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Emotions? Sure.
Like us?
I dunno. Does irate fury at being woken up mid nap count as “like us”?
I’m gonna go with absolutely.
they obviously have emotions, just a bit less complex ones, but it’s pretty clear they’re not just robots
Just because we understand their emotions only on a basic level doesn’t mean they’re not more complicated.
There is a lot we don’t understand and can’t understand.
their brains are a lot smaller though, so less complex
If size is what matters, then whales, elephants, and dolphins all have more complex brains than humans.
Their neurons are bigger tho. The odd case are bird brains; they work a bit different than mammalian but are as smart as ravens in a small package, while human neurons are as small as physically can be.
Elephants are the smartest land animals on earth and the complexity of their brains is comparable to that of humans. This is also clearly reflected in their behaviour. They are able to communicate with body language within their own species and even with humans, and a recent study has shown they even give each other names.
Dolphins and whales are also pretty smart, so yes, size is a big part of what matters.
… yes
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How do you know cats don’t experience sonder? Did you ask one? No, you just assumed
Two monks were passing by a little pond where there were some ducks, and the first monk said, “Look at how happy those ducks are!”
The second monk said, “You are not a duck. You can’t know if they are happy.”
The first monk replied, “You are not me. You can’t know that I cannot.”
The takeaway from this is that half of all monks may or may not have duck telepathy, yes?
It’s a zen parable, so… yes.
Hidden gem. Thanks!
I’ve asked my cats loads of questions. Not one has given a comprehensive answer.
sonwhat?
Sonder is the inverse of this:
Had to look that up too. My immediate reaction was wondering if Thalasin works for them too?
Insects on the other hand are pretty much nature’s robots.
Bees have been known to engage in play
I figured some of the larger species have some basic emotions. My preying mantis could certainly let me know if she was irritated, though I never really saw a “happy” as much as “content.”
My tarantula and I never managed to talk to one another.
I don’t understand non-mammalian pets
Why have a tarantula that you just look at, instead of a Golden retriever to goof off with?
Por que no los dos?
The golden retriever was named Tahereh.
I also had mice, gerbils, guinea pigs, and cats. Parents had a nice farm.
I was of this opinion until I moved in with my partner who had a bearded dragon. Reptiles move strangely, but this bearded dragon had been a classroom pet for the first few years of her life, and was surprisingly social. She’d make eye contact, gesture with her body, present her head to be gently pet around the bristles, and even flip over to be rubbed on the belly like a dog if she was not currently or just finished eating. Responsive with body language to some specific one or two syllable words like her name or the words for mealtime, and very aware of visual cues (like any of the objects she was handed a mealworm from, even just once).
I imagine a tarantula probably has some behaviors that would surprise me if it was conditioned as a pet and socialized, I know they have a fair number of ways aside from the bite to show displeasure or anxiety like flicking hairs and quickly shuffling away to show a defensive posture. I think it could be a fun experience and wouldn’t turn my nose up at it instantly these days if the opportunity came along; animal cooperation is a small joy even when it’s a bit foreign.
because children think weird pets are ‘cool’
Yes
“Fuck you, feed me” - cat
Man, mine go nuts being happy to see us.
MEOW!
Eh, we can leave our cats for a week with plenty of food, etc., and they’re still thrilled when we return.
I remember my cat being a lot more clingy after I and my family returned from vacation.
My cat: I pissed three times on your stuff while you were away because fuck you and your shitty ‘healthy’ food
Same evening: cuddles? cuddles! cuddle me human, yes scratches behind the ears!
They don’t have emotions like us but they have emotions similar to ours.
How would you define like us vs similar to us?
Same same, but different.
Lol if you meant to invoke the thought of Korean culture vs. American as an example, I think it worked!
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I can’t answer your question, but I assume that “like” and “similar to” are neither like nor similar to each other
My cat has only one emotion: not giving a damn about me
Don’t worry, my cats are exactly the same. They also don’t give a damn about you.
Of course they don’t give a damn about me, because they don’t know me. My cat sees me all the time.
