2 ms·

The part about "my calf has been taken" doesn't seem so far fetched though.

• strken 3y ago
  Yes, but do we know how a cow experiences the loss of a calf? The loss of a human child is very painful because of human comprehension of permanence, death, and the future. Is a cow thinking "I can't find my child, I am sad, I'm going to bellow and walk around for a few days searching" or is she experiencing a longer-term loss which she understands as the irrevocable death of her calf + social isolation from the experience + the end of her personal dreams for the calf? This is what I meant by "my calf has been taken and he'll never get a college degree". I'm not saying that a cow isn't upset when you take her calf away, but I am skeptical that she is capable of being upset in the way a human would be, or for as long and as deeply. I'm skeptical that even earlier humans from a time with ~50% child mortality would be as sad as a modern mother upon losing a child, just due to the relative normality of the loss.