Newkirk founded PETA in March 1980 with fellow animal rights activist Alex Pacheco.

Newkirk attended a convent boarding school in the Himalayas for well-to-do Indian nationals and non-natives.

[8] She tells the story of an early experience of trying to rescue an animal, when she heard laughter in the alleyway behind the family home in New Delhi.

had bound a dog's legs, muzzled him, then lowered him into a muddy ditch, laughing as they watched him try to escape.

[11][12] When she was eighteen, the family moved to Florida, where her father worked on designing bombing systems for the United States Air Force.

[7]She blew the whistle on the shelter and became an animal-protection officer, first for Montgomery County, Maryland, then for the District of Columbia.

She has said that Singer had put into words what she had felt intuitively for a long time, and she called Pacheco "Alex the Abdul", a name given to messengers in Islamic stories.

The modern animal rights movement had started in England eight years earlier, in 1972, when a group of Oxford University scholars, particularly philosophers, had formed the "Oxford group" to promote the idea that discrimination against individuals on the basis of their species is as irrational as discrimination on the basis of race or sex.

Newkirk was older, practical, and very organized, whereas Pacheco spent his time in white painter's overalls eating vegetarian hot dogs straight from the can.

[9]: 18 The case of the Silver Spring monkeys, an animal-research controversy that lasted ten years, transformed PETA from just Newkirk, Pacheco, and a small group of friends into an international movement.

[16] In mid-1981, Pacheco took a job as a volunteer inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, so that he and Newkirk would have some firsthand knowledge on which to base their campaigns.

He had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to their arms and legs, then used physical restraint, electric shock, and withholding of food to force them to use the limbs.

[17] Pacheco repeatedly went into the lab at night to take photographs and to escort scientists, including veterinarians and a primatologist, through it to secure their testimony.

[18] Newkirk lay crouched on the back seat of a car outside, hidden under a large cardboard box with holes for her eyes, using a walkie-talkie from a toy store to alert Pacheco if anyone else entered the building.

The judge found Taub guilty of six counts of cruelty to animals for failing to provide adequate veterinary care and fined him $3,000.

[15] Newkirk has been criticized for publicizing actions carried out in the name of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

During the 1995 trial of Rod Coronado, in connection with an arson attack at Michigan State University (MSU), U.S. Attorney Michael Dettmer alleged that Newkirk had arranged, in advance of the attack, to have Coronado send her stolen documents from the university and a videotape of the action.

In her will, for example, she has asked that her skin be turned into wallets, her feet into umbrella stands, and her flesh into "Newkirk Nuggets", then grilled on a barbecue.

When she is not proselytizing, denouncing, or attacking the ninety-nine per cent of humanity that sees the world differently from the way she does, she is good company.

And she becomes more disliked with every peta [sic] stunt; she can't walk through an airport without accosting any woman who is wearing fur.

She no longer takes vacations in tropical or poor countries like Mexico, because "I spend the whole time rescuing animals from their horrid owners.

"[7]Specter also questioned her about a 2003 letter that she wrote to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to protest the use of a donkey as a suicide bomber.

Sam Simon said in an interview: "I learned about animal rights from my favorite person in the whole world, Ingrid Newkirk at PETA.

"[26] Newkirk has been accused of employing a double standard for her organization's practice of euthanizing animals for which it has neither the space nor resources to shelter.

Debra Saunders, a critic of Newkirk, argues that "PETA assails other parties for killing animals for food or research.