>The bear does not lament its catch, the whale does not wonder at the inner life of a fish it accidentally swallows.
Neither do humans, of course. Do you stop and grieve for the chicken you just grilled and ate?
Obviously animals are capable of recognizing that other creatures have emotions, too--any dog or cat owner can tell you that. But clearly, like us, they don't always choose empathy.
>It's not quite what you're looking for, but animals have at least been shown to exhibit preference of what species animals they will eat.
Occam's razor says that most wild animals exhibit preference of what species they'll eat based on taste and availability of food, not because of ethics. I said most because I'm not a wildlife biologist and there always seems to be strange outliers, but I have a hard time believing an omnivore/carnivore, such as a bear, would willingly choose vegetation 100% of the time because of ethics when there's plenty of game of its preference to eat.
>Consider a dog which has been raised around cats, which might hunt a rabbit but not another cat.
Most domesticated dogs that were raised alongside cats won't eat them because they've learned that they're not allowed to. The ones that do attack children and other pets are frequently euthanized.
>Dogs raised alongside cats never even try to eat them to begin with. You don't need to teach them it's not allowed.
That's an absurd statement. While tempers of dogs vary from one to the next just like humans, I vehemently disagree to the extent that I'm hesitant to believe you've ever raised a puppy, or even have been exposed to many dogs for that matter. Plenty of pet dogs behave more like their wolf ancestors than others.
I've raised dozens of dogs, and like humans, some need some coaching about good behavior and some get along just fine without ever needing discipline.
That's a separate issue from the one I raised, namely that animals display species-oriented preference in their dietary range, and that for some animals this preference can be emotionally/socially based.
>animals display species-oriented preference in their dietary range, and that for some animals this preference can be emotionally/socially based.
If there is any species-oriented preferences outside of taste and availability, it's purely out of a symbiotic relationship that they benefit from. Wolves aren't going to stop hunting deer unless the deer somehow provide additional sources of food that the wolves realize only exists because of the deer's help.
I've read about wolves that they eat only the meat they are taught to eat (and different pack of wolves in different places hunt different animals.)
So a wolf may literally starve to death while sitting near a corpse of some animal if it doesn't know it can eat it. May happen to pups if their pack dies or to wolves who were brought up in captivity.
In many cases, I have observed that an emotional connection with another animal is enough to prevent hunting of either just the animal itself or in some cases the entire species. In a more extreme example I've known chickens to run amok and play with dogs like they were one of their own.
And not just dogs. I have trained cats to become friendly to individual rats (I think instinct is too strong), and I have seen some species express either preference or disdain for other species. My personal analysis is that this has more to do with social and emotional conditioning, a true recognition of another animal as "friendly" despite not offering a symbiotic relationship, rather than directly as a result of behavioral conditioning with positive/negative stimulus.
I think a better indicator of the difference between us and pets is that we keep pets, and further, that we sometimes keep pets purely for emotional benefits. Incidences of non-humans keeping other animals as pets is extremely rare and seemingly limited to primates. [0] I think that says a lot about our psychology. But it's a little pointless to debate about whether other mammals experience meaningful emotions. They do. Meaningful emotions are actionable. That's why our emotions seem meaningful.
> If there is any species-oriented preferences outside of taste and availability, it's purely out of a symbiotic relationship that they benefit from.
Isn’t that how humans operate as well? People keep pets that they get satisfaction from but we don’t eat our pets.
Then you have the debate of whether true altruism exists or whether people do even our most selfless acts because of the endorphin rush we get from helping others.
Hypocrisyis when your lifestyle is a full blown war on whole ecosystems and kills a dozen animals per year and you pretend to deeply care- for one animal, chosen by traits that could best be described as missguided antromorphism.
Your pet would eat you, if you had a stroke in your flat- lying helpless on the floor. All the nice moments, are just a function of the surpulus, that is provided by humanity via ecocide.
My daughter killed a small rabbit when she was 4 year old. I was not there but the story is that mom tried to take it away from her and she got overly violent trying to snatch it back out of mom's hands. Clearly she did not have the bunny's welfare in mind in this moment or she would have been more gentle. I don't see a difference between her actions/motivations and that of an overly rambunctious puppy. In general, my daughter is a very kind, compassionate, caring person.
