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Like a tiger stalking its prey through the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, good legislation can quietly sneak up on you.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced yesterday that the polar bear would be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, ending months of speculation over the fate of this proposed listing.

When the NRA walks the halls of the U.S. Congress these days, it may stand for “No Rational Argument.”

The Humane Society of the United States yesterday released the next wave of its groundbreaking investigation into rampant mistreatment of sick and crippled cows. Last time, the downed animals were tormented and processed at a California slaughter plant for the National School Lunch Program.

The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance takes aim at animals when they’re most vulnerable. Polar bears in the Arctic, as their ice floes are vanishing, body weights are declining, and populations are dwindling. Mourning doves in states where they’ve been protected for decades as backyard songbirds, still nursing their young during September target practice. Endangered antelope stocked in fenced pens for captive trophy hunts, where they have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to escape.

The nationally syndicated comic strip MUTTS is read in more than 700 newspapers, and fans know that artist Patrick McDonnell turns his attention not only to humor, but also to the cruelties and challenges that face animals. He regularly features the stories of animals in shelters, and his new hardcover book, “Shelter Stories: Love. Guaranteed.,” celebrates these pets and the people who’ve rescued them.

When legislators want to duck an issue, they often say it’s outside their jurisdiction. Federal lawmakers tell you to deal with the states, and their state counterparts tell you to deal with the feds.

Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the U.S. as pontiff was historic for many reasons, but for animal advocates it was especially noteworthy because of the pope’s long history of advocating for kindness and mercy toward animals. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2002, for example, he criticized some of the worst abuses of factory farming, including battery cages and foie gras:

Christine Kenneally recently penned a thought-provoking "Washington Post" column about how alike people and animals are in so many ways. Chimpanzees are perhaps the most striking example, as our closest living relatives understand and construct sentences and favor different tools for hammering and fishing. As Kenneally wrote, “chimpanzees make sense of the world in many of the same ways we do. The implication is indisputable: Humans are not unique.”

Last week on Long Island, the law stood up for a duck named Circles. As far as I know, it was a first time that waterfowl rated such attention at the courthouse.

We can be delighted for the duck. And we can be thankful for our own sake. Increasingly, our society recognizes that cruelty extracts a terrible toll not just on the likes of Circles and other creatures, but on us humans too.