Domestic dogs, cats, hamsters or budgerigars should be rebranded as "companion animals" while owners should be known as "human carers", they insist.

Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned - who should instead be known as "free-living", the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.

The call comes from the editors of then Journal of Animal Ethics, a new academic publication devoted to the issue.

It is edited by the Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, a theologian and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, who once received an honorary degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury for his work promoting the rights of "God's sentient creatures".

In its first editorial, the journal - jointly published by Prof Linzey's centre and the University of Illinois in the US - condemns the use of terms such as "critters" and "beasts".