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There's some pretty horrifying YouTube videos of people torturing and eating live animals which I think we'd be better off banning. If you want to see examples
by TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
There's some pretty horrifying YouTube videos of people torturing and eating live animals which I think we'd be better off banning. If you want to see examples just look up "eating live octopus". Incredibly disturbing.
- zvmaz 3y agoI also have seen a young youtuber eat a living octopus. I was horrified. The animal rights question has been lurking on my mind for many years, and I couldn't stand to ignore the problem any longer. I am currently reading Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer. There's a chapter on the various experiments that scientists have been doing on animals, and it's heart-wrenching (see, for instance, the documentary Unnecessary Fuss [1]). Our treatment of animals is a moral problem that cannot be ignored. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnecessary_Fuss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnecessary_Fuss
- beerpls 3y agoI don’t really follow. There are billions/trillions of these creatures who are eaten alive every year in the wild. Why is it so significant that humans also do this? Are we trying to make reality fit our wholesome romanced version of reality? Not that I could stomach it myself, but I don’t really see this as much of a moral issue. Devour to survive. So it is, so it’s always been…
- endtime 3y agoAnimals do lots of things we consider unethical and unacceptable for humans to do.
- permalac 3y agoWe may need to try and be better than them. I think that is the point, at least for me. I'm no vegetarian, and I like to indulge myself with some 'pulpo a la gallega', But one thing is killing an animal because we are at the top of the food chain, and another thing is killing in the name of sport or culture.
- zabzonk 3y agosuch as what?
- TecoAndJix 3y agoGreat point. Do you think it is immoral for the animals to do these acts? Should we as bystanders have any obligation to prevent this from occurring?
- jabl 3y agoAnimals don't have the mental capacity reason about moral philosophy, so we can't really judge them for not behaving in another way. But we humans have, and yes, we can judge other humans for causing unnecessary suffering towards others.
- lisasays 3y agoBecause in this case - they're not being devoured so someone can survive. But for the sheer gall and thrill of it. Meanwhile, humans have a huge empathy problem in regard to animals (and other types of species) - perhaps its most categorical failing, and the driver for the most pressing crises of our time, in fact.
- virgildotcodes 3y agoThis is an appeal to nature fallacy. Rape, homicide, and infanticide happen in nature, is that a justification for us to do it?
- zabzonk 3y ago> Rape, homicide, and infanticide happen in nature those can only happen within the same species
- johnnyanmac 3y agoPeople do it regardless. It's not a justification, but it's also not a preventative measure to say "this is bad". But in the grand scheme of things, I don't think honoring prey is even in the top 100 issues in terms of impacts humans have on marine ecosystems. Sorry if I sound belittling, but it does sound like this whole thing is more of a symbolic gesure than a means to really resolve the issues we have caused. That's why I don't take it quite as seriously.
- srameshc 3y agoBecause there is a difference between being eaten in the wild by other animals who survive on those and humans expoliting the wild life or marine life.
- dsego 3y agoWhat's the difference honestly?
- LinXitoW 3y agoNecessity, which is also the important difference between murder and self defense. I so wish people would think of dog or cat meat in these supposedly difficult questions. What's the difference between killing and eating a dog for survival and doing it for fun, or because it tastes good?
- mvdtnz 3y agoBecause we can do better. I don't know about you but I hold myself to a higher moral standard than a shark.
- xdennis 3y ago"Better" is your personal morality. Whenever people are doing too well they invent hardships for themselves. No one who is struggled find food will come up with random rules about should and shouldn't be eaten.
- netrus 3y agoAnother way of saying "inventing hardships" is "raising the bar". People who struggle to find food might do all kinds of horrible things in order to survive - for example at the expense of other humans competing for the same food. When it becomes easier to source food, they can raise their moral standards. Do you think that's some kind of fallacy? That the standard should be the same, no matter how hard it is to source food (or, in the context of this discussion, alternative foods)?
- zvmaz 3y ago> I don’t really follow. There are billions/trillions of these creatures who are eaten alive every year in the wild. Why is it so significant that humans also do this? That tells us little on our moral obligations towards them and, for that matter, towards our fellow humans. Animals also murder other members of their own species, is murder hence ok?
