DEUT1307 In The Golden Rule, Professor Jeffrey Wattles concludes that "golden rule thinking may ... be characterized as recognizing moral implications in the fact that others are like oneself" (page 42). Obviously, this is a basis for applying the Golden Rule in our interactions with other human beings. But while biblical ethics presupposes a deep chasm in intelligence and free will between human beings and animals, there are also significant similarities (particularly in the physical sphere), and the Golden Rule should apply in those areas as well. Thus, animals hate pain, and therefore, as we have seen, the Torah prohibits unnecessary pain, such as that brought about by yoking a weaker animal to a stronger one. And animals, like humans, crave food, hence it is forbidden, as noted, to muzzle an animal working in the field, just as it is prohibited to prevent a laborer working in the field from eating [this and next verse].