In the wild, life is often far harsher than we tend to imagine. Many animals face constant threats—hunger, disease, injury, predation, and exposure—and a large number die young, often in prolonged and painful ways. Given the vast number of animals living in these conditions, this suffering may exist on an enormous scale, yet it remains largely overlooked.

Why is this? Is it justified? And what, if anything, should we do about wild animal suffering (WAS)? To help us answer this, let us turn to five questions that get at the heart of the issue.

1: Do wild animals really suffer?

There is good reason to think that many wild animals can feel pain. Converging lines of evidence point to this in many animals: shared evolutionary history, similar neural structures, and characteristic pain-related behaviors. This case is strongest for vertebrates, especially mammals, birds, and reptiles. Beyond vertebrates, uncertainty increases, but a precautionary argument becomes compelling. Species such as octopuses, shrimp, crabs, and insects have a nontrivial chance of being sentient. Given their vast numbers, we have reason to be concerned.

“Suffer” is stronger than “feel pain.” Yet wild animals are regularly exposed to the kinds of conditions that produce not merely pain, but extreme suffering in humans: predation, disease, starvation, parasitism, injury, and exposure. In this context, talk of suffering seems appropriate.

2. What makes suffering bad?

WAS may be neglected in large part because the suffering is hidden from view and we have a misleadingly romanticized picture of nature. But maybe there are good reasons to neglect WAS. Perhaps the suffering involved matters less than human suffering, or less than the suffering caused by injustice rather than natural processes.

On the other hand, a plausible answer to the above question is that suffering is bad because of how it feels. From the inside, it does not matter whether suffering is caused by human action or natural processes, by injustice or mere chance. It feels just as bad. So why should any of this matter from the outside? If suffering is bad because of how it feels, WAS is bad—just as bad as suffering in other contexts.

3. May we intervene in nature to reduce WAS?

Even if we think WAS is bad, that does not mean we should do anything about it. Perhaps it might even be wrong to intervene. Many people resist the idea that we may intervene in nature to reduce WAS. Perhaps there is inherent value in ecosystems or wilderness that makes it, other things equal, wrong to intervene in them. But could this value really outweigh immense suffering? That may seem implausible.

Of course, we already intervene in nature all the time, and most people probably think this can be good. We use medicine to stave off disease, and we intervene in nature to grow food and build houses so humans do not starve or freeze. If we refuse to extend similar concern to non-human animals, that may seem arbitrary, or if you prefer, speciesist. Interestingly, large segments of the public seem to agree.

A different qualm about intervention appeals to our inability to gain consent from wild animals. Perhaps we need their consent in order to intervene, just as we might demand it in the case of humans. Yet our pets also cannot consent to being helped, nor can small children or some humans with severe cognitive disabilities. And still, it often seems permissible to intervene in their lives to reduce their suffering.

There’s also the idea of implied consent, where consent is presumed because we think someone would plausibly agree if they were able to do so. We might think it permissible to care for an unconscious person on the grounds that they would consent to our doing so if they could. Perhaps something similar applies in the case of wild animals. Is it so unreasonable to think that wild animals in agony would consent, if only they could, to being helped?

4. Should we intervene?

Even if we may intervene to reduce WAS, should we? Some argue that we need not, since wild animals are not under our care and therefore not our responsibility; Perhaps helping them is optional rather than required; we don’t owe them it.

But what does it mean for someone to be “under our care”? Who counts as under our care, and how could we defensibly draw the line? Perhaps we are supposed to care primarily for our family and friends. Yet if we have a chance to save a drowning child who is a complete stranger, it seems we should do so. Maybe this case also convinces us that we should help distant strangers too, such as children in need around the world. If so, might we also have a responsibility to help wild animals? Species membership may seem just as arbitrary, morally speaking, as distance.

Perhaps we are obligated to help others because, quite simply, they are in need. We might also find the logic of the “veil of ignorance” compelling. The famous thought experiment asks what principles we would choose if we did not know in advance who we would be—rich or poor, healthy or sick, etc. But why not extend this to all sentient beings, including wild animals? If we did not know whether we ourselves would be born as a wild animal, would we really endorse a principle according to which others need not help us?

Perhaps morality leaves some room for favoring those with whom we share special relationships. Perhaps we have less responsibility to help wild animals than to help our family, friends, and fellow humans. Yet it seems quite plausible that we have at least some responsibility to help wild animals. Given the vast numbers of wild animals and the scale and severity of WAS, this might amount to a major responsibility in practice.

5. What could we do?

We finally arrive at what a skeptic may take to be her strongest challenge: but what could we even do? Wouldn’t we just make things worse? Perhaps we might: ecosystems are complex, and even well-intentioned interventions can backfire.

But many important problems are highly complex, from nuclear war to AI governance. And arguably there is more reason for optimism about interventions in this domain than in many others. One might think humans have a bad track record when it comes to intervening in nature, but that may be true mainly when economic incentives are misaligned with animal welfare.

When incentives do align, or when humans consciously take animal welfare into account, the picture may look considerably better. The eradication of the screwworm parasite in some parts of the world, the complete eradication of rinderpest, and ongoing wildlife vaccination programs, for instance, suggest that successful interventions are possible.

The risks here warrant a careful strategy, but not deprioritizing the issue altogether. They may also justify much more research. Welfare biology, which studies the wellbeing of animals in their environments, is still in its infancy and remains highly neglected. We lack even basic knowledge about the quality of wild animal lives and the nature and intensity of their pain. We also remain ignorant about the long-term impacts of many interventions.

Conclusion

Together, these questions suggest that we should take WAS seriously and consider prioritizing it. Perhaps the most robust response, at least for now, is investing in more research into the issue. Increasing public awareness also seems valuable: the animal movement has been quite successful in raising concern for farmed and domesticated animals. More deliberate inclusion of wild animals might help to bring greater attention to WAS and its scale. But public awareness campaigns must proceed carefully. Given the complexity of ecosystems, interventions can backfire and cause unintended harms. So any movement in this area should focus on targeted, evidence-based interventions and emphasize the need for more research on how we can help wild animals.