Animal Ethics in the Hitchhiker’s Guide

Two inter­est­ing episodes in Adams’ clas­sic sci­fi com­e­dy. The first, involv­ing a sen­tient cow-like ani­mal offer­ing parts of its own body for din­ner in a restaurant:

A large dairy ani­mal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox’s table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingra­ti­at­ing smile on its lips. “Good evening,” it lowed and sat back heav­i­ly on its haunch­es, “I am the main Dish of the Day. May I inter­est you in parts of my body?” It har­rumphed and gur­gled a bit, wrig­gled its hind quar­ters into a more com­fort­able posi­tion and gazed peace­ful­ly at them.

You mean this ani­mal actu­al­ly wants us to eat it?” whis­pered Tril­lian to Ford. “Me?” said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes. “I don’t mean any­thing.” “That’s absolute­ly hor­ri­ble,” exclaimed Arthur, “the most revolt­ing thing I’ve ever heard.” “What’s the prob­lem, Earth­man?” said Zaphod, now trans­fer­ring his atten­tion to the animal’s enor­mous rump. “I just don’t want to eat an ani­mal that’s stand­ing there invit­ing me to,” said Arthur. “It’s heart­less.” “Bet­ter than eat­ing an ani­mal that doesn’t want to be eat­en,” said Zaphod. “That’s not the point,” Arthur protest­ed. Then he thought about it for a moment. “All right,” he said, “maybe it is the point. I don’t care, I’m not going to think about it now. I’ll just … er …”

Look,” said Zaphod, “we want to eat, we don’t want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hur­ry. We haven’t eat­en in five hun­dred and sev­en­ty-six thou­sand mil­lion years.” The ani­mal stag­gered to its feet. It gave a mel­low gur­gle. “A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good,” it said. “I’ll just nip off and shoot myself.” He turned and gave a friend­ly wink to Arthur. “Don’t wor­ry, sir,” he said, “I’ll be very humane.” It wad­dled unhur­ried­ly off to the kitchen.

The sec­ond, towards the end of the last book, involves lib­er­at­ing zoo ani­mals, foie gras and eth­i­cal laziness:

They checked into a large two-bed­room suite at the Lang­ham. Mys­te­ri­ous­ly, Ford’s Dine-O-Charge card, issued on a plan­et over five thou­sand light years away, seemed to present the hotel’s com­put­er with no prob­lems. Ford hit the phones straight away while Arthur attempt­ed to locate the tele­vi­sion. “Okay,” said Ford. “I want to order up some mar­gar­i­tas, please. Cou­ple of pitch­ers. Cou­ple of chef’s sal­ads. And as much foie gras as you’ve got. And also Lon­don Zoo.

That’s what I said,” said Ford into the phone. “Lon­don Zoo. Just charge it to the room.

Are you hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing the Eng­lish lan­guage?” con­tin­ued Ford. “It’s the zoo just up the road from here. I don’t care if it’s closed this evening. I don’t want to buy a tick­et, I just want to buy the zoo. I don’t care if you’re busy. This is room ser­vice, I’m in a room and I want some ser­vice. Got a piece of paper? Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. All the ani­mals that can be safe­ly returned to the wild, return them. Set up some good teams of peo­ple to mon­i­tor their progress in the wild, see that they’re doing okay.”

Just a sec­ond,” Ford shout­ed, and returned to his nego­ti­a­tions with room ser­vice. “Then we’ll need some nat­ur­al reserves for the ani­mals that can’t hack it in the wild,” he said. “Set up a team to work out the best places to do that. We might need to buy some­where like Zaire and maybe some islands. Mada­gas­car. Baf­fin. Suma­tra. Those kind of places. We’ll need a wide vari­ety of habi­tats. Look, I don’t see why you’re see­ing this as a prob­lem. Learn to del­e­gate. Hire who­ev­er you want. Get onto it. I think you’ll find my cred­it is good. And blue cheese dress­ing on the sal­ad. Thank you.” He put the phone down and went through to Arthur, who was sit­ting on the edge of his bed watch­ing television.

I ordered us some foie gras,” said Ford. “What?” said Arthur, whose atten­tion was entire­ly focused on the tele­vi­sion. “I said I ordered us some foie gras.” “Oh,” said Arthur, vague­ly. “Um, I always feel a bit bad about foie gras. Bit cru­el to the geese, isn’t it?” “Fuck ’em,” said Ford, slump­ing on the bed. “You can’t care about every damn thing.”

Well, that’s all very well for you to say, but—” “Drop it!” said Ford. “If you don’t like it I’ll have yours.

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.