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Timeline of wild-animal suffering

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| 1874 || || Publication || {{w|John Stuart Mill}} || John Stuart Mill's essay "On Nature" is published posthumously. The essay discusses the amorality and cruelty of nature and argues that humans should struggle against it.<ref>JS Mill. On Nature.</ref>
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| 1906 || || Publication || {{w|J. Howard Moore}} || In his book ''{{w|The Universal Kinship}}'', J. Howard Moore argued that the egoism of sentient beings—a product of natural selection—which leads them to exploit their sentient fellows, was the most mournful fact of existence, and speculated whether a sufficiently sympathetic human could significantly improve this situation if given the chance.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Moore|first=J. Howard (John Howard)|url=http://archive.org/details/universalkinship00moor|title=The Universal Kinship|publisher=Charles H. Kerr & Co.|year=1906|isbn=|location=Chicago|pages=249–250|quote= The preponderance of egoism in the natures of living beings is the most mournful and immense fact in the phenomena of conscious life. It has made the world the kind of world it would have been had the gods actually emptied their wrath vials upon it. Brotherhood is anomalous, and, even in its highest manifestations, is but the expression of a veiled and calculating egoism. Inhumanity is everywhere. The whole planet is steeped in it. Every creature faces an inhospitable universeful, and every life is a campaign. It has all come about as a result of the mindless and inhuman manner in which life has been developed on the earth. It has been said that an individual of unlimited faculties and infinite goodness and power made this world and endowed it with ways of acting, and that this individual, as the world's executive, continues to determine its phenomena by inspiring the order of its events. But one cannot help thinking sometimes, when, in his more daring and vivid moments, he comes to comprehend the real character and condition of the world, what a discrepancy exists between the reputation of this builder and his works, and cannot help wondering whether an ordinary human being with only common-sense and insight and an average concern for the welfare of the world would not make a great improvement in terrestrial affairs if he only had the opportunity for a while.}}</ref>
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| 1973 || {{dts|June 14}} || Publication || {{w|Peter Singer}} || Peter Singer responds to a question about predation, arguing against interference in practice because the long-term consequences of intervention cannot be predicted. However, he accepts that intervention to reduce wild-animal suffering would be morally justified if one could be reasonably confident that the long-term effects would be positive.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Singer|first1=Peter|title=Food for Thought|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/jun/14/food-for-thought/|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180509205824/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/06/14/food-for-thought/<!--https://archive.fo/WkUXS-->|archivedate=2018-05-09|deadurl=no|journal=The New York Review of Books|date=June 14, 1973}}</ref>
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