Completely different behavior. (I already said this exact sentence in another reply with that exact punctuation)
Take it easy buddy, I was just kidding.
Why is it so difficult for me to notice when someone is kidding or not?
It’s a secondary effect of having emotionally abusive cats, eheh.
Now I get it.
It’s not just you, I guarantee your cat doesn’t give a damn about anyone
My cat is actually hostile towards others, he bites people a lot. He just doesn’t care about me.
Completely different behavior.
Cares enough to not bite you!
Well saved.
go vegan!
Silly vegoon, only the cute animals I didn’t want to eat have feelings. The others are unfeeling slabs of meat that is magically created by wholesome farmers being folksy.
A few coworkers refer to cows as giant dogs. Then they sell them to be butchered.
Seems well adjusted. I’d keep my kids away from them if I were you.
I don’t spend time with the rednecks outside of work.
As a new parent the agriculture propaganda from the very start is crazy! Look at this happy farmer and his cute pig its so happy in its mudpit, what a wholesome picture!
ya, my sister is raising kids atm and she’s had to hunt for books that don’t associate farming with cuddly-happy—funtimes
Its tough finding good media, almost anything pre 2000 is out because of some sort of bigotry and even after that it gets iffy sometimes, and if you filter for copaganda, zoo propaganda, agri propaganda and corporate propaganda there is not a lot left…
There’s loads of good children’s fantasy like Rowan of Rin etc. This one is still at “what does Bunny like?” level though :p
oh mine is learning animal noises still, cat goes “ma” sheep go “ba” dogs go “wa” elephants go “pffffff” lol.
But simply finding good picture books is already a pain.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Childrens-Books-Touch-Feel/s?rh=n%3A4893846051%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A4910122051 these are pretty nice. They’ve got like texture patches and stuff to play and learn with.
All the ones I’ve read to her have been unproblematic.
I don’t eat meat, but the more we learn about plant intelligence, the less I can say with confidence that plants do not have their equivalents of things like pain and emotion. It doesn’t help that we have great difficulty defining what emotion means.
But we know a lot about plants now that we thought were animal things. Grass “panics” or “screams” by sending out chemical signals when you cut it as a warning to others of its species that they are seriously injured and danger is coming. That’s what the smell of fresh-cut grass is. Sure, calling it a panic or a scream is anthropomorphizing it, but it’s kind of hard to describe it in other terms.
We also have learned about “mother trees,” which will send resources to their offspring if the offspring let the mother tree know they are in desperate need of them. Which sounds very much like parenting in animal species. There’s also lots of evidence that plants can learn from experiences and retain some sort of memory of them in some capacity.
Do I think plants have the same sort of sentience as animals and will I stop eating broccoli? Of course not. But I will still have to admit that at the end of the day, I might just be choosing to cause a different kingdom of life pain and suffering because it’s far enough away from my species that I don’t consider that to be pain and suffering.
If you’re eating meat, then you’re contributing to the death of all of those plants that had to feed the animals you’re eating. Even if you grant plants sentience, veganism is still the more ethical option.
Is “more ethical” really enough if you accept that plants can suffer? You’re still essentially saying one group of living things’ suffering is acceptable to you. Isn’t that like saying the holocaust of the Jews was bad, but the holocaust of the Roma at the same time was fine because there were fewer Roma than Jews? Does “less” matter when we’re talking quantities so massive?
I don’t think there are easy answers to any of these questions. Not if you want to approach them from an honest philosophical level.
Is “more ethical” really enough if you accept that plants can suffer
I don’t accept that, but even if I did, you should still act to minimize suffering as much as possible.
Do you really believe that killing a plant is the same as killing an animal?
I literally wrote this:
Do I think plants have the same sort of sentience as animals and will I stop eating broccoli? Of course not.
I guess you didn’t actually read my entire post before you responded.
Honestly it just seems like you’re trying to contort yourself into a knot that allows you to eat meat without feeling bad?
First four words of my initial post:
I don’t eat meat
Did no one read it?
If our ability to modify ourselves reaches sci fi levels, allowing us to photosynthesize and fix amino acids from nitrogen in the atmosphere (or if there’s any hope of making that happen), then that likely will be the new vegan position.
