11 ms·

Even cows are extremely intelligent and emotional animals. Did you stop eating them?

by pranith 5y ago

lisper 5y ago
Pigs and chickens too.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- silisili 5y ago
  I'm not joining in on the ethics of meat eating debate at all, but as someone who's lived around chickens a good chunk of life, calling them extremely intelligent would be...a stretch. Pigs though, definitely. Highly underrated animal.
  - lisper 5y ago
    That's surprising. I have no first hand experience, but I have been told by people who keep them as pets that chickens and cows are pretty much in the same league. Both can have distinct personalities.
    - CallMeJim 5y ago
      Distinct personalities and intelligence are quite different things! Talk to a grower and they'll tell you that plants have personalities (this one doesn't like the shade, this one sulks after being repotted, etc).
    - kuhewa 5y ago
      Really dumb animals can have distinct personalities, which is why I think what gets inferred from some of the quirky behaviours octopus display in terms of intelligence gets a bit overrated.
    - cheese_goddess 5y ago
      I don't know about cows, but there's chickens in the farm where I live and they're the dumbest animal I've ever seen. They also don't seem to care when one of them is taken by a predator (something took one of our roosters two nights ago and the other chickens didn't make a sound, although he certainly did). Pigs are intelligent and sensitive and they have compassion for their kind and other animals. A lady I know worked in a lab that made experiments with pigs and with dogs and she saw pigs taking food on their snouts and giving it to the dogs, who were intentionally left without food, through the bars of their cells. And pigs know when you come to take one of them for the slaughter and will raise hell and try to get in the way and defend their kin. It is a heartbreaking thing killing a pig. It is very unfortunate that pigs don't produce milk or eggs or wool and we just want them for their meat becaus there's no other reason to keep them around than to kill and eat them, unlike cows or goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, horses, donkeys, dogs, cats etc etc... (I mean, we kill those other animals too, to eat them, but we also keep some of them alive for their other products or work)
      - lisper 5y ago
        Thanks for that data point. It makes me feel quite a bit better about eating chickens, and makes me redouble my efforts to wean myself off bacon. I already don't eat pork in any other form, but it's really hard to pass on a strip of bacon at a breakfast buffet.
- Czarcasm 5y ago
  Chickens are amazingly stupid, disloyal, impulsive animals. Not anywhere close to pigs, and far away from octopi. (I grew up on a farm with both chickens and pigs).
handmodel 5y ago
This is what I don't quite get. Perhaps eating octopi seems gratuitous since they are expensive and not integrated into everyday customs/life. But hard to imagine an octopus is on a higher status than a pig or a cow which are fairly close to us evolutionarily.
- hashimotonomora 5y ago
  Cows (actually their genes) have been evolutionarily successful by paradoxically allowing themselves to be slaughtered and eaten by humans.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    "Allow" implies some sort of consent. I understand that you mean in an evolutionary sense, but it's clear that most living beings are averse to dying, even when possessing the most biologically primitive nervous systems. I prefer to head off any arguments in bad faith, "well, why don't all the cows just run away?" Some people are very comfortable resorting to satirical absurdity when discussing suffering, as evidenced by ridiculous arguments like "plants feel pain, why do you eat plants?"
    - glenngillen 5y ago
      Genuine question and not an attempt to bait you, but curious why the latter is a ridiculous argument? I’ve not heard that argument, but I have seen the occasional piece of research pop up to suggest there’s more complicated communication or social structures in plants. Particularly fungi. I’ve no idea how true any of it is and what why more may learn about that in the coming decades. So while I personally don’t have evidence or believe it to be true, I couldn’t with absolute conviction rule it out either.
      - nefitty 5y ago
        I'm definitely open to discussing the possibility when it's with someone arguing in good faith. It seems like that's where you're coming from, so thank you. I won't bury the lede further. Plants can't experience pain, at least insofar as we conceive of it, because they don't have nociceptors that signal pain. Therefore, if they do have any sort of phenomenological experience, whether it would be recognizable to us or not, there is no sense in describing anything they experience as "pain". There may be simple damage-avoidance reflexes, but comparing that with what it feels like to break a bone would be like saying that pedestrians and vehicles should share the road. The difference in quality is so significant that it makes better sense to categorize those reflexes as not pain at all although in service of the same tissue-protecting goal. My legs are not a vehicle I don't think. A final point on the deficit of nociception, is that the experience of pain is so central to our lived experience that it's difficult to conceive of what that would be like. It's like the alpha channel in rgba... Without that signal for opacity, there's no color at all. If the above is not enough to convince, there's some recent research that sought to systematize the analysis of sentience. Here's the 8 points used: 1) possession of nociceptors; 2) possession of integrative brain regions; 3) connections between nociceptors and integrative brain regions; 4) responses affected by potential local anaesthetics or analgesics; 5) motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat against opportunity for reward; 6) flexible self-protective behaviours in response to injury and threat; 7) associative learning that goes beyond habituation and sensitisation; 8) behaviour that shows the animal values local anaesthetics or analgesics when injured As you can see, plants are immediately out of the running on the most fundamental point. As you continue down, it becomes more and more absurd to say that plants feel. There's no mechanism by which that would be possible. I hope that helps!
