Mage, have you just started ignoring what MisterGreen's been saying? Here, let me recap; we are not common animals. If you want to relinquish your claim to that fact, then go ahead and do this. If you want to try and say that "we're the superior species so this is perfectly fine", then I say to you this. What would be your opinion of a group of UFC fighters busted into your home, beat you into a bloody pulp, and took all your stuff? Would you be saying it's alright because they're superior to you?

You've clearly missed my point, put it like this, what I'm trying to say is that we need to have proper rights for other humans before we try working for other species, it's like we need to make sure our own planet will stay livable before we make other planets stay livable.

No, in fact, I'm saying that both are the same. Since they are the same, they are both equally negative reactions to pain, and thus unnecessary abuse is sickening, no matter the species harmed.

 

That's defeating your own argument. Animals make other animals suffer all the time. If we're the same as them, then doesn't that mean it's no different when a human makes an animal suffer than when an animal does it?

Animals make other animals needlessly suffer? I don't know which Discovery Channel programs you watch, but I know for a fact that any mammal predator goes straight for the neck, and gives it such large whiplash that they prey's neck snaps and is instantly dead. Bears kills fish by simply closing it's jaws on it... it does not half deep fry and poke it with a fork, still living. Every animal kills as efficiently as possible, any other technique would be a waste of energy and will never arise in the evolutionary scale of things.

 

I feel like going "URP DERP DERP" at the end of all my posts, to make you guys understand how that's what you sound like half the time.

Animals make other animals needlessly suffer? I don't know which Discovery Channel programs you watch, but I know for a fact that any mammal predator goes straight for the neck, and gives it such large whiplash that they prey's neck snaps and is instantly dead.

 

I'll give you one example off the top of my head: Killer Whales throw around the bodies of seals that they've caught up to for ages before and after the seal has died.

Animals make other animals needlessly suffer?

 

Yeah, they do actually. Ever had a pet cat? They claw at nearly anything that moves. I saw my cats kill several animals without eating them too so don't say it's just for survival. URP DERP DERP

The fact that you nitpick at certain arguments in my long post instead of posting opinions on my point of view is pretty annoying, but I'll make another post because the topic interests me. Sure you could argue that one single point in my argument can unravel it entirely, but bare with me. Read this post as an opinion post, reflect upon it, don't bother yourself with questions about how well you can refute certain aspects of it.

 

Back in my first serious post, I mentioned how humans are more animalike than we all think. Since my point didn't get across because everyone is arguing whether animals are more humanlike and not the other way around, I'll write it out again properly. Animals react instinctively because that's all we expect from them. As animals evolved, they acquired new techniques for hunting among other things. Kill faster, use time more effectively, eat and share with family more, the natural pressure on developing better killing methods is obvious.

 

We've reached a point where humans among other animals have too much time on their hands. If we were constantly forced to acquire food by killing animals, we wouldn't have time to develop language past "there's a hawk overhead" or "go wait in that bush". If you and I would face dire consequences for lazing around in a chair for an hour, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. It's by spending our time effectively that we can easily spread our power over all other animal species. This point is important because it's reflected by other animals, too. Give an elephant the luxury of a three meal day and an environment where it doesn't have to worry about droughts or predators, and it can paint a painting. Cats that aren't hungry because you feed them twice a day still have an ancestral killing instinct, but don't necessarily do it for survival. This is a problem - why kill unnecessarily if you don't have to? If cats do it, then surely we shouldn't have any guilt either. This isn't a counter example, it makes perfect sense. You'd never find a cat in the wild being given constant care, enabling it to do whatever it wants. It's an anomaly of nature.

 

We aren't the only ones who can develop techniques for improving life. Monkeys create their own anvils and hammers to crack open rock hard nutshells. Crows, given a rock and a bowl of water with the water level just out of reach, will figure out it has to drop the rock in the bowl to make the water level rise. Do you see how we're just an evolved version of animals, with insanely effective living techniques? We've figured out that instead of running in large plains to hunt buffalo, we can just raise them in farms and murder them there with ease. We've obviously cheated our way out of the great scheme of natural ways, I don't need to give examples on this point.

 

Now that we have extended our power over all creatures that resemble us in more ways than you would have first thought, what would be the point in unnecessarily harming them? I'm sorry if this sounds naive of me, maybe I have seen too many movies where the good guys win, but if a ruling group takes over power and has absolute control over everything, I'd want that group to do some good instead of harm. Yes, we have a responsibility for being the most powerful species on this planet. That's why cruelty to animals feels extremely wrong to me - even more so when it involves primates rather than humans being hurt, precisely because they cannot express themselves to us properly. In my books, cutting off the arm of a human baby or a young monkey is equally appalling, and now you know where my feelings are coming from.

