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couple issues with this post: - it's trivial to find a class of animals that doesn't eat flesh (e.g. elephant) so i'm assuming you meant to say omnivore here
by maximente 7y ago
couple issues with this post:
- it's trivial to find a class of animals that doesn't eat flesh (e.g. elephant) so i'm assuming you meant to say omnivore here
- evolution doesn't "make" things in that way. it could be that it provided an advantage, it could be that it is bound to something else that provided an advantage, or it could be completely coincidental.
for example, suppose our optimal setup is eating 100% fresh spinach but we can live at 80% by eating non-spinach stuff including meat. so in that sense, we weren't "made" to eat meat. it's just adaptive for reproduction.
from a layman's point of view it was probably advantageous to be able to eat both things, but our guts do more closely resemble herbivores than omnivores (gorillas e.g. are almost purely herbivores)
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoI don't understand. I did say "omnivores". "Make" is a metaphor. I just don't like to use the turn of phrase "we evolved to do X" because it leads to just-so stories. And it's common to use vague evolutionary arguments to try and support all sorts of personal opinions: "We evolved to do X so we should not do Y", etc. The point is that we are an animal that eats other animals and plants. I don't think that this is any more controversial than saying that a tiger is an animal that eats other animals and a sheep is an animal that eats grasses. So, as animals that eat other animals and plants- what is wrong with us eating other animals?
- maximente 7y ago> Note also that, as animals, we are not plant-eaters: we can't survive on plant matter alone. it clearly makes the argument "as animals, we are not plant eaters". did you really mean animals? or did you mean omnivores?
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoI don't understand the source of the confusion. We are animals that eat plants and other animals, so we are omnivores. What is unclear or controversial about this?