WaxProlix 5y ago
For me, the answer was yes. I stopped eating pigs first, and then cows and other mammals, and then octopi (octopodes?). I've been cutting back further on chicken and fish, too, though I eat a lot of eggs and some dairy still. I don't know that it's morally right or something, but it doesn't cost much and the potential upside seems high enough to do it.
- throwaway5752 5y ago
  It helps the planet, is good for my health, reduces deaths of sentient beings to feed me, has greater trophic efficiency... and the big thing is that vegetarian food and vegan food tastes good. I still eat meat periodically, but I feel much better and happier since I've reduced my meat consumption greatly.
  - philipswood 5y ago
    At some stage my son was wilfully damaging plants. As part of the discipline to make him stop I showed him videos of plants sped up. It becomes a bit harder to deny that they aren’t the inanimate objects we perceive them to be because they are slow when you see them react to stimuli and they show what seems to be intent. Although it certainly isn’t a consensus opinion there is a real possibility that (given that the nervous system specialises what normal tissues can also do) plants are considerably more “conscious” than we give them credit for. They have been proven to be able to communicate. There are even suggestions that they could “see” without specialised eyes. I’m not sure where this would leave moral vegans. Besides attempting a diet of fruit - we clearly need to kill to survive. PS: To clarify my own positioning on this - I eat meat. I occasionally go vegetarian for health or spiritual reasons. I do believe we can and should strive to minimise cruelty, waste and environmental damage and impacts. The lives of some livestock are significantly better than that of many wild creatures and it can be a humane choice given that they would not exist without our intervention. That said I don’t think that we are currently near the level of responsibility that we could be. Our levels of cruelty, waste and environmental impact are unacceptably high and will seem barbaric to our descendants.
    - 5y ago
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Yeah, this is why I'm a vegetarian. I met a cow.
- sweetheart 5y ago
  Even vegetarianism supports unreal violence against cows. You should make the leap to veganism if you’re interested in to avoid unnecessary cruelty to animals.
rhodysurf 5y ago
Yes and pigs. It’s surprisingly easy now, fake meat is good enough
rhegart 5y ago
Yes. I did.
markdown 5y ago
Extremely intelligent? Have you worked with cattle before?
- afarviral 5y ago
  I have. Extremely intelligent might be a stretch, but a little. Certainly curious, emotional and social. Id rate them at the level of cats, dogs and pigs. My cat is dumb as fuck, no way she could outsmart a cow.
  - CallMeJim 5y ago
    Dogs and pigs can be trained. Cats can, to a certain degree. Cows? Not so much. I wouldn't rate them at the same level as cats, dogs and pigs (source: farming background).
fouc 5y ago
If you're a utilitarian part-vegetarian then you'd preferentially eat cow over smaller intelligent animals. If we assume small animals and large animals experience the same amount of sentient pain during the slaughter, we can minimize the amount of pain per pound of meat produced. This means that beef is likely the best choice of meat for consumption. Unless we somehow developed whale farms someday. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-09 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-09
- pc86 5y ago
  I don't have the slightest bit of guilt eating meat products, including octopus, but it seems pretty self-evident that "pain per pound of meat" is a ridiculous standard. Pain doesn't exist in measurable units, the entire idea of trying to quantify it in relation to food production, much of which happens with little to no pain at all, seems pretty silly.
  - hansvm 5y ago
    If we draw on human comparisons, it's generally agreed that more deaths are worse than fewer, and I posit that the weight of a person doesn't factor into that calculus. If we assume that a given quantity of meat will be produced and that animal deaths are undesirable for analogous reasons to human deaths then it's perfectly natural to attempt to minimize deaths per pound.
    - pc86 5y ago
      Maybe (I would argue feeding more people is better), but the GP is referring to pain, not death. Cows can be killed pretty quickly - perhaps not painlessly but pretty close to it. Lobsters not so much.
    - cgriswald 5y ago
      You're not comparing humans to humans. You're comparing cows to (say) chickens. The underlying assumption then is that chickens and cows share the same experience of pain. That's not proven, seems unlikely to be the case, and is, in any case, currently unmeasurable.
hackernewds 5y ago
No because beef is delicious-er