- nvahalik 3y ago> Animals also murder I think you mean kill. Murder involves intent. Animals do not have intent. Usually murder involves malice. Animals don't have malice. Killing can be in self-defense or self-preservation. Most animals don't simply kill other animals unless provoked or they are hungry. Animals kill. Humans are the only beings capable of murder.
- jackmott42 3y agoAre you sure no animals have intent?
- Jtsummers 3y ago> Animals do not have intent. Only if you believe they're automata. Which raises the question, are humans not automata as well? If we are, then we also don't murder as we also don't have intent. But if we have intent, what's the line that separates us (other than the obvious "not the same species") from other animals that renders them mere unintentional automata and us intentional non-automata? Also, spend a few days with any animal, you'll see they have intentions. They're just harder to discern. > Animals don't have malice. Likewise some do have malice. It's just harder to discern as we lack the ability to communicate with them and they lack the ability to articulate to us what their feelings are.
- TheNewsIsHere 3y agoI agree with your analysis, but while I can’t speak for the original commenter, I think their point was probably closer to: “If we can all have this conversation together, it’s clearly a choice for us.” I (am not being cute when I say I) truly wish I could talk _with_ my cat. I would ask if she murdered that bug or was operating on instinct. Did she kill for sport, defense, or hunger? Was she just pissed off? I don’t know and she can’t tell me, so I can only assume she’s just doing what cats do. Among our own species I don’t think that “benefit of the doubt” (?) is defacto transferable. I hope this makes sense. I am enjoying this conversation in an odd kind of way. I’ve been waiting for news like this for a long time. Though the article and UKGOV articles are from 2021? Edit: today my main job was typos
- wizofaus 3y agoDo non-humans also create YouTube videos showing off their bravado (or whatever it is) where they knowingly inflict pain and misery on other species?
- zabzonk 3y agodo non-humans have access to YouTube? if they did, there is no telling what they might post there.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoDolphin Youtube would make even Liveleaks blush. also, RIP Liveleaks
- evandale 3y agoOrca TikTok would be a hell of a ride. I'd love to doom scroll the the kid orcas wearing their salmon hats and the adults making reactions videos to their grandkids reviving a dead trend. Or an orca declaring "I'm Donny Rocksville and this is rock the boat!!" before him and all his friends capsize a ship off of Spain.
- wizofaus 3y agoOrca behaviour does seem to indicate they inflict pain/misery on other creatures largely for the "fun" of it. But we don't really know, and certainly don't know whether they're capable of properly understanding that their victims are suffering.
- evandale 3y agoI know we don't know for sure but it there is evidence to suggest orcas may have equal or better emotional processing than humans. In Blackfish one of the most interesting attacks was against a trainer, Ken Peters, who was also a trained diver. The orca seemed to know the limits of the trainer and how long she could keep him underwater. When she brought him up she gave him time to breathe and compose himself before dunking him under again. She could have easily killed him if that was her intent but it didn't seem to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv2_OX4Soeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv2_OX4Soeg
- Lorkki 3y agoMorally, it's pretty significant that we make conscious decisions (as a process that we often see as distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom) to kill and eat thousands of other animals mostly for the sake of taste, rather than for the sake of necessity, which is why most other animals hunt.
- autoexec 3y ago> There are billions/trillions of these creatures who are eaten alive every year in the wild. Why is it so significant that humans also do this? Most animals eat other animals in such cruel ways because they don't have better means available to them and because if they didn't use the teeth and claws they have to catch prey they'd starve. Humans don't have to be needlessly cruel in order to eat an animal. For us, it's a choice. I'd prefer that every hamburger I eat comes from a cow who lived a long happy cow life then died suddenly and without pain. There's no section in the meat department at my grocery store for "happy cows that died painlessly" though, so I'm left with what's available. I can accept that, but there's zero reason for me to torture a live cow and excuses like "well, a lion would have ripped it apart while it was alive" wouldn't justify my actions if I did. By all means, eat animals! They're delicious! At a minimum though, we shouldn't go out of our way to make a living thing suffer.
- xdennis 3y ago> For us, it's a choice. Yes, it's your choice, and your choice to consider it "cruel". Don't force your choices onto others.
