Summary Of Empty Cages

In summary, “Empty Cages” is mostly about animal rights. Well not specifically about animal rights, it proves that animals should have the same rights as humans. Tom Regan argues about how people don’t agree with animals having rights because they aren’t human. That is true, they aren’t humans, but he talks about how animals and humans are similar in many ways. From this, he says, since we have so many similarities animals should have the same rights as humans. For example, animals have emotions and that they can feel excited or even depressed. Some owners would leave their pets in a cage all day and when a person passes by, they would start barking. This shows that they are excited to see somebody. The author then asks how would you feel if you were in that situation? Would you want to bark also? Regan concludes

If you were in a cage all day, what would you do?We are similar in the structure of our bodies, our behavior, language, systems, and origins. Then he gives us examples about how we are similar in those topics. The author wrote Empty Cages to tell people about how animals are being treated and how us people need to do something to stop it. He tries to get everyone involved because attitude towards animals changed, therefore he became an animal rights activist. He never thought about anything that had to do with animals. He used to call them “a thing.” Now he has changed his whole mindset, and he tries to change everybody else's. He gave many examples of what people used to say about animals having rights. From this, questions and statements arose and everybody started to ask. One argument that he addresses against animal rights is “Animals do not understand what rights are”(Regan 65) so they should not have rights. To this he responds, well children don’t know what kidneys are, therefore the child doesn’t have