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Cats are "biologically designed to kill and eat flesh" but have you ever seen what cats do to the animals they capture for food? On the other hand, humans don't
by cheese_goddess 5y ago
Cats are "biologically designed to kill and eat flesh" but have you ever seen
what cats do to the animals they capture for food? On the other hand, humans
don't, as a rule torture our food and we usually kill our food before we eat it.
Not all meat-eating animals have the same kind of behaviour toward their prey.
Humans are "biologically designed" to love other animals and care for them.
Not in an Elmyra Duff kind of way, but in the way that has allowed us to tame
and domesticate the wild ancestors of the animals we still live with. In the
same way that our animals have a docile and calm nature that allows them to be
domesticated, we have a caring and loving nature that allows us to domesticate
them. We are not lions. A lion could not domesticate a flock of sheep. It would
just fall on the sheep and slaughter them, on the first day. Without our love
for animals, which is just as ingrained into us as our love of eating their
flesh, we wouldn't be who we are today, our civilisation wouldn't be what it is
today, our bodies and brains wouldn't be what they are today.
Those animals have given us so much, and they will continue to give us even
more. The least we can do is to treat them with respect and ensure they have a
dignified life and a dignified death.
- technothrasher 5y ago> A lion could not domesticate a flock of sheep. It would just fall on the sheep and slaughter them, on the first day. What a simplistic view of lions. I agree that lions don't really have the capacity to domesticate a flock of sheep, but to suggest that they're mindless killing machines that would meaninglessly mass slaughter sheep the first chance they got is weird. They're complicated creatures with rich emotional lives, and I've personally seen them plenty of times pass up opportunities to kill because there was no point. Interestingly, there's also lots of youtube footage of lions and other big cats attempting to care for other animals (albeit typically ineptly).
- cheese_goddess 5y agoIt seems my views are not simplistic enough to not warrant a snotty response from someone who knows so much better. Oh, what tortured lives we simple folk must live...
- aerostable_slug 5y agoLions among other large cats regularly engage in surplus killing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing A local rancher lost a number of sheep to a mountain lion that apparently enjoyed surplus killing. After the first spree, the cat was captured, collared, and relocated but it came back and took out 11 more sheep plus an alpaca, after which it was culled by the state. Big cats are certainly interesting creatures, but it would be foolish to assume a given cat would care for something, eat it, or kill it for sport. They are all possible outcomes, and depending upon one's perception of cat psychology is a good way to get Roy Horn'ed and end up in a wheelchair.
- Someone 5y agoNitpick: a mountain lion isn’t a lion; it just looks like a female lion, leading to confusion when they were first seen by Europeans in the Americas (https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-cougar-or-puma-called-a-lion-as-well https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-cougar-or-puma-called-a-lio... has a nice pair of photos) The Wikipedia page also has weak evidence for lions being involved in surplus killing. It has two footnotes. http://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/mbe.2018031 http://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/mbe.2018031 is a simulation, and the abstract (article is paywalled) of https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1972.tb04087.x https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... only mentions “foxes, spotted hyenas and other carnivores”, and hints it may only happen when prey is easily available (as with a fox in a hen house, I suppose) I think neither article claims it happens regularly.