Many animals flourish not in spite of the fact that they are animals but because they are animals—or even more precisely, perhaps, because they are felt to be members of our families and our communities, regardless of their species. And yet, at the very same moment, billions of animals in factory farms, many of whom are very near to or indeed exceed cats and dogs and other companion animals in the capacities we take to be relevant to standing (the ability to experience pain and suffering, anticipatory dread, emotional bonds and complex social interactions, and so on), have as horrible a life as one could imagine, also because they are animals.Clearly, then, the question here is not simply of the animal as the abjected other of the human tout court, but rather something like a distinction between bios and zoe that obtains within the domain of domesticated animals itself.
~ Cary Wolfe
