Imagine if a film crew, without your permission, stormed into your home and filmed you in your most private moments. Makers of wildlife documentaries do just that to non-human animals, and are denying these animals their right to privacy, according to new research published in the current issue of Continuum: Journal of

Media and Cultural Studies.

(Tortoises mating. Zoos might also deny animals their right to privacy, since they force animals to do in public what they might otherwise do in private. Wikimedia Commons image)

Animals obviously cannot sign release forms, but Brett Mills from the University of East Anglia still argues that animals have a right to privacy, which he acknowledges is a challenge for production teams.

“The aim of (my) research is to encourage debate, especially within

the contemporary environmental context where it is now commonplace for

us to question the impact of human movement and behavior around the

globe,” explained Mills, a senior lecturer in the School of Film and

Television Studies. “In addition, though, perhaps there is an argument

for some species, in some circumstances, not to be filmed. At the moment

it seems that such arguments are never put forward.”

He added, “This is an important debate for two reasons. Firstly,

wildlife documentaries are usually seen as important pieces of public

service broadcasting, and it's therefore worth us thinking about the

ethical contexts within which such productions exist. Secondly, such

documentaries are the key way in which many people 'encounter' a range

of species from all over the globe, and so they therefore contribute to

how we think about other species and human/animal interactions. By

exploring what wildlife documentaries do, and how they do it, I hope to

contribute to environmental debates at a time when the global effects of

human behavior are rightly under scrutiny.”

For our own species, we generally make a distinction between what is public and private, although paparazzi often cross the line. Nevertheless, we can still take legal action or speak out against violations. At the heart of this argument is: Do animals even have a right to privacy?

Dr Mills said, “It might at first seem odd to claim that animals

might have a right to privacy. Privacy, as it is commonly understood, is

a culturally human concept. The key idea is to think about animals in

terms of the public/private distinction. We can never really know if

animals are giving consent, but they often do engage in forms of behavior which suggest they'd rather not encounter humans, and we might

want to think about equating this with a desire for privacy."

(Japanese macaques. This species was featured in the Discovery Channel documentary series "Life." Wikimedia Commons image.)

“When confronted with such ‘secretive’ behavior the response of the

wildlife documentary is to read it as a challenge to be overcome with

the technologies of television. The question constantly posed by

wildlife documentaries is how animals should be filmed: they never ask

whether animals should be filmed at all.”

He mentions that a justification could be made for filming animals as they roam plains

and deserts and engage in hunting activities because these are ‘public’

events, which take place in locations that include many other animals,

and in which the animal being filmed makes no explicit attempt to not

be seen.

Yet animal activities which might equate with human notions of

the private are treated in a way which suggests the public/private

distinction does not hold, he believes. Mills said many species could be read as

desiring not to be seen. Animals in burrows and nests, for example, have constructed a

living space that equates with the human concept of the home, and

commonly do this in locations that are, by their very nature,

explicitly hidden, often for practical purposes.

“Human notions of

privacy which rest on ideas of location or activity are ignored in terms

of animals," said Mills. "It doesn’t matter what an animal does, or where it does it,

it will be deemed fair game for the documentary."

In addition to the filmmakers and the animals, there are two other groups involved in the matter. First, there are the broadcasters, which must decide whether or not to run the footage. Those decisions are often guided by regulations and are based on what the second group- the public- wants to see and deems to be acceptable. 

“While never made explicit, such regulations assume that such ethics

are applicable to humans only,” said Mills. “The ethical standards

applying to wildlife programs are predominately predicated on ensuring

that ‘audiences should never be deceived or misled by what they see or

hear,' that is the ‘contract with the viewer’ is prioritized over the

rights of the animals. In doing so, an assumption is made here about the

differences between humans and animals, which have been at the heart of

debates over animal rights and the ethical treatment of animals for

millennia."

“The environmental and educational aspects of wildlife documentaries

are assumed to trump ethical concerns about animals’ privacy. It is an

impressive piece of ethical manipulation, whereby privacy, so enshrined

within the concepts of rights for humans, becomes merely a ‘realm’ which

documentary makers can enter, justifying their actions as ones for the

benefit of the very species whose rights are being moralized away.”