that hunters and their proponents refer to (such as national culture related to history, tradition, rituals), positioning them against counterarguments, indicating their outdated character and aiming at moral condemnation of hunting.

The article shows the shift in perception of wolves that occurred in North America between the 1950s and 1990s through the stories of Lois Crisler and Teresa Martino—two women who developed a close relationship with their wolves. Although Lois Crisler’s wolves—Lady, Trigger, Alatna, Arctic, Barrow, Killik, and Tundra—were born wild, they spent their lives as captives. On the other hand, Mckenzie, a she-wolf born in captivity and raised by Teresa Martino, was released back to the wild. Their stories provide a glimpse into a period of time when hatred for wolves was giving way to public acceptance. It was during this time, too, that wolf reintroductions were considered as a way of rewilding the land after these predators have been almost completely exterminated in the United States.

In her article, Katarzyna Szalewska offers a reading of the idea of the zoo in the context of Michel Foucault’s concept of the spatialization of discourse. Lars Berge’s book A Good Wolf. The Tragedy in a Swedish Zoo was an inspiration for Szalewska’s reflection. Szalewska refers to the history of the zoo and places this facility against the history of ideas, especially the nineteenth-century concepts of economization, scientism, collections and taxonomy. She then considers the zoo in the context of visual practices, especially the role of the gaze in the dialectic of power and knowledge. She shows that the zoo, functioning as it does in relation to the political and hierarchizing view, will always remain the domain of the cultural and the anthropocentric. Szalewska also addresses the perception and role of zoos as modern Noah’s arcs in the Anthropocene era and the ethical dimension of the “socialization” of animals.

Ewa Czerwińska-Jakimiuk’s aim in this article is to discuss selected aspects of human aggression and violence against animals. She presents definitions of aggression and violence, a description of these phenomena, and the results of selected empirical studies. These studies take into account the socio-demographic characteristics of the perpetrators of violence against animals, the most common personality disorders, criminal behavior, legal actions taken against them, and – in the case of children and adolescents using violence against animals – the causes and correlates of the phenomenon, motivational background and effects. Further in the article, Czerwińska-Jakimiuk analyzes the factors most often correlating with aggression and violence as a personality trait (e.g., aggressiveness, fear, self-control, and empathy) and as a situational-social phenomenon (e.g., frustration, relative deprivation, and social learning) as well as psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder.

It is still widely believed that only people can be mentally ill, and that this trait distinguishes us from other species. The interest of 21st-century scholars representing the humanities in the issue of animal mental disorders can be studied from the perspective of posthumanism and the animal turn, in that it means crossing another line between the “human” and the “non-human.” In her article, Magdalena Kozhevnikova highlights the most common mental disorders diagnosed in pets and captive animals, provides examples of unethical animal experiments in psychology, and briefly discusses the phenomenon of animal addiction and suicide. Her findings allow her to emphasize that, while analogies to mental disorders in humans can and should be used in the study of mental disorders in non-human animals, their primary goal of animal research ought to be to study the psyche of non-human animals.

In her article, Marzena Kubisz examines representations of veganism in the context of debates about the ways to counteract the degradation of the natural environment while claiming that veganism is used instrumentally in the discourse of the Anthropocene, which, in turn, leads to a marginalization of animal suffering. By referring to Donata Marfiak and Jerzy Rey’s book entitled Mamo, tato – dlaczego nie jemy zwierząt? Czyli o tym, jak dzieci ratują świat [Mummy, Daddy, Why Don’t We Eat Animals? Or the Way Children Save the World] Kubisz demonstrates that one of the areas in which the connection between veganism, animal welfare and environmental care is foregrounded in a way which stresses the co-dependency and communality of all living organisms is vegan literature for children.

Tomasz Nowak’s article is part of a series of publications that deal with the problem of various aspects of communication. Here he focuses on the biological and semiotic dimensions of communication phenomena. His purpose is, inter alia, to give a biosemiotic reinterpretation of several key terms of classical information and communication theory. In particular, he is interested in the relationship between „communication of complication” and „complication of communication” as observed in different manifestations of communication between people and (other) animals. Nowak argues the biocommunication skills of human and non-human animals are separated by distance, both quantitative and qualitative.

The aim of the article is to present Polish and EU regulations established to combat the African swine fever (ASF) as well as an assessment of the effectiveness of their application, also taking into account ethical and purposeful aspects. It contains a presentation of factors leading to loss of control over the spread of the disease, including cross-sectional overview of legal rules concerning swine slaughter, biosecurity rules, sanitary shots and hunting alongside with the examples and outcomes of their non-compliance with. The issue of negligence in veterinary supervision has also been addressed. It has also been shown that preventive slaughtering decisions issued within the framework of broad administrative discretion, based on current legislation, have serious ethical consequences and cause disproportionate economic losses for farms.

Peter Singer is one of the most influential philosophers alive. Since the mid-1970s, his ethical considerations related to the relationship between man and other sentient animals have been an extremely important point of reference for discussions, academic and otherwise. Over the several decades of Singer’s philosophical activity, however, the social conditions and status of some practices have changed. This is also the case of the practice of veganism, a topic to which Singer’s book Why Vegan? Eating Ethically seems to be devoted. In none of his previous publications has Singer analyzed in an in-depth and exhaustive way the theory and practice of veganism, a fact which had raised the public’s expectations for Why Vegan? Unfortunately, the analysis of this book reveals its shortcomings and deficiencies.