Photosynthesis would probably not work too well for people who aren’t outside a lot. But there might be other possibilities.
Sounds like a good way to incentivise touching some grass.
I know you’re being flippant, but I do like the idea of coming up with a variety of ways for humans to get food which don’t require life at all. Finding a way to make a construction worker photosynthetic but also finding a way for an office worker to be chemosynthetic. Hydrogen and methane are in abundance on the planet and bacteria can use them as food. Maybe one day we can too
It’s the fish argument all over again. Some vegetarians reason they can eat fish because fish has simple enough nervous system that it can be aware of its suffering. Sure it reacts to pain, but is it aware?
Similarly, grass may react to damage, but have such simple systems that you can’t even call it pain, much less that they have any awareness of pain
Why can’t you call it pain? Plaints obviously are aware of it if they react to it.
There is an interesting catch to this argument, which is that in a human body we can eliminate pain by using general anesthesia or nerve blockers. Locally the body still reacts to damage but the actual person doesn’t experience any pain because it isn’t communicated to their consciousness. If we accept that being unconscious precludes experiencing pain then it follows that consciousness is a pre-requisite for pain.
On the other hand if it’s still unethical to inflict damage on a living thing without consciousness then is it unethical to operate on a sedated person even though they don’t consciously experience pain?
Very interesting points, and this was the sort of discussion I was hoping to have. These are complex ethical questions without simple answers and in 100 years, people may look back at any eating choices made in this time, be they vegan or 100% carnivore, to be absolutely nuts because none of us have figured out that the real key to good and ethical nutrition is everyone eats a soup made from cloned moose DNA and petroleum. Science is constantly changing and moving on, so who knows? But it’s an interesting thing to talk about, at least to me.
For now, I am on the side of those who say it is not ethical to eat meats, but it is ethical to eat plants. In 20 years of plant science? Who can say?
Not at all, it’s just a reaction. When you drop your mentos into Diet Coke, you see a very excited reaction, but do you really call that an emotion or can you really connect that with any entity’s awareness?
Mentos and Diet Coke are not alive. Plants are. Mentos and Diet Coke are also not having reactions to being damaged that signal that damage to other cans of Coke and packs of Mentos. Plants do. That is not a good analogy.
fingers crossed we get star trek replicator food asap
You’re conflating very different processes here. While there is the hard problem of consciousness and we can’t falsify ideas like panpsychism consider a few things.
If you amputate my hand and press on it it will emit nervous signals. Does anyone feel pain? If you destroy most of my brain but keep me alive, then stab me almost all the nervous activity and hormones etc associated with injury will happen. Is there any reason to believe there is any pain felt?
I would say no in both cases, pain is not emitting nervous impulses, or something that precedes releasing endorphins and inflammatory factors etc. Pain cannot even necessarily be reliably correlated with stress markers like heart rate, and in the case of phantom limb syndrome pain can even be associated with a complete lack of signals.
There are good evolutionary reasons to exhange information and resources, even unwittingly. Apparently some bacteria in my tummy are in conversation with my body constantly but I’m not at all aware or actively participating in that. Maintaing pain only really seems to offer advantage if you can do something about it, while it’s possible for things to exist accidentally it’s not like grass can move to places without mowers or trees shade themselves. In all animals with nervous systems the nervous systems are the vastly most expensive thing to keep alive. In fact there are a few creatures who when entering an immobile stage of life rapidly digest their own (a good explaination for both tenure and retirees!).
Plants don’t have rapid long distance communication in their bodies, they don’t have centralised organs, they don’t even have anything approaching the levels of activity we associate with the simplest nervous systems.
It’s probably best to think of grass “screaming” as skin cells “screaming” for resources to make more melanin when exposed to UV. Or lymph nodes “screaming” when releasing hormones to heal a wound and stuff. This is all vastly below the level of consciousness.
Or whatever, embrace panpsychism, like the invisible dragon in my garage nobody can prove it false /shrug. Animals eat plants though and thermo law 2 is a thing so even panpsychics minimise suffering by being plant based.