I would eat any living organism except for another human and close pets whom mean a whole lot to me emotionally and whom carry transitional memories that my brain wishes to keep.
Not eating another human has nothing to do with the fact that we share a species and everything to do with the conscious psychological decision to have respect for the life of all highly cognitive beings which can live complex lives, and not arrogantly place my own need for survival higher than theirs...
But nuances aside, fundamentally I don't differ from the deer, birds, or squirrels in that I'm wired to do almost anything necessary to satisfy my hunger impulse. So I'm not sure how what you're saying makes any difference.
Well, among omnivore animals it is certainly true that some individual animals would fit the literal definition of vegan. You probably wouldn't ever know about it unless it lived in a zoo, however.
When an adult chimp kills another adult chimp and doesn’t eat them, is that not because of beliefs? There are many animals that don’t eat everything that comes their way, and it is clearly a conscious decision.
I guess it depends on the chimp's religious beliefs. These unstaged chimps from BBC PlanetEarth clearly has no compunction about eating a rival gang's carcass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al-f_WWoHI4 .
I've put a road kill deer in my trunk, brought it home, strung it up under my deck and butchered it by myself in the night. I will tell you that was far more emotional for me than any shot I've ever taken with a rifle or shotgun.
The butchering can certainly be more emotional that the killing... it might 10 seconds to grab an axe and swing and then at least 30 minutes to cut the skin and pull it off of the body, to cut the body cavity open and to slice out the internal organs. It feels different than say preforming an autopsy in biology lab... you might have this moment as I have where you realize that the story you tell yourself, that you're a killer with a higher purpose, is just that -- a story. It doesn't make the animal you murdered feel any better about the fate it met at your hand.
I would guess it is a significantly different feeling in cultures where a large portion of the population kill what they eat. Even here where I live, in rural Pennsylvania, people will often look at you like you're a sociopath if you tell them you killed and skinned and ate any animal other than a deer, and yet, the first day of hunting season there were often many empty chairs in school because dad wanted to take his kid out to celebrate a time honored tradition. Those kids don't often cry when they kill their deer, they often feel an overwhelming sense of pride. And then they pay a processor $50 so that they don't have to do the hard dirty work themselves.
And had you not been in a position to have life explained to you, as your species did not have those kinds of descriptive ability, would you ha e ever felt the shame? The bear does not lament, as he was never told to.
Yes actually I do when it’s an animal I hunted myself, butchered and later prepared. I think you touch on the problem though, since grocery store meat does not elicit such response from me and everyone else.
There are plenty of indigenous cultures that show respect to their kill. And plenty of modern societies that show respect our say a prayer or give thanks before a meal.
It's possible to show empathy and respect without grief.
what's missing in this discussion is a mention that humans are well capable of wiping out other species and have done so fully aware. we're also perfectly capable of wiping each other out for no reason other than status.
I keep engaging in morbid thought experiments to figure out how certain people feel when they commit certain acts and whether I would be able to do the same provided the circumstances are hard enough. A few examples:
if I could blink my eye and all the valuables and money of everyone in this room/house etc would suddenly be mine, how much would that be, and would I do it?
if I could blink my eye and everyone in that room/building would vanish from the earth would I do it?
if I could blink my eye and 2/3 of the earths human population would be wiped out by x/y/z would I do it?
if I would be forced to work in a concentration camp being tasked with horrid acts against humans ... maybe with the alternative of being killed myself or having my family etc (spin that further what if I didn't have a family and just my dog that would be sacrificed if I were to refuse) ...
We talk about it all the time. We have industries built around it. We write books about it. Maybe bears could read our books? Whoops! They can't read! Or tie their shoes, or set the dinner table. Maybe we're special after all ...
Neither do humans, of course. Do you stop and grieve for the chicken you just grilled and ate?
Obviously animals are capable of recognizing that other creatures have emotions, too--any dog or cat owner can tell you that. But clearly, like us, they don't always choose empathy.