[botexpert]

Animals are, by law, treated as property, not sentient beings, so one dead bird is nothing in the realm of anthropocentric humanity. If it fulfills the purpose man has given it's enough of a justification not to take animal's wishes as morally relevant.

[jmknoll]

Do you have a citation for that? As far as I understand it, the nature of animal sentience is a very widely debated subject.

If you define sentience to mean "the ability to feel or perceive," then a wide array of animals are sentient. Look at any pet cat or dog to see a display of feelings like fear, excitement, or curiosity.

If you take a more narrow definition of "being aware of one's own existence," I imagine you would still find a number of animals who fit into the category.

An African Grey Parrot, while learning colors, asked what color his feathers were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot); I would imagine there is a strong likelihood that you would probably see similar levels of self