Highlights of Animal Ethics activities in 2025

2025 has been a transformative year for Animal Ethics. We’ve expanded our reach by launching materials in new formats, adding languages, and strengthening our campaigns with targeted workshops, talks, and film screenings around the world. From impactful documentaries to university courses, here’s a look at what we accomplished together this year:

• Release of our first documentary: Seantience
• Production in Hindi of the video course on wild animal suffering
• Publication of our website in a new language, Japanese
• More than 20 talks worldwide and 10 Seantience screenings
• 6 interviews for radio and podcasts
• 8 courses at Brazilian universities
• 1 book, 8 web articles, and 2 reports

Animal Ethics campaigns

1. Seantience: the documentary and the campaign

The documentary

In October, we launched Seantience, a short documentary produced by Animal Ethics and directed by Xiana Castro. The documentary features interviews with scientists and philosophers who present the latest scientific evidence on the sentience of aquatic animals, including invertebrates.

The documentary was selected for the International Environmental Film Festival—SUNCINE and awarded the prize for best cinematography at the International Animal and Environmental Film Festival (FICAA). It’s available in English, Spanish, and soon in Chinese.

The campaign

Seantience is also the title of our international campaign that aims to raise awareness about one of the most neglected and exploited groups of animals: aquatic animals, particularly invertebrates. The campaign consists of:

• The documentary, which highlights the reality of these animals
• Two rigorous and accessible reports on the sentience of aquatic animals
• The new seantience.org website, which hosts this information and various opportunities for contribution in creating awareness about this issue

In the coming months, we’ll be disseminating the campaign in various regions of Europe, Asia, and America, including screenings of the documentary. Screenings have already taken place in different cities in Spain, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and China.

On December 10, International Animal Rights Day, we’ll host an online screening of the documentary on our YouTube channel, followed by a Q&A session with Mart Gross, professor of biology at the University of Toronto and one of the scientists interviewed in Seantience.

On the same day, we’ll hold another screening on our Spanish YouTube channel and also a livestream on our Portuguese YouTube channel, presenting in detail the report Sentience in decapod crustaceans: Scientific aspects and ethical implications, which is also part of the campaign.

2. Campaign to promote the course on wild animal suffering in Hindi

We also launched a campaign to promote the first part of our video course in Hindi on wild animal suffering. The new 12 videos cover the situation of animals in the wild as individuals, including the many harms they suffer, and ways of improving their situation, some of which are already being done.

As part of our Hindi course promotion efforts, we’re delivering talks at various universities, such as multiple colleges of  Delhi University, while also spreading this information to other animal advocates in India through presenting at conferences like AVA India, and offering online courses in collaboration with Indian animal protection organizations such as Animal Climate Health Save India and FIAPO.

New articles on our website

This year, we published several new articles on our website exploring key ethical questions about nonhuman animals:

• Should we use environmentalist and anthropocentric arguments to defend animals?
• Sentience in aquatic animals: FAQ on World Day for the End of Fishing and Fish Farming
• Legal status of nonhuman animals in India
• Why we ignore the suffering of wild animals: Understanding our biases
• Why the long-term future is so important
• Rethinking our relationship with insects on World Day for the End of Speciesism
• How to test whether an attitude is speciesist
• Dispelling common misconceptions about sentience-centered ethics

Talks, interviews, and podcast appearances

In 2025, Animal Ethics members took our work to audiences worldwide through speaking at events, appearing on podcasts, giving interviews, and hosting livestreams to engage directly with the public. Here’s where we’ve been doing:

Interviews and talks:

• Interview with Animal Ethics’ Asia Outreach Coordinator, Aditya S.K., on the program Nossos Irmãos Animais, on Radio Boa Nova (Brazil): “Aditya and Animal Ethics”
• Talk “Reimagining conservation: Why wild animal welfare matters” with Coexistence Consortium
• Talk “Wild Animal Welfare: Extending care and consideration for all wild animals” at Sadhana forest, Vegan forest festival (India)
• AI, Animals, and Digital Minds Conference 2025 attendance at the University College of London
• Talk “Longtermism approach to animal advocacy” at the PHAIR Conference, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Talk “Animals and Longtermism” at the Compassionate Future Summit (Berlin, Germany)
• Talk “Introduction to animal ethics: Exploring wild animal suffering and longtermist approach to animal advocacy” with Effektiver Altruismus Deutschland (Germany).
• Animal Ethics member Oscar Horta gave various talks and presentations in different Chinese cities on speciesism, animal ethics, veganism, and wild animal suffering.
• Talk “Crucial but neglected areas of work in Animal Advocacy in Asia” at AVA Summit India 2025
• Interview with Animal Ethics member Oscar Horta on the podcast Slightly Tofu, the first Chinese podcast about veganism.
• Talk “Animal advocacy in India” at the International Animal Rights Conference (Luxembourg)
• Talk “Animals, AI and Longtermism” at CARE 2025 (Poland)
• Talk by Animal Ethics member Oscar Horta, “Animal liberation: A longtermist approach” at the international conference Animal liberation, 1975-2025 and beyond (France)
• Talks on Wild Animal Suffering with EA Groups in Germany and New Zealand

Interviews, talks, and conferences in other languages:

• Talk “Animal ethics in the classroom” for IES Espiñeira students (Spain)
• Presentation of the educational project Animal ethics in the classroom at Rivas Vegan Fest (Spain)
• Various interviews such as “Moral awareness regarding animals” with Animal Ethics members on the program Nossos Irmãos Animais, on Radio Boa Nova (Brazil)
• Interview “De-extinction: right or wrong?” on the podcast Aonde a Ciência Acaba?(Brazil)
• Interview “Launch of the collection A journey through animal ethics” on the site Guia Vegano (Brazil)
• Talk “Wild animal suffering and its ethical implications” at the 2° Abril Laranja (Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil)

Courses and study groups in Brazil

Our educational work in Brazil continued to grow in 2025. Building on our presence since 2019, we offered eight courses in partnership with public universities, the  Instituto de Educação Antiespecista – INEA, and the Núcleo de Estudos Animalistas (FADIR) at the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU). Course topics included animal ethics foundations, environmentalism versus animal advocacy, wild animal welfare, and effective altruism and future suffering. Each course features live broadcasts via our YouTube channel to answer participants’ questions.

We also partnered with Effective Altruism Brazil to host a reading group. Over eight online sessions from February to May, participants discussed the de Luciano Cunha’s book A brief introduction to animal ethics.

All activities were free and open to the public, drawing more than 2,000 registrants combined.

Books from the collection: A Journey Through Animal Ethics

This year, we have promoted the publication of A Journey Through Animal Ethics, a comprehensive 12-volume collection created by Luciano Carlos Cunha.

The collection is hosted on Sentience and Ethics: Questions and Answers, a website funded and supported by Animal Ethics. Spanning more than 1,000 pages, this free resource offers a didactic yet rigorous analysis of animal ethics, from foundational questions to contemporary debates. The collection covers hundreds of topics across the field’s history and has already reached more than 7,000 downloads.

Coming soon: AI and Animals

We are delighted to announce that, before the year ends, we’ll release the first English version of our new documentary AI and Animals. The film explores how artificial intelligence can transform the lives of animals and how advocates can harness AI tools to amplify their impact.

Follow us to catch the premiere!

Support our work on Giving Tuesday and double your impact! Until January 7

Giving Tuesday is a global movement promoting generosity and solidarity. This year, it takes place on December 2. This is a great opportunity to donate to Animal Ethics. A generous supporter has offered to match all contributions up to $30,000, meaning your gift will go twice as far in supporting our mission to create a better world for all sentient beings.

None of the work we’ve shared here would be possible without supporters who believe we can change the world for animals. If our work resonates with you, please consider making a donation on Giving Tuesday. Your support will help us continue this vital work in 2026 and beyond.

Thank you for standing with us.