- burnished 3y agoIts a little hypocritical of you to try and force this perspective on others - if this is how you feel shouldnt you simply keep quiet and make your own decisions, to avoid forcing your choices onto others?
- autoexec 3y agoI think that, apart from psychopaths, very few people wouldn't consider torturing an animal to be "cruel". There are extreme circumstances which may justify being cruel in that way, but making a youtube video isn't one of them.
- agalunar 3y agoThis doesn't make sense to me; it sounds like you're suggesting I can't make my own moral judgment regarding your actions – that if you think what you're doing is okay, I have to think it's okay too. Even if morality is only about answering the question, "how should I conduct myself", and not directly about how anyone else should conduct themselves, if one of my values is alleviating the suffering of others, I will need to recognize when other feeling things are being hurt. If you're the one causing the hurt, I suppose you could say that I'm not making a "moral judgment" about your actions (but rather some other kind of assessment), but regardless I will feel a duty to intervene.
- jackmott42 3y agoOne of the great things we are capable of as humans is NOT doing what has always been done just because. People who think that is a justification or clever quip could be argued to be barbaric and without any creative imagination.
- dweymouth 3y agoAnimals devour to survive. Humans (in first world countries at least) don't need to do that. We eat meat because we like it, not because we need to. And we have the choice to do otherwise. In fact, plant based alternatives are healthier for us (look up the China study), and for the planet (most Amazon deforestation is to grow cattle feed). There is no need for most of us to eat any animal products at all.
- burnished 3y agoIts a bit hard to take this perspective seriously - you arent exactly living in the conditions that you are talking about you know? 'Man at top of heap says situation basically acceptable' Don't mistake this for moralizing, I just think your position is weak.
- diydsp 3y agoBecause we have awareness. Err some of us.
- ethbr0 3y agoScientific experimentation is the least bad thing we do to animals. At least at reputable institutes and companies, it's for a clear goal, that could not be achieved otherwise, and governed by a review board. It's trading animal harm for human harm. Furthermore, it's few animals for much good. Simply killing an animal to eat it seems far less ethical: there are other things we can eat, and animal deaths must scale linearly with human population. IMHO, one shouldn't eat meat unless one can look into a live animal's eyes and murder it. I eat meat, and I feel bad about it -- but we should all be honest about what it means, even if it shows up in colorfully-wrapped, no-blood, sanitized-of-sentience form. ... And at the bottom of the ethical gradient is just killing an animal without any purpose, for which I hope there's a special place in hell.
- zvmaz 3y ago> Scientific experimentation is the least bad thing we do to animals. I did not know (maybe I didn't want to) the ineffable amount of suffering we subject animals in vastly useless "scientific" experiments (see Singer, Animal Liberation, Chapter 2: Tools for research).
- ethbr0 3y agoThe existence of horrific science experiments doesn't prove that most science experiments are horrific. And it's a very differently regulated landscape now vs even 30 years ago.
- boringuser2 3y ago[flagged]
- zvmaz 3y agoThanks for the precious advice. I will take note of it. The descriptions and the results of the experiments cited in Singer's book come from the experimenters themselves. Published work, publicly available. Edit: I have talked about a "documentary" above, but it's not really a documentary, but video footage stolen from a lab doing experiments on baboons. The lab has been closed because of the videos. The fuss is unnecessary with you sir [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnecessary_Fuss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnecessary_Fuss
- Alupis 3y agoIf you think those are disturbing, wait until you hear about all those "helping animals" Youtube/TikTok channels. Often, the people making the video placed the animal in very dangerous or painful situations/positions, and then "help" the animal for the views... and of course all the comments are about how great the person is for being kind hearted and helping - it's really sick.
- CaptainNegative 3y agoNot that I envy the ducklings thrown into the sewers for those videos, but I'd still rather be that duckling than a ferret into whom scientists have been stuffing colloidal tungsten to see if its LD50 differs from that in hamsters.
- Alupis 3y agoPay attention next time you see these videos show up in your feeds - they'll probably change your mind once you realize what the game is. These people glue things onto animals then rip them off, mutilate appendages, etc. Those videos of people "freeing" animals stuck in bear traps... how do you think they got into the trap? So while lab testing on animals can be inhumane, it's not being done just for funsies like these videos are. The people making these videos are on an entirely different level of cruel.
