Nick Jones

In the last blog I commented on some of the thorny ethical issues that will arise as human augmentation technology becomes more mature. But why should we stop at humans? Why not augment our pets as well? In fact two of our three cats already have chips implanted, but only for identification purposes. Technologically however, if you could implant something into a human to improve their intellectual or physical performance it seems likely it would also work on cats, physiologically they’re not that different to us and are already used as research subjects for vision implants.

I often feel that a bit of feline intellectual augmentation wouldn’t be a bad idea. One of our cats is possibly the most stupid feline in the entire universe. Although it’s fair to say there is fierce competition for that title, whenever I say that to other cat owners I get comments like: “rubbish, let me tell you what MY cat did the other day….”. Even before feline brainpower boosting chips become available there’s a clear need for intelligence tests to apply to kittens in the refuge before you agree to give them a home.

But back to ethics. Would PETA approve of, or criticise, the idea of feline augmentation? Would this be an unwarranted intrusion into the rights of animals by humans making morally dubious value judgements about what would benefit cats? Or would it be a generous act by humanity to reduce the intellectual differential between cats and ourselves, so empowering cats to take responsibility for their own future. But if we augmented cats they’d likely become even better able to catch birds; so would that be a criminal act from the perspective of the birds? Would we have to augment them too to maintain parity? I can foresee some heated debates amongst animal rights supporters in the future.

One of the great things about the Internet is that however weird your opinions you can always find someone who has gone a few steps further. Some time back I discovered an article whose writer claimed that not only should we augment our pets, but we had a moral duty to augment our pets, because only then would they be intelligent enough to make a reasoned decision about whether or not they wanted to be augmented.