To help establish 2025 as the banner year for animal rights, a new PETA ad showing a noble rat demanding freedom for all animals has popped up outside University College London, where the heralded philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s body is preserved. The anti-speciesism ad supports Bentham’s famous quote, “The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withheld from them but by the hand of tyranny… The question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?”

“Rats and other animals are individuals who value their lives and have their own desires, just like we do, and they don’t deserve to be treated as a means to humans’ ends,” says PETA Vice President of Programmes Elisa Allen. “PETA encourages everyone to make 2025 the year they say no to exploiting animals for food, fashion, experiments or entertainment, and otherwise harming and killing others who weren’t born human.”

Rats are altruistic, good-natured, and often giggle when tickled. But speciesism – the belief that, despite their extraordinary talents and abilities, all other animal species are inferior to humans – justifies subjecting them to cruel and pointless experiments, such as the forced swim test, in which they are dropped into beakers of water and made to paddle for their lives.

Human supremacy also justifies killing billions of cows, chickens, pigs, and others for food, mutilating sheep for their wool, and trapping orcas in tiny tanks and forcing them to perform tricks. PETA encourages everyone to combat this systematic oppression by buying cosmetics that weren’t tested on animals, choosing vegan food and fashion, staying away from marine parks, and otherwise rejecting all animal exploitation.

PETA’s motto reads, “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” The animal protection group points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.