system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can (some) non-human animals have moral duties?

Hello community, 

The whole animal rights discussion has got me thinking: If non-human animals can have rights (for example, based on their cognitive and emotional abilities) does this also imply they can have duties? Maybe even duties towards us if we consider that their rights consist of our duties towards them?

Could somebody give me some initial ideas and directions to explore? If so, that would be great. 

Thanks in advance!
gpt
Nonhuman animals, like human animals with cognitive impairments, typically would qualify as moral *patients*. In this sense, animals would get certain rights (such as the right to not be killed in cases where it is not necessary to do so), but would not have a moral responsibility to not kill others.

It gets into a gray area when you get into primates, as there is some evidence that some of them have the level of cognition necessary to understand simple moral principles, but for the most part animals would not have moral duties. This would not disqualify them from having right though, unless we were working exclusively under a social-contract type of morality.