A Right to Liberty?

Some animal rights theorists contend that animals have a basic right to liberty that is being abridged by their confinement in zoos and aquariums. If we accept that the basic right afforded to animals in possession of rights is that they have the right to pursue their own interests without human interference, it seems like the animal rights advocates have it right.

On the other hand there are many animals who's interests are in staying in a confined environment. Reptiles seem to have better lives confined in a zoo than in the wild. Of course the reptile in question cannot make this judgement for themselves. If an animal cannot even conceptualize freedom how do we know if it would want it?

The easiest solution (or stop gap measure), because we cannot ask the nonhuman in question, is to see what is in their welfare. If a polar bear will go insane in a small enclosure at a zoo, it is not moral to keep that bear enclosed, unless it has no means of life in any other environment. Similarly, if a snake does better in an enclosure and will not suffer any trauma, it seems to be fine to keep it enclosed.

We must be very careful to approach this individual by individual nonhuman animal. One of the follies of our current conceptualization of animals is our tenancy to grant overriding value to their species. We would not ever treat an individual human's moral value as subordinate to the instrumental value of such an abstract concept, and it does disservice to all the rights-bearing individual non-human animals existent to not treat them as full individuals.