This story originally appeared on Hakai and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
There was a time when we human beings used to put animals on trial for their alleged crimes against us. The earliest of these prosecutions in the Western tradition of law appears to be a case against moles in the Valle d’Aosta, Italy, in 824 AD, and legal actions continued into the 1900s. In the centuries between, a killer pig was dressed in human clothing and hanged in Falaise, France; Marseille put dolphins on trial for crimes unknown; and a rooster—in what must have been a case of mistaken identity—was