Quantifying the scale of wild animal suffering — from predation, disease, starvation, and parasitism — is a growing area of welfare philosophy and science with policy implications.
Wild animal suffering is a philosophically challenging but welfare-relevant subject. The romantic view of nature as harmonious obscures the reality that most wild animals die young and through processes — predation, starvation, parasitism — that involve suffering. The scale of wild animal suffering, particularly for invertebrates and r-strategist species with enormous population sizes and high mortality rates, may dwarf the suffering caused by human animal use. This does not diminish the importance of addressing farmed animal welfare, but it does suggest that a complete account of animal suffering must eventually engage with the natural world as well as human-managed systems.