That's why cruelty to animals feels extremely wrong to me

 

I think animal cruelty is wrong too. I just don't see why you are putting humans on the same level as every other living organism. Surely you would choose to save a human's life over an ant's?

 

We have a world of difference between us. For this very reason I am against animal cruelty. Our actions should be more reasonable since our minds are capable of it compared to animals. I guess you can say more is expected from us. I don't really have much sympathy for an ant if it were in pain, but the fact that a human would want it to suffer is what bothers me. That kind of behavior can be expected amongst animals but it's disturbing that a human mind would think of something so cruel - we comprehend the concepts of pain and suffering, so we should be expected to avoid causing it. Animals don't understand those concepts though.

 

So my point is, if you see animals and humans as equal then I don't see how you can think animal cruelty is wrong.

Mage, have you just started ignoring what MisterGreen's been saying? Here, let me recap; we are not common animals. If you want to relinquish your claim to that fact, then go ahead and do this. If you want to try and say that "we're the superior species so this is perfectly fine", then I say to you this. What would be your opinion of a group of UFC fighters busted into your home, beat you into a bloody pulp, and took all your stuff? Would you be saying it's alright because they're superior to you?

Horrible analogy. You're implying the difference between a fish and a human is the as between two humans.

Animals make other animals needlessly suffer? I don't know which Discovery Channel programs you watch, but I know for a fact that any mammal predator goes straight for the neck, and gives it such large whiplash that they prey's neck snaps and is instantly dead.

 

The dolphins disagree with you. Admittedly, there's no clear reason why they're doing this, but animals can be just as cruel as humans. And this is in the wild, mind you.

 

You've clearly missed my point, put it like this, what I'm trying to say is that we need to have proper rights for other humans before we try working for other species, it's like we need to make sure our own planet will stay livable before we make other planets stay livable.

 

Why can't we resolve the two simultaneously?

Animals make other animals needlessly suffer? I don't know which Discovery Channel programs you watch, but I know for a fact that any mammal predator goes straight for the neck, and gives it such large whiplash that they prey's neck snaps and is instantly dead.

 

The dolphins disagree with you. Admittedly, there's no clear reason why they're doing this, but animals can be just as cruel as humans. And this is in the wild, mind you.

They're also smart like humans. Maybe there's a connection...

Fish lack a neocortex, the part of the brain that interprets pain. It's a mechanical animal by nature. Birth, development, reproduction, death. Nothing else to it.

You've clearly missed my point, put it like this, what I'm trying to say is that we need to have proper rights for other humans before we try working for other species, it's like we need to make sure our own planet will stay livable before we make other planets stay livable.

 

Why can't we resolve the two simultaneously?

Tackling too many issues at once is too resource intensive, if we start with humans, we can get better feedback from people than we would from animals, once we have done that, it will make treating animals better an easier task.

Fish lack a neocortex, the part of the brain that interprets pain. It's a mechanical animal by nature. Birth, development, reproduction, death. Nothing else to it.

 

From Wikipedia:

 

In a 2009 paper, Janicke Nordgreen from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, Joseph Garner from Purdue University, and others, published research which concluded that goldfish do feel pain, and that their reactions to pain are much like those of humans.[20] "There has been an effort by some to argue that a fish's response to a noxious stimuli is merely a reflexive action, but that it didn't really feel pain," Garner said. "We wanted to see if fish responded to potentially painful stimuli in a reflexive way or a more clever way."[21] The fish were divided into two groups, one given morphine and the other saline. They were then subjected to unpleasant temperatures. The fish that were given saline subsequently acted with defensive behaviours, indicating anxiety, wariness and fear, whereas those given morphine did not.[21] Nordgreen said that the behavioural differences they found showed that fish feel both reflexive and cognitive pain. "The experiment shows that fish do not only respond to painful stimuli with reflexes, but change their behavior also after the event," Nordgreen said. "Together with what we know from experiments carried out by other groups, this indicates that the fish consciously perceive the test situation as painful and switch to behaviors indicative of having been through an aversive experience."[21]

 

Links:

[20]

[21]

 

Even if this were not the case, the neocortex interprets pain in animals, but this study (news article, actually, but it's reporting on said study) shows that some animals without a neocortex have other parts of their brain for functions associated with the neocortex. So, no neocortex != no capacity to interpret pain.

