Except perhaps for far-reaching metaphysical reasons (e.g., an antecedent commitment to idealism), few would deny the very existence of animals, nor the fact that a perfectly good specimen of the species Homo sapiens is presently seated in your chair.
And the entire environment, the "living earth" itself, has something like a life of its own, containing but not reducible to the biotic existence of animals and plants (Walden, XVII).
Besides, the demonstration of the existence of animals as persistent carriers [ 48] or with a subclinical state of the disease [ 47], already described in mice with high titers of infection but no symptoms [ 49], should be borne in mind.
Moreover, since individual buffalo and buffalo herds are known to carry and maintain FMDV infections for a long time [ 11], it is likely that they are continuously exposed to FMDVs, resulting in the existence of animals with multiple previous infections by the virus.
The publication of these experiments gave rise to Galvani's controversy with Volta, who denied the existence of animal electricity after discovering that there exists a potential difference between any couple of dissimilar conductors.
Animal behaviourists such as Stamp Dawkins do not deny the existence of animal consciousness but say that theories about it cannot be tested in the real world.
With his prodigious skills as an illustrator, the naturalist artist Walton Ford has, over a relatively short time, produced a remarkable, at times repetitious but deeply reflective group of works on themes like colonialism, the tradition of naturalist illustration and the existence of animal species.
I am not saying that the existence of animal rights entails that fetuses have rights, or vice versa (there are some differences between fetuses and animals); I am only saying that, if animals have rights, it is much more likely that fetuses do, and vice versa.
The existence of animal personality is well-established across a wide range of species, with the majority of evidence for this being obtained from individuals held in captivity.
Like altruistic behaviors, acts of punishment may lower individual fitness, so the existence of animal punishment is a puzzle for biologists.
Major evo-devo concepts such as constraint, evolvability, homology, canalization, integration and modularity, heterochrony, and other concepts are based on the existence of animal body plans.