But what I am arguing is that is an anthropocentric view of what constitutes pain and suffering. We cannot assume either is not possible without a nervous system. It’s worth at least looking into the concept even though we don’t know that there would be a mechanism simply based on what we know about plants so far. I myself would put myself on the no side when it comes to whether or not plants feel pain, but I couldn’t say that it was a 100% definite no by any means and I think we may feel very differently about what it means to be a plant and what plants are capable of in 20 years.
You’ve got to operate on evidence, there’s an infinite number of things you can’t falsify and you have no criteria for choosing which to believe or not.
In other animals we observe things consistent with pain such as long term behaviour modification in the absence of a persistent hormone. Things like avoiding places they were injured, becoming more cautious or less curious, even changes that destroy them like starving themselves to death.
Anyone that says “only humans feel pain” is a chauvinist ignoring stuff like rats giving up the will to live.
But trees or mosses or whatever do none of this. A tree will keep trying to grow towards a fence that damages branches in a storm, a tree never starves itself to death making thicker bark after teens carve lovehearts into it, a tree doesn’t stop reproducing after 3 droughts kill all its children and so on. Leaves might change colour in response to periods of high or low sunlight but these changes are like tanning, they don’t modify anything about how the tree trees.
We can’t know is true, but we also can’t know I don’t have an invisible dragon in my garage. you should definitely not live your life thinking I have an invisible dragon in my garage. Why? you don’t have any evidence to suspect it’s real that is distinguishable from a random lie. We have no evidence of behaviour in trees indistinguishable from chemical signals we know are below the level of consciousness in ourselves.
But trees or mosses or whatever do none of this. A tree will keep trying to grow towards a fence that damages branches in a storm, a tree never starves itself to death making thicker bark after teens carve lovehearts into it, a tree doesn’t stop reproducing after 3 droughts kill all its children and so on. Leaves might change colour in response to periods of high or low sunlight but these changes are like tanning, they don’t modify anything about how the tree trees.
I don’t know why any of this means that our nebulous definitions of ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’ cannot apply to plants.
If I stub my toe, it doesn’t modify anything about how I human. But it hurts.
It does though, you will stop walking. Clutch your foot, say ow, look at where you hit the thing, be more careful when walking near there, move the object, pad the object, maybe wear protective covers on your feet, maybe dress a wound if the nailbed was damaged etc. If your toe keeps hurting you will travel to a doctor for assessment, or splint the toe and so on.
Unless you don’t notice, in which case you feel no pain despite the toe signalling furiously.
Along side this a bunch of cellular processes will happen to repair the damage, but they happen even if you don’t notice (distraction/nerve damage, anaesthetic etc) and so we can notice “huh, there are 2 clusters of things happening, one is conditional and one isn’t” and that’s a clue that there’s something more going on than just a body repairing itself.
Damaged plants can send out signals to other plants, and chemicals to repel what is damaging them (to the specific area where the damage is being done) and repair their damage. Some plants will avoid growing towards areas that they have been unable to thrive in before.
You still seem to be talking about things from a purely human perspective. Dogs will damage their feet and not even let you know sometimes. They will get a piece of glass in their foot and they won’t stop walking on them or try to do anything about it until they literally can’t do anything about it. My dog tore her CCL and the only reason we knew anything was wrong was that she wasn’t limping and then she was a few moments later. She didn’t make a sound, she didn’t react with any sort of signal that indicated that she was aware serious damage had been done to her, she just was unable to use that leg. Are you going to argue that she felt no pain?
It doesn’t help that we have great difficulty defining what emotion means.
There was this thing about fishing with hooks. Apparently it’s ok, since fishes don’t have the facilities to process pain as anything different than a robot would interpret sensory input.
Thermostat sentience.
Not in any way. This is actual science done by botanists and other biologists.
Plants do have incredibly impressive defence mechanisms, but that doesn’t mean onions are crying when you cut them. There’s no central nervous system, you are anthropomorphising. That is very common whenever this topic comes up, but it really is magical thinking, and the garden is already magical enough without imagining fairies at the bottom.