- remote_phone 3y agoI hate to break it to you but most prey are eaten alive. I’m not advocating for it in the least, but it’s the reality. I don’t know what is worse, living a somewhat free life in the Savannah and then one day being cruelly and viciously eaten alive by a predator or to live your life on a farm in a small pen with no freedom and then blinking out of existence at the hands of a sledgehammer to the head.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoOne might hope people could be held to a higher standard than snakes & spiders...
- bioemerl 3y agoWe do hold ourselves to a higher standard, but we typically have actual reason to do so. Vegan moral arguments almost entirely rely on empathy. "The animal suffers therefore it's wrong". And they miss the mark almost every time because they're literally thinking emotionally instead of logically. Human suffering has actual consequences and we're basically always worse of if we don't reduce it. Where that isn't true such as in times of war we happy promote it. Those arguments are far weaker than you would expect because empathy doesn't actually weigh as heavily as you would expect on real social level decision making. Instead, practicality always wins and animal products are far far more valuable than the nearly non-existent harms of animal suffering.
- Barrin92 3y ago>Vegan moral arguments almost entirely rely on empathy. "The animal suffers therefore it's wrong". This isn't an appeal to empathy, it's a rational argument based on the mental capacity of the animal and our existing standards for ethics. An empathetic appeal would be to say, "when the octopus suffers, you feel sad, therefore because you feel sad you shouldn't cause it harm". That's not the vegan moral case. Your feelings don't matter. Speciesism is illogical and requires empathy or lack thereof. You don't feel bad when you cause the octopus harm instead of a human, therefore the octopus doesn't matter. Logically, the vegan is on perfectly solid ground. You have it the exact wrong way around. In social decisions empathy weighs very highly and logic counts for very little, which is why tribalism is such a huge driver of human behavior, even when it causes many more living beings harm than it helps, as it does during war.
- xdennis 3y agoAre you also horrified by videos of kittens eating live mice?
- wk_end 3y agoEr, I'd say most people would find that pretty unpleasant, yeah. Well, that is: there's two different ways a video like this might be horrifying. There's a kind of visceral horror: blood, guts, and also a kind of instinctive empathy for the suffering that the creature getting killed might be going through (great time to point out that octopuses are much more intelligent than mice and, depending on how you feel about a bunch of tricky philosophical questions, there's probably more "there there" to be suffering). Like I said, I think most people would be pretty horrified, in this sense, by a video like that. The other kind of horror is a moral horror. And in that case...well, a cat is a cat, not a human, I don't expect them to act humanely. So in that particular moral sense the "cat eats mouse" video isn't horrifying. Whereas: I do have a moral expectations that humans should act humanely, which a Youtube video featuring people eating a live octopus violates, triggering moral horror.
- dsego 3y agoSeen any nature shows when one animal eats another one, eg live prey? I am interested whether you find such animal behavior disturbing as well?
- pm90 3y agoYes. As sentient beings its within our control to ensure that we don't engage in it even if its behavior that exists among non-sentient living things.
- userbinator 3y agoYet octopuses, crabs, and lobsters are supposedly now "sentient" according to some, but they'll essentially do the same things to their prey? Those with "animal rights" fetishes never made any sense to me, and the discussion here is just more of the same nonsense.
- Dylan16807 3y agoAre you using a completely different definition of "sentient" than the article on purpose? Anything with a spine is sentient by this law. Can you rephrase your answer while keeping that in mind?
- bequanna 3y agoAnimals likely don’t know they are making the other animal that they are eating suffer. Humans absolutely know. There is no excuse for that kind of cruelty.
- beanjuiceII 3y agowhats disturbing about eating a live octopus, it ends up dead quite quickly. It's also a think that happens in nature
- DethNinja 3y agoYouTube is horrendous, I keep reporting couple of animal abuse videos but platform just keeps them. Some of these videos especially with small animals like hamsters have millions of views, so I guess there is a monetary incentive for them to keep such videos.
- userbinator 3y ago"disturbing" or just "more like nature"? Watch some wildlife videos (also plenty on YouTube) and you'll see animals being eaten alive by other animals.