Jenna Huffstetler

English 1102-057
Due 2/25/14
Evaluative Bibliography

Bjorkenstam, Melissa. "Legal Rights for Animals - Petfinder." Petfinder Legal Rights for
Animals Comments. ASPCA Animal Watch, Spring 2001. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.petfinder.com/helping-pets/information-on-helping-pets/legal-rights-
animals/>.
This website article just gives the basic legal rights for animals. The introduction gives a
statement about courting legal change and gave an idea of what the anticruelty laws are and how
effective they are once they came into the situation. Two federal laws are given to regulate the
practices of research, entertainment, and slaughter of livestock which goes against abuse. There
are a few paragraphs focusing on court cases and justice for specific animals such as dolphins
and chimpanzees. At the very end of the article is a boxed quote from Melissa Bjorkenstam
herself telling how one can obtain legal rights. She first notes that any legal rights would come
through legislation, then she mentions how the decisions from court cases create common law,
and lastly she tells the reader that the third way to reach legal rights is to create an initiative.
I thought this website was a good overview of my specific topics involving animal rights
and animals themselves. I feel that this was a good start to look at how animals can obtain legal
rights, but more information is needed to back this information up where I can compare to other
cases. I liked that it used a sense of change of one topic to the next where all topic were covered.
I think this article is credible because I have heard of the group ASPCA before, but
because the website is not credited as an organization, I cannot be so sure. This article mentions
that the writer, Bjorkenstam, was a two-year law student who volunteers with the UCLA Animal
Welfare Assocition which shows somewhat credibility, bu I think this citation is the least
credible source out of all of my other ones.


DeGrazia, David. Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.
Print.
The only information taken from this book was from chapter six about keeping pets and
zoo animals. This chapter specifically focuses on the conditions of keeping animals in zoos and
the discussion of debates within the topic. He talks about how zoos vary in many ways such as
quality; this means that zoos vary in species preservation, in education, in research, and in having
both well-kept and unwell-kept exhibits for the visitors. He then mentions that there are four
major purposes of zoos and three of them involve human involvement: scientific research,
education, and entertainment purposes. He explains the pros and cons to those three major
purposes although they are of human interest. Questions were asked about if the goal of species
preservation justified further capture from the wild and if humans should keep animals in the
zoo. He explains both sides of species preservation on how captivity frequently causes death but
captivity can also increase genetic diversity for the endangered species. An explanation is given
on why animals should not be in zoos due to most zoos not fulfilling the adequate and basic
needs that the animals should have for survival in the wildlife aspect.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this chapter because it surprisingly had everything I
need when it comes to debates and what activists vs. scientists believe is morally right for
animals that cannot fend for themselves. I plan to refer back to this book a lot because the
whole debate issue is what I am focusing on for the inquiry project rather than just
questions and lists of answers. These topics are insightful due to the fact that they bring
up more questions and the debates make it hard for people to decide what to do which is
the whole point.
I know this is a credible source because I found this book through the UNC
Charlotte database and it was one of the few sources that was recommended by the
librarian Stephanie who helped me shape my question and focus for the project. This
book has a publication year of 2002 to prove its credibility. Also, DeGrazia had many
sources displayed in the index and reference sections from which his research was also
credible. He made sense of all his information by citing it and writing about each of his
findings.


Donahue, Jesse, and Erik Trump. The Politics of Zoos: Exotic Animals and Their
Protectors. DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 2006. Print.
I focused on using a few chapters of this book for species preservation, animal welfare
issues revisited and the conclusion of elephants and the trajectory of zoo politics. This book
brings up a lot of issues that have come about in the past and that have remained an issue until
this day. One chapter talks about taking endangered species out of the wild where the zoo fought
for the legal right to take limited numbers of endangered species and was able to do so; two court
cases were involved with this topic which will later be described further in the inquiry project.
Another chapter is about how welfare issues are revisited and the action that animal right activist
groups took in the early 90s to pass laws that would make facilities such as zoos more efficient
which would give animals more rights that are well deserved. The very last chapter is about
elephants and the trajectory of zoo politics; this chapter is important because it gives meaning to
the previous chapters within the book and it shows a focus on why elephants are so important
and how they can be helped.
I think this book will be very helpful for me to relate certain debates from the book above
about zoos with specific court cases and its stories within each chapter. I used this book for the
animals rights activist culture that I will be focusing on, comparing, and contrasting. I liked how
the book gradually provided court cases over time and how some related to specific animals
whereas other related to previous issues involving animal cruelty . This book is a good way to
show how animals rights have evolved over time and how some issues still remain in this era.
I know this is a credible source because this was found through the UNC Charlotte
database. The two authors published this book in 2006 and had both an index section of their
sources and notes of sources for each chapter that they referred to a specific law, person, or court
case.

Kalof, Linda. A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity. Vol. 1. Oxford: Berg, 2007.
Print.
This book mainly focuses on history and myths of domestication and animals themselves.
There is a referral back to how animals were used for entertainment purposes such as captivity
and public slaughter. Information is given about almost every animal and its origin. Kalof talked
about how elephants are the largest animal and is the closest to human regarding intelligence.
Elephants are known to have characteristics that are hard to even find in man; these qualities
include justice, honesty, respect, and loyalty. The importance of animals is written and told that
humans ironically dont think of their capacities to where one solely bases off their superiority.
I personally think that this book may not have as much information as I wanted but I
found a few interesting things listed in the previous paragraph that I think can be useful for both
my history and my reasoning of why people domesticated animals long ago and their motivation.
The importance of elephants stood out to me which made me sure that I would use that animal as
a focus for my inquiry. I know elephants were used for warfare which may have given them the
qualities that are so rare compared to other animals.
This book is also just as credible as the other books because I once again found it through
the UNC Charlotte database which I found relating to my topic when looking up key words. Its
publication date was in 2007 edited by Linda Kalof. Kalof used all of the following that shows
credibility: notes of sources for each chapter, contributions to specific people, and an index of all
myths and history of animals.

Lear, Jessica. "Our Furry Friends: The History of Animal Domestication | JYI
The Premier Undergraduate Research Journal." JYI The Premier Undergraduate
Research Journal. Journal of Young Investigators Science, Feb. 2012. Web. 24
Mar. 2014. <http://www.jyi.org /issue/our-furry-friends/>.
This article starts off with the history of how domestication started with dogs and how
research told that domestication could have started before that time period but evidence has not
yet been found. Pet domestications are mentioned on how dogs and cats became really important
with their encounter with humans. Farm domestications were then mentioned on how cattle and
horses were used for human purposes which has helped many over the centuries. The author
mentions the unique domestications of elephants and honeybees; elephants were used for
transportation along with zoos and circuses while honeybees were used to gain honey because it
was a sough-out product for different tribes. It also includes the downsides of domestication and
six criteria that an animal must meet in order to be domesticated.
This article made a lot of good points and interesting information on how domestication
started with dogs about 14,000 years ago which is thought to be even earlier but evidence has not
been found yet. This article definitely relates to my topic because of the history that I can
mention for domestication along with its downsides that will give good relations to the views of
the animal rights activists culture that I will be focusing on. The six criteria given in the article
for domestication will be a great way to see if the animals of the zoo that I explore have that
criteria for domestication; this will be good for my essay.
I would definitely say that this article is credible because it has an ending citation of
.org which was one of the first things that I noticed. This article was published online under
the scholarly work of the Journal of Young Investigators by a woman writer named Jessica Lear.
It gives the date of publication (February 2012) and tells the institution in which she is from
(West Virginia University).