Are there examples from behavior in the non-human animal kingdom which one would understandably be tempted to label as “unnecessarily cruel?” Like, you get the feeling the animal has some understanding it doesn’t need to inflict this cruel act on its victim, but goes ahead and does so anyway?
If the behavior can be described (to someone tempted to accept “anthropomorphism”) as “humiliating” so much the better.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of such behavior from apes and monkeys, and I think from dogs as well.
Cats are really downright mean about it, too. Actively sadistic, IMHO.
This implies cats are able to empathize with their prey. Unlikely, in my opinion. They are simply “practice hunting,” keeping their skills honed by repeatedly catching a prey item that isn’t able to escape. For a cat this is probably like shooting at targets in a shooting gallery; they either don’t know or don’t care that the prey animal feels fear and pain. This probably goes for orcas as well.
Killer whales have been known to basically play soccer with seals. They will sometimes bounce one of the poor little guys (who is still alive!) back and forth like kids playing with a ball, and the killer whales seem to do this only for their own entertainment. They aren’t trying to kill the seal and eat it at that point. It’s obviously just some sort of play behavior.
Isn’t it obvious to all that the Intelligent Designer wanted things to be that way? Otherwise He would have designed them differently. Or maybe the apparent cruelty arose because Adam and Eve disobeyed.
I saw a show on TV that described how a pair of dogs had killed a large number of domesticated rabbits on a neighbor’s property. The dogs ripped open the cages and killed the rabbits. The dogs were not interested in eating the rabbits, just in killing as many as possible.
I’m sure you know this David, but that really is what they say. At a fundamentalist’s forum I once asked why, if God was all loving and all merciful, he was so sadistic as to create the food chain. And that’s the answer I got.
I once had a butterfly “farm” at my school where we had them from caterpillars. While they were in cocoons one of them fell to the ground. When it came time to hatch the one that feel never was able to extend its wings all the way and was deformed. All the other butterfly’s would fly around it almost taunting it.
I have a dim memory of a PBS nature show about lions. There was a fight between lions from different prides (all female, I think), which resulted in one lion dying. As I recall, the victors then proceeded to urinate on the defeated lion. I don’t recall if the downed lion was dead at that point or just nearly dead. In either case, that seemed a little uncalled for.
Sorry for not having a cite. Maybe someone else will remember more?
Ludovic, I remind you it is against the rules to change the words within a quoted post while leaving the attribution to the original poster. I have removed the quoted posters name from your post.
I once saw a nature program that showed seals eating the fins off of a series of sunfish (big, flat-bodied fish with small fins), leaving the finless fish free-floating as a living larder. They played around them and would push them around to keep them together until they got hungry again.