Why doesn’t it mean onions are crying out? Why is a nervous system necessary for pain or suffering? How can we know that? How am I anthropomorphizing if we do not have a functional universal definition of ‘suffering?’ If you’re going to make that claim, you’re going to say I can’t prove cows suffer.
I studied plant signalling/phytohormones during my MSc, it’s genuinely fascinating but it doesn’t imply consciousness. Cows have a central nervous system. Beyond that, it’s magical thinking. You are making an unfalsifiable claim, and that’s fine, but please acknowledge that you are adopting a faith-based position here. I could claim the sentience of crystals and be similarly obstinate when challenged.
Again- how do you define suffering? You didn’t answer.
Fallacy
A (potentially) thinking or feeling plant has to be killed in order to eat it just like an animal has to be killed, and there’s no difference between the two.
Did you not read what I wrote? I made it very clear that there were a lot of differences.
And the fun part is that you’re the second person to tell me that I was trying to justify eating meat when, again, the first four words of my post are “I don’t eat meat.” I couldn’t have been more clear on that point.
no dude its about the resources, like you claim that plants can feel pain or something stupid like that, read up on it.
Also
But I will still have to admit that at the end of the day, I might just be choosing to cause a different kingdom of life pain and suffering because it’s far enough away from my species that I don’t consider that to be pain and suffering.
sure sounds like think the “pain and suffering” of the two “kingdoms of life” might be equal.
You still seem to think I’m justifying eating meat when I still don’t eat meat.
I dont, I think youre just trying to make up some weird philosophical debate because you like to debate.
I wasn’t trying to make up any sort of debate. You are the one trying to debate here. And you’re not doing it very well either.
Just don’t try to force it on your pets.
Cats are obligate carnivores.
There are people working on foods for cats which aren’t based on cruelty. There already exist options, though some are sold as special diets.
Example: https://sustainablepetfood.info/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132 it’s already happening.
The work in “lab meat” products is actually going to contribute to this too.
Note: cats don’t eat cows or pigs or even adult chickens in “nature”.
Believe me vegans put a lot more thought into nutrition than omni’s do. Aside from that pet ownership is not vegan. The word “ownership” being operative. If you find yourself having to care for an animal then that’s a different situation of course.
Here is some surface-level reading about caring for animals in a vegan way https://www.peta.org/living/animal-companions/caring-animal-companions/
Obligate carnivores in nature. Why do you care if a cat is fed with fortified plant bits vs fortified animal bits? Neither product exists in nature and the cat can live a healthy life on both. Also breeding cats to be pets is completely unnatural, so why are you fine with that?
It’s not a “moral” obligation, it’s how their body actually processes and uses proteins and nutrients… you know, it’s probably better for me to not engage here. Stop neglecting animals based on your own beliefs.
Go get a rabbit for a pet instead.
This is bullshit because pet food exists where the proteins are denatured because some animals have serious allergies. Animals can build the proteins they need from the constituent parts. There are surely proteins unique to cats, where do you think they get them, cannibalism? Are you saying veterinarians recommending such products are harming animals?
Also who said I have a cat companion, even if you were 100% correct about what constitutes neglect it would not apply to me. But you’re obviously not engaging in good faith and just want someone to paint as a monster. What’s really monstrous is we have an industry that brutally harvests billions of sentient creatures every year just to feed ourselves and other animals.
https://www.whyanimalsdothething.com/why-a-vegan-diet-will-kill-your-cat-and-sicken-your-dog
The only way to not participate in this industry is to not have any carnivores as companions. Because otherwise you are killing your own sentient creature.
Link to studies please.
Nobody is suggesting we feed cats tofu and spinach. The naturalistic argument and yelling “We don’t know!” a bunch really only works if you are proposing we feed cats only raw meat from fresh kills, what they would eat in the wild. Pet food isn’t a pet’s natural diet, vegan or not, and it all has to be fortified.