Even cows are extremely intelligent and emotional animals. Did you stop eating them?

lisper 5y ago

Pigs and chickens too.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
silisili 5y ago
I'm not joining in on the ethics of meat eating debate at all, but as someone who's lived around chickens a good chunk of life, calling them extremely intelligent would be...a stretch. Pigs though, definitely. Highly underrated animal.
- lisper 5y ago
  That's surprising. I have no first hand experience, but I have been told by people who keep them as pets that chickens and cows are pretty much in the same league. Both can have distinct personalities.
  - CallMeJim 5y ago
    Distinct personalities and intelligence are quite different things! Talk to a grower and they'll tell you that plants have personalities (this one doesn't like the shade, this one sulks after being repotted, etc).
  - kuhewa 5y ago
    Really dumb animals can have distinct personalities, which is why I think what gets inferred from some of the quirky behaviours octopus display in terms of intelligence gets a bit overrated.
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    I don't know about cows, but there's chickens in the farm where I live and they're the dumbest animal I've ever seen. They also don't seem to care when one of them is taken by a predator (something took one of our roosters two nights ago and the other chickens didn't make a sound, although he certainly did). Pigs are intelligent and sensitive and they have compassion for their kind and other animals. A lady I know worked in a lab that made experiments with pigs and with dogs and she saw pigs taking food on their snouts and giving it to the dogs, who were intentionally left without food, through the bars of their cells. And pigs know when you come to take one of them for the slaughter and will raise hell and try to get in the way and defend their kin. It is a heartbreaking thing killing a pig. It is very unfortunate that pigs don't produce milk or eggs or wool and we just want them for their meat becaus there's no other reason to keep them around than to kill and eat them, unlike cows or goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, horses, donkeys, dogs, cats etc etc... (I mean, we kill those other animals too, to eat them, but we also keep some of them alive for their other products or work)
    - lisper 5y ago
      Thanks for that data point. It makes me feel quite a bit better about eating chickens, and makes me redouble my efforts to wean myself off bacon. I already don't eat pork in any other form, but it's really hard to pass on a strip of bacon at a breakfast buffet.
Czarcasm 5y ago
Chickens are amazingly stupid, disloyal, impulsive animals. Not anywhere close to pigs, and far away from octopi. (I grew up on a farm with both chickens and pigs).

handmodel 5y ago

This is what I don't quite get. Perhaps eating octopi seems gratuitous since they are expensive and not integrated into everyday customs/life. But hard to imagine an octopus is on a higher status than a pig or a cow which are fairly close to us evolutionarily.

hashimotonomora 5y ago
Cows (actually their genes) have been evolutionarily successful by paradoxically allowing themselves to be slaughtered and eaten by humans.
- nefitty 5y ago
  "Allow" implies some sort of consent. I understand that you mean in an evolutionary sense, but it's clear that most living beings are averse to dying, even when possessing the most biologically primitive nervous systems. I prefer to head off any arguments in bad faith, "well, why don't all the cows just run away?" Some people are very comfortable resorting to satirical absurdity when discussing suffering, as evidenced by ridiculous arguments like "plants feel pain, why do you eat plants?"
  - glenngillen 5y ago
    Genuine question and not an attempt to bait you, but curious why the latter is a ridiculous argument? I’ve not heard that argument, but I have seen the occasional piece of research pop up to suggest there’s more complicated communication or social structures in plants. Particularly fungi. I’ve no idea how true any of it is and what why more may learn about that in the coming decades. So while I personally don’t have evidence or believe it to be true, I couldn’t with absolute conviction rule it out either.
    - nefitty 5y ago
      I'm definitely open to discussing the possibility when it's with someone arguing in good faith. It seems like that's where you're coming from, so thank you. I won't bury the lede further. Plants can't experience pain, at least insofar as we conceive of it, because they don't have nociceptors that signal pain. Therefore, if they do have any sort of phenomenological experience, whether it would be recognizable to us or not, there is no sense in describing anything they experience as "pain". There may be simple damage-avoidance reflexes, but comparing that with what it feels like to break a bone would be like saying that pedestrians and vehicles should share the road. The difference in quality is so significant that it makes better sense to categorize those reflexes as not pain at all although in service of the same tissue-protecting goal. My legs are not a vehicle I don't think. A final point on the deficit of nociception, is that the experience of pain is so central to our lived experience that it's difficult to conceive of what that would be like. It's like the alpha channel in rgba... Without that signal for opacity, there's no color at all. If the above is not enough to convince, there's some recent research that sought to systematize the analysis of sentience. Here's the 8 points used: 1) possession of nociceptors; 2) possession of integrative brain regions; 3) connections between nociceptors and integrative brain regions; 4) responses affected by potential local anaesthetics or analgesics; 5) motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat against opportunity for reward; 6) flexible self-protective behaviours in response to injury and threat; 7) associative learning that goes beyond habituation and sensitisation; 8) behaviour that shows the animal values local anaesthetics or analgesics when injured As you can see, plants are immediately out of the running on the most fundamental point. As you continue down, it becomes more and more absurd to say that plants feel. There's no mechanism by which that would be possible. I hope that helps!