 

Tackling too many issues at once is too resource intensive, if we start with humans, we can get better feedback from people than we would from animals, once we have done that, it will make treating animals better an easier task.

 

I seriously doubt it would require all of our "resources" (what do you mean by that, exactly?) to resolve human rights.

Animal rights? It's kind of like arguing... How much [cabbage] can I do to this thing until it's considered unethical... It's obviously wrong, but elaborating on it isn't worth my valuable time, which I'm currently spending trying to dissect this dude in a coma. It's OK; he can't feel a thing since he doesn't have a properly functioning central nervous system.

Tackling too many issues at once is too resource intensive, if we start with humans, we can get better feedback from people than we would from animals, once we have done that, it will make treating animals better an easier task.

 

I seriously doubt it would require all of our "resources" (what do you mean by that, exactly?) to resolve human rights.

There's only so many people we can have working on it without having the ecconomy crash from nobody working.

Fish lack a neocortex, the part of the brain that interprets pain. It's a mechanical animal by nature. Birth, development, reproduction, death. Nothing else to it.

I have been sport-fishing for about 17 years now, and to say that fish can't feel pain is absolute rubbish.

Fish lack a neocortex, the part of the brain that interprets pain. It's a mechanical animal by nature. Birth, development, reproduction, death. Nothing else to it.

I have been sport-fishing for about 17 years now, and to say that fish can't feel pain is absolute rubbish.

Really, anything being unable to feel pain would be. If you believe in evolution the idea of any organism without the ability to feel pain surviving long enough to reproduce is unlikely because it probably would have killed or crippled itself early on, and if you believe in creationism you'd have to realize that no God(s) would be that stupid.

Way to argue against someone who thinks that it's okay to torture a fish because it can't feel pain by proving that it can... Ask that person whether they'd be comfortable beating a dog in a coma to death. Surely it can't feel pain, but does that fact alone diminish the behavior as unethical?

Tackling too many issues at once is too resource intensive, if we start with humans, we can get better feedback from people than we would from animals, once we have done that, it will make treating animals better an easier task.

 

I seriously doubt it would require all of our "resources" (what do you mean by that, exactly?) to resolve human rights.

There's only so many people we can have working on it without having the ecconomy crash from nobody working.

 

...the economy isn't going to crash. Really, there's no realistic scenario where you'd have so many people tackling these issues that the economy would crash.

Tackling too many issues at once is too resource intensive, if we start with humans, we can get better feedback from people than we would from animals, once we have done that, it will make treating animals better an easier task.

 

I seriously doubt it would require all of our "resources" (what do you mean by that, exactly?) to resolve human rights.

There's only so many people we can have working on it without having the ecconomy crash from nobody working.

 

...the economy isn't going to crash. Really, there's no realistic scenario where you'd have so many people tackling these issues that the economy would crash.

All it would take is enough joining a protest that blocks some major areas of an important city. Maybe. Biiig maybe there.

 

Ahahaha that was good :lol:

 

Quick and painless guys, slow and painful is just stupid. Honestly.

Tackling too many issues at once is too resource intensive, if we start with humans, we can get better feedback from people than we would from animals, once we have done that, it will make treating animals better an easier task.

 

I seriously doubt it would require all of our "resources" (what do you mean by that, exactly?) to resolve human rights.

There's only so many people we can have working on it without having the ecconomy crash from nobody working.

 

...the economy isn't going to crash. Really, there's no realistic scenario where you'd have so many people tackling these issues that the economy would crash.

All it would take is enough joining a protest that blocks some major areas of an important city. Maybe. Biiig maybe there.

 

 

that is completely ridiculous.

Tackling too many issues at once is too resource intensive, if we start with humans, we can get better feedback from people than we would from animals, once we have done that, it will make treating animals better an easier task.

 

I seriously doubt it would require all of our "resources" (what do you mean by that, exactly?) to resolve human rights.

There's only so many people we can have working on it without having the ecconomy crash from nobody working.

 

...the economy isn't going to crash. Really, there's no realistic scenario where you'd have so many people tackling these issues that the economy would crash.

All it would take is enough joining a protest that blocks some major areas of an important city. Maybe. Biiig maybe there.

 

 

that is completely ridiculous.

 

 

That's what the army of squirrels from 800 B.C. said... until they were ninja-turtled by a group of mocking birds. BAM! Didn't see that one coming, huh squirrels?