How can speciesism, be immoral for people, but moral for the animals that clearly prefer their own species? If animals are morally culpable for speciesism, can animals be held morally responsible for other things like murder?

Ethicists often distinguish moral objects from moral agents . Moral objets are those things whose preferences, interests, rights and so on should be taken into consideration in our moral deliberations, while moral agents are those things which can properly be held morally responsible (praised, blamed and so on) for their decisions and actions. Ethicists disagree about exactly which things fall into which category, but most agree that not all moral objects are moral agents. My infant niece, Evelyn, is a good example. Evelyn's interests in health, food and safety should surely be taken into account when I am deciding how to act, but it's also clear that she is not (yet) to be held morally responsible for her actions. Peter Singer, Tom Regan and other moral philosophers who argue against speciesism hold, in effect, that sentient non-human animals are moral objects, even though very few (if any) are moral agents. But holding that a pig's interests should be taken into consideration even though it is...

I recently "rescued" a sea gull with a broken wing. I approached it while I was riding my bike on a very busy road filled with speeding wood-laden trucks and various other vehicles. The bird ran from me as well as it could, dragging its broken wing behind it; and as sea gulls are much more efficient at flying than walking, this was quite a feat. I managed to scare the creature off the road as well as I could, as I felt it was much safer in the fields beside the road, than on the road. Then I went home, feeling a little better with myself, as I believed I had helped the creature. The next morning I was driving my Jeep to work along the same road, and lo and behold, there was the same (at least I think it was) gull wending its way along the road, a full 3/4 kms further along from where it was the night before. It had survived a full twelve hours on a very busy roadway. I was carrying a cat cage in the back of the vehicle, and I successfully captured the bird. My philosophical quandary occurred shortly...

By my lights, both you and the vet did exactly the right things. You initially helped the bird help itself (by putting it out of harm's way), and then, when that seemed insufficient, took it to a place where you thought it could get medical attention. In my view, the vet also did the right thing in euthanizing the gull on his or her considered judgment that any other course of action would result in much greater suffering. Your qualms seem really to be with euthanasia, and your role in enabling it. One question to ask is how you think the gull (or the world) would have been better had the the gull not been euthanized, but rather left, in all likelihood, to die much more painfully a few days later. Many would argue that the euthanasia maximized the quality if not the length of the gull's life. The gull may have died more naturally and with more dignity if let be, but this is debatable I think, and in any case difficult to weigh against the much greater suffering. We have to be careful here to strip away...