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Over the past month or so People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has been trying to buy billboard space for its new anti-fishing campaign, which features a picture of a dog Photoshopped to look as if it has been captured on a fish hook (PETA has a JPEG version of the billboard here).
In its anti-fishing propaganda, PETA endorses a twist on an old animal rights saying. According to PETA, "When it comes to feelings, a boy is a dog is a fish." In fact, PETA quotes marine biologist Sylvia Earle as imputing individual personality to fish.
A fish is not a fish is not a fish. They are all different as individuals. Like all Labrador retrievers have certain waggly tail kinds of characteristics that identify them as Labrador retrievers, but every one is different. Some are more shy, some are more aggressive, some are more curious. Some kinds of fish, like groupers, have a particular kind of personality that makes it very tough to eat fish once you've gotten to know them on a one to one basis. I certainly don't eat anyone I know personally anymore.
Earle is a well respected scientist, but perhaps the thousands of hours she's spent underwater are beginning to cloud her judgment a bit. I wonder if she would go as far as PETA does in its literature when it claims that, "Bass and basset hounds, cods and collies, all animals treasure their lives and feel pain."
Leaving aside the issue of whether or not fish feel pain, claiming that a dog treasures its life is an absurd claim that is supportable only through the most extreme form of anthropomorphizing animals.
Source:
Why do we throw a frisbee to some animals and a barbed hook to others?. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Fact Sheet, 2001.
