Wildlife documentaries invade animal privacy rights, claims leading academic

Telegraph ^ | 04/29/10 | Richard Alleyne

[TigerLikesRooster]

Wildlife documentaries invade animal privacy rights, claims leading academic

Wildlife documentary makers are breaching the rights of animals by invading their privacy, a leading academic has claimed.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Published: 5:51PM BST 29 Apr 2010

Dr Brett Mills believes programmes such as the BBC's Nature's Great Events, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, are "unethical" for capturing animals' most intimate secrets on camera without their consent.

The senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia said it was wrong for broadcasters to treat all creatures as "fair game" and to fail to consider their right to privacy before recording.

Animals just like humans have a basic right not to have their most intimate moments – such as mating, giving birth and dying – broadcast to an audience of millions, he said.

He compared putting pinhole cameras in birds' nests to intrusive Big Brother-style CCTV.

Dr Mills, at the university's School of Film and Television Studies, said: "We can never really know if animals are giving consent, but they often do engage in forms of behaviour which suggest they'd rather not encounter humans, such as running away or building a burrow.

"The question constantly posed by wildlife documentaries is how animals should be filmed, they never ask whether animals should be filmed at all.

[CPOSharky]

How long before some idiot comes up with microbe “rights”?

[TigerLikesRooster]

Before getting there, we have to first take care of cockroach privacy rights.:-)

[John-Irish]

“Have I missed anything?’’ Yes, VEGETABLE RIGHTS NOW!!”” WHAT DO WE WANT?”” VEGETABLE RIGHTS!!”” WHEN DO WE WANT THEM?”” “”NOW””!! Hey, you asked? :-)

[redhead]

"Send this fruit to Alaska to commune with the brown bears."

Thanks, but no, thanks. We have enough of them here already. We call them the "3BO crowd" (Backpacks, Birkenstocks, and Body Odor).