I study fruit flies, which is a very inefficient business. We inevitably end up breeding thousands more flies than we actually need, and all of the extras are disposed of, one way or another, either being dumped into ethanol or frozen to death. I can’t even estimate how many thousands I end up killing in an average week. The ones I actually use get dissected without anesthetic, though I do usually crush their heads before ripping open their abdomens and extracting the ovaries.
No, not killing the geese myself…although in America they use ducks, but I digress. The point was that I am consistent…foie gras production is decried by animal rights activists as cruel. I don’t think it is…and I don’t really care. Same thing with getting rid of vermin. I use glue traps at my businesses. When I discover a trapped rat, if it is still alive, I kill it immediately. I don’t just throw the thing into the garbage to linger on to life for however long it takes the thing to die.
Cats are moronic little fuzzballs though, that don’t have any sets of morals. They probably don’t understand the mouse is “living” and “suffers”. It’s just a toy to it. It’ll do the same thing to a toy mouse as it would a wild one, because it can’t see the distinction. But yeah, if it were my cat, I would have intervened and put the animal out of its misery. If can I stop the pain, I will.
BTW, is your cat bored and overfed? Housecats don’t seem to have the ruthless efficiency that a wild cat would. That is, not wasting energy playing around it, but kill it then and there and gobble it up.
Because it’s the popular belief that insects do not feel pain. They don’t seem to learn anything from it, and display behaviour that’s contrary to something that can actually feel pain (ie. still having sex while being eaten alive, or eating something while cut in half for a dissection). I’m not really sure though.
Your own cites give you scant support. You treat this as a settled issue, but your cites are larded with equivocating words that are there to emphasize that the authors themselves consider this to be debatable material. Mostly, they seem to be re-tooling Skinner’s work and calling positive and negative responses emotions. Now, either provide some good strong evidence WRT fear and anger being universal mammalian emotions, or stop asserting it. Every time you do that, it makes you look that little bit more like a lunatic who thinks Dr. Dolittle was a documentary.
No, I am not taking pleasure in suffering, nor am I proud of killing. I am having an adverse reaction to the thread participants that are going overboard in their desire to try to make sure we all know how to responsibly dispatch vermin, which given the attitudes of some, is surprising that it’s even allowable to them at all.
Strong evidence? Ok, just observe the behaviour of a dog. Go and yell at the dog, make aggressive moves to it - preferably a small one. Watch its behaviour. Dogs certainly have fear, that is not debatable. Fear is an emotion, that is also not debatable. The only question with regards to the animals’ capacity to emotion is whether is it human-like, but you fail to acknowledge that emotions aren’t necessarily human exclusive traits. The best evidence is to see the reaction of a fucking animal in distress. That it might not think like a human being, or convey the same thoughts as a human being doesn’t mean shit - you said that they have no emotions, period. But the fact that researchers use rats in the testing of the effects of depression is more than proof enough - you can’t induce and test the effects of depression when the test subject has no emotion.
You speak of animals as if they’re some kind of computer program, then ignore every piece of evidence because it doesn’t suit your outdated, bullshit mantra. Get a fucking clue. I’m not a lunatic for saying animals can feel and have emotion - it’s simple common sense talking here. Maybe you should observe and educate yourself with animal behaviour rather than talking shit. I’ll let someone else take the bite from you, preferably someone experienced with animal husbandry because you’re wasting my time.
You know, sport, that you simply declaring things non-debatable based on your engagingly childlike interpretations of animal behavior doesn’t make it so. I recognize that this is The Pit where most anything goes, but even here I think we draw the line at accepting the fantasies of retarded children as scientific fact.
Here is my middle finger - go shove it. Your amazingly stupid comparison between a mammal and bacteria says enough about your contribution on this thread. While you’re at it, go and learn the fundamentals of animal behaviour. You’ve absolutely no shred of common sense, and are the last to talk about anything “childlike”, seeing you’re doing a great job of doing that yourself.
Welcome to the Dope. How are you enjoying your first day here? Can we get you anything to make your stay more comfortable? I’d like to start by offering you a warm glass of SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Now, now, you know what the doctor said about being Mr. Angrypants. It’s unpleasant when you throw tantrums and bang your head against the wall over and over, but it doesn’t make you right. It only makes you purplish in the face and with more lumps on your head.
My reference to a staph infection is what the kids in the regular classes learn is called an analogy. Maybe next year, your teacher will let you do more than coloring sheets and you’ll learn about them too. Wouldn’t that be swell?