Timmy the humpback whale's stranded struggle exposes human hypocrisy on animal suffering

"How is Timmy doing?" That's the question morning TV shows have been asking for days, cutting live to the Baltic coast. He's breathing but otherwise showing little response, says a Greenpeace expert in the measured tones of an emergency physician.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's SPD Environment Minister Till Backhaus magnanimously declares that they will now leave the humpback whale—who was given a name by someone to ensure maximum emotional impact—alone so it can "recharge its strength."

This "whale drama" offers a striking case study in humanity's overbearing attitude toward animals. Humans, it seems, always know best what's good for a wild mammal that belongs to no one but nature itself. A sick whale strands on a sandbank, and self-appointed rescuers with a savior complex arrive with an excavator to clear its path to freedom. A night later, the whale is back on the sandbank. Could it be that the ailing animal is simply withdrawing to die—and that, with its navigation system clearly malfunctioning, it has no chance of survival anyway? Or, to put it more abstractly, isn't this just the natural cycle of life? Animals die all the time without humans even noticing.

Speaking of death: If people want to hone their empathy for animals, they might consider visiting a German slaughterhouse, where nearly 2 million chickens, turkeys, and other poultry, 120,000 pigs, and 8,000 cattle are killed every single day. The sight of wide, terror-stricken cow eyes as they're herded into the slaughterhall, or the screams of pigs when the captive bolt fails to stun them properly, should make it painfully clear even to the most hardened observer that animals are sentient beings. Live broadcasts from a slaughterhouse on morning TV might have a similarly salutary effect—though the anchor would have to ask: "How is Friederike the cow doing today?"