I think there’s a few things at play here. First of course is whether or not animals understand what they’re doing. When a bird of prey kills another bird, does it know it’s taking life? Is there a mental decision there where options are weighed? Another point might be whether it’s necessary. A bird doesn’t really have any other option than hunting for food. Can we really blame it?
Of course we can’t just say “animals”. I don’t think anyone would disagree that, say, a worm couldn’t be evil. Somewhere between worms and humans must lie the line at which we can say “Yes, that’s an evil creature”. The question is, is the gap far enough between us that humans are the only animals that count? Or can we go back and say apes, or dolphins, can also be evil?
I don’t think that we can say what is good or evil in another animal’s society, except by the standards of that society. Other primates have at least a sense of reciprocity, if not of morals, but by and large it’s might makes right.
I remember an Eddie Izzard routine where he asks this question, and ponders the possibility of an evil giraffe:
“I will eat all the leaves off this tree. I have gotten up early to eat all the leaves off this tree, and when the other animals wake up, there will be no leaves for them AND THEY WILL DIE! MWAHAHAHAHA!”
I don’t think that animals can be portrayed as having evil intent. In your first example, a bird of prey is doing what it needs to to survive. That’s their only means of survival, and there aren’t other options. That would fall into the course of Nature category. The only option is to survive as successful tactics honed over time dictate. Taking a life is par for the course. The mental decision is to succeed in that endeavor, with best skill. “Blame” is a human judgement. If you watch the life on this planet Earth, it can appear to be cruel at times (as opposed to evil intent), but also incredibly beautiful in the ways all life adapts to survival. If there is a Creator who dictates Good and Evil; as far as the natural world goes, they are either a sadistic genius or flat out crazy.
By that I mean that there are so many weird permutations of survival here, especially in the insect world, that if you concern yourself with Evil intent, and look at the scope of what goes on in Nature every second of every day, down to microcosm, your head will explode. It’s incredibly rude and wonderful and thriving, so Evil intent is better left out. It’s the way things happen here, and best to appreciate it as a beautiful model of success. Without the ability to create and cultivate that we humans have developed, animals do what they do best to survive.
In preview, I see the post about the Giraffe. I don’t see any evil intent. Most likely, it’s just,“Hey, leaves, yep, I’m gonna eat em cause I want to live. Got here first, yeah, yumm!” Me first, sure, but don’t know if there’s a “Bwaaaahaaa”
There was this big dog named George, who was owned by someone down the
street. George would go through the neighborhood beating the living shit out of every dog he could get his teeth on.
The son of a bitch came on my property and attacked my dog (who was lying there minding his own business) which resulted in a hefty vet bill. George’s owner paid.
My point is George would go out of his way to inflict harm on other dogs, and in my book, this suggests canine evilness.
Son of a bitch? I don’t think that’s an insult to a dog…
Dogs are pack animals and packs have hierarchies. Those hierarchies re determined by who is the toughest, which is determined by who can beat the living shit out of the other dogs. That’s not evil, that’s just dog nature.
Good and evil presuppose choice. I don’t believe animals “choose” their actions the same as humans; they simply do what they do, and can’t act otherwise. We have the ability to choose whether or not to do evil (whatever you consider evil), which is the basic requirement of morality.
First you need to define what constitute’s “evil.”
Evil I think might be defined as intentionally acting in such a way as to cause distress in others, or deliberately disregarding the distress of others in the course of getting what you want. As such, it requires 1) self-awareness of yourself as an individual; 2) the ability to recognize that others are also individuals with their own emotional state, that is, the capacity for empathy, or having a “theory of mind.” It’s likely that apes have this to some degree, but few if any other animals probably do.
Such niceties are generally put forth by people who never had a pet that obviously knew that what it was doing was wrong, by the standards of the society in which it lived. Dogs generally do not live in packs of dogs. They live in–and evolved to their present form in–human societies and are aware of a fair chunk of the rules of those societies. If they do not know that peeing on the floor is WRONG they know that it displeases the alpha members of their society, which is pretty much the same thing. If, knowing that the alpha members do not like it, they persist in peeing on the floor they are purposely violating the societal rules and are, by that purposeful violation, evil.
Do not give “dumb” animals too much leeway because they can’t do calculus. They are often at least as aware of the rules of their society as we are.
From a christian perspective (which I do not hold) the answer is no, only Adam and Eve ate from the tree of life, only they were banished from the garden. Why the other animals left only god knows. For that matter where did cain and abel’s wives come from? But I digress…
Though not a christian, I still don’t think animals can be evil. For that mater I don’t know if humans can be. Outside of religion evil seems to be just that which is very bad. But it seems like it must involve immoral acts. While animals can do great harm can they be said to act immorally? I don’t think so.
Seriously, though, in order to be evil, you have to have a certain level of intelligence. And whatever that level is, no animal has it. (At least no animal I’ve ever met.)
It’s like asking whether a 2 year old could be evil. The answer is “no”.
