The topic of the final paper is the Discrepancy between the right on paper and the right in practice on the example of the application of the Animal Protection Act. This paper provides a theoretical and practical contribution in terms of animal rights and the importance of applying legal provisions that indirectly deal with animal protection. Analyzing the available literature, the development of animal rights and the transition of the understanding of animals as an irrelevant element of society to the stage where we are today where animals are subject to legal protection. The first protector of animal rights is considered to be Pythagoras, who in 491. pr. Kr believed that all living things that are born are related to each other. After Pythagoras' first mention of animal rights, a long period of time elapsed and it took theoretical work and research to recognize the legal subjectivity of animals. The tendency to increase the number of committed crimes related to torture, killing or other forms of inhuman treatment of animals is worrying and brings us to the main problem in the application of the Animal Protection Act in the Republic of Croatia, which refers to sentencing perpetrators. The main role of punishment against perpetrators of criminal offenses is special and general prevention, which does not achieve its one hundred percent purpose until the perpetrators are punished or prosecuted for the committed offenses.