I don’t believe in such a naturalistic argument though. Humans are able (key word, able, most don’t) eat healthier with modern diets. Why would we assume we can’t develop food that is just as healthy or even healthier than an animal’s natural diet?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6380542/
Indeed, the cat appears to have less capability to adapt to most changes in dietary composition because it cannot change the quantities of enzymes involved in the metabolic pathways. This evolutionary development has resulted in more stringent nutritional requirements for cats than for omnivores such as the rat, dog, and man.
Biologically, humans are omnivores. Your suggestion would work great with other omnivores. I’m all for balanced healthy humane diets for the animals we are responsible for feeding! But not to the point of neglect.
Let me burn this horses skin so it is marked for the rest of its life
dont you dare put your cat on a vegan diet!
I believe it ties into the “if it cant be done 100% perfectly its not worth doing at all” excuse omnis have
Go banana!
As someone who‘s allergic to an ungodly amount of vegetable oils, fruit and gluten: no.
Weird how every time veganism comes up everyone is suddenly deathly allergic to anything that doesn’t scream when it dies
Vegans complaining about other people needlessly injecting themselves into conversations is peak copium.
…every time veganism comes up…
You mean every time that a vegan uses whatever tenuous link to the current topic they can imagine exists to bring up veganism?
Post: animals have emotions
Comment: we shouldn’t kill things with emotions
I dunno seems pretty related. And when we’re feeling a lot of empathy for animals is probably the best time to think about these issues
And then when someone brings a topic to discussion related to these issues
“I can’t be vegan, i’m allergic to a lot of stuff”, suddenly it’s not about having a discussion anymore but rather to push one side of the story without consideration for others.
You can still care about animal cruelty and be ethical, even if you have an allergy. Having a medical condition doesn’t give you a free pass to do whatever you want.
You can still care about ethics and animal safety, and you are allowed to avoid foods you cannot eat due to allergy, even if that comes at an unfortunate cost
I’m deathly allergic to evangelism.
Cows are deathly allergic to knives
Funny how you’re still alive, seems there’s no one being evangelical
I really wish alpha gal allergy was more prevalent.
Maybe one day I’ll stop reading “alpha gal” as a female alpha male
Stuff from milk, mushrooms and eggs don’t scream, so do a lot of salads and olive oil, even rice is silent.
And don’t start with those industrial cows that only get to live because of the milk. That stuff tastes like shit. Same with those chickens in cages.
I’m pretty sure, that both cow and calf are screaming when they are separated shortly after birth. Alnost like a mother and her baby have an emotional bond.
And even the smallest farm will absolutely kill them once they aren’t profitable anymore, or they’d have an ever increasing population of animals.
Ummm… We don’t typically have just one pen or pasture for the animals. The males and females are typically kept separate from each other, except for when we specifically want more animals.
Cattle are artificially inseminated when farmers want more, they don’t get put all together
We didn’t have cattle. Just horses, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, a couple turkeys, and rabbits… Tons of rabbits accidentally one time. We let them do their thing when we wanted more.
Plants scream when they die, we just don’t notice it. They release all sorts of pheromone type chemicals that warn other plants that there is danger. That’s definitely a scream.
I’m not saying eating meat is better, I’m just saying that seemingly the only truly ethical things to eat are raw minerals, and I don’t believe that’s possible, other than salt. Salt seems to be the only tasty rock.
Graphics cards totally scream when they die too, the smell warns their symbiotic sysadmins to turn off the power
And don’t even get me started on how chalkboards scream when you scratch them, why do vegans not talk about this cruelty
Some sanity.
Some people can also just have health issues, but i get your point
Here, the permalink: https://sarahcandersen.com/post/754633959852392448
Literally me.
Tax animal meat, put the proceeds into precision fermentation.
Really, just stop subsidizing the shit out of it.
That sounds like a much better idea.
Also dairy.
Most unrealistic comic I’ve ever read in my life
Removed by mod
Is the user base on lemmy really large enough to warrant an AI bot to shill payday loans? Like, come on man, let us have nice things for once in this goddamn hellscape of an internet.
Every free space must be enclosed and monetized.
While you’re at it, why not redesign your logo?.
