Anticipation and memory as criteria for special welfare consideration

It is widely agreed that all animals are entitled to some degree of welfare consideration, hut that some are entitled to more consideration than other s. However, the basis for singling out some animals for special considerati on often seems to be mostly a matter of degree of similarity to, or associa tion with, humans. A more reasonable criterion would involve the extent of suffering caused by given events. Two variables that seem likely to be very important in the extent of suffering are the capacity to anticipate and th e capacity to recall. Everyday experience tells us that human suffering can be hugely amplified by either anticipation or recall of painful or distres sing events. In the past, psychologists have tended to rake the view that b oth these processes depend on the possession of language, and were therefor e irrelevant to species other than humans. But comparative psychologists ar e increasingly making use of concepts from human cognition, including both memory, and anticipation, to explain animals' responses to both past and fu ture events. These processes are invoked to explain the behaviour of a wide range of vertebrate species. Recent work on primate cognition indicates th at more elaborate forms of representation may be possible in the great apes . Such evidence should be used as the basis for deciding whether to give sp ecial welfare consideration to certain species which have special cognitive capacities - or indeed enhanced welfare consideration to a wider range of species, if their cognitive capacities are found to be more sophisticated t han is generally assumed.