WaxProlix 5y ago

For me, the answer was yes. I stopped eating pigs first, and then cows and other mammals, and then octopi (octopodes?). I've been cutting back further on chicken and fish, too, though I eat a lot of eggs and some dairy still. I don't know that it's morally right or something, but it doesn't cost much and the potential upside seems high enough to do it.

throwaway5752 5y ago
It helps the planet, is good for my health, reduces deaths of sentient beings to feed me, has greater trophic efficiency... and the big thing is that vegetarian food and vegan food tastes good. I still eat meat periodically, but I feel much better and happier since I've reduced my meat consumption greatly.
- philipswood 5y ago
  At some stage my son was wilfully damaging plants. As part of the discipline to make him stop I showed him videos of plants sped up. It becomes a bit harder to deny that they aren’t the inanimate objects we perceive them to be because they are slow when you see them react to stimuli and they show what seems to be intent. Although it certainly isn’t a consensus opinion there is a real possibility that (given that the nervous system specialises what normal tissues can also do) plants are considerably more “conscious” than we give them credit for. They have been proven to be able to communicate. There are even suggestions that they could “see” without specialised eyes. I’m not sure where this would leave moral vegans. Besides attempting a diet of fruit - we clearly need to kill to survive. PS: To clarify my own positioning on this - I eat meat. I occasionally go vegetarian for health or spiritual reasons. I do believe we can and should strive to minimise cruelty, waste and environmental damage and impacts. The lives of some livestock are significantly better than that of many wild creatures and it can be a humane choice given that they would not exist without our intervention. That said I don’t think that we are currently near the level of responsibility that we could be. Our levels of cruelty, waste and environmental impact are unacceptably high and will seem barbaric to our descendants.
  - 5y ago

micromacrofoot 5y ago

Yeah, this is why I'm a vegetarian. I met a cow.

sweetheart 5y ago
Even vegetarianism supports unreal violence against cows. You should make the leap to veganism if you’re interested in to avoid unnecessary cruelty to animals.

rhodysurf 5y ago

Yes and pigs. It’s surprisingly easy now, fake meat is good enough

rhegart 5y ago

Yes. I did.

markdown 5y ago

Extremely intelligent? Have you worked with cattle before?

afarviral 5y ago
I have. Extremely intelligent might be a stretch, but a little. Certainly curious, emotional and social. Id rate them at the level of cats, dogs and pigs. My cat is dumb as fuck, no way she could outsmart a cow.
- CallMeJim 5y ago
  Dogs and pigs can be trained. Cats can, to a certain degree. Cows? Not so much. I wouldn't rate them at the same level as cats, dogs and pigs (source: farming background).

fouc 5y ago

If you're a utilitarian part-vegetarian then you'd preferentially eat cow over smaller intelligent animals. If we assume small animals and large animals experience the same amount of sentient pain during the slaughter, we can minimize the amount of pain per pound of meat produced. This means that beef is likely the best choice of meat for consumption. Unless we somehow developed whale farms someday. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-09 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-09

pc86 5y ago
I don't have the slightest bit of guilt eating meat products, including octopus, but it seems pretty self-evident that "pain per pound of meat" is a ridiculous standard. Pain doesn't exist in measurable units, the entire idea of trying to quantify it in relation to food production, much of which happens with little to no pain at all, seems pretty silly.
- hansvm 5y ago
  If we draw on human comparisons, it's generally agreed that more deaths are worse than fewer, and I posit that the weight of a person doesn't factor into that calculus. If we assume that a given quantity of meat will be produced and that animal deaths are undesirable for analogous reasons to human deaths then it's perfectly natural to attempt to minimize deaths per pound.
  - pc86 5y ago
    Maybe (I would argue feeding more people is better), but the GP is referring to pain, not death. Cows can be killed pretty quickly - perhaps not painlessly but pretty close to it. Lobsters not so much.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    You're not comparing humans to humans. You're comparing cows to (say) chickens. The underlying assumption then is that chickens and cows share the same experience of pain. That's not proven, seems unlikely to be the case, and is, in any case, currently unmeasurable.

hackernewds 5y ago

No because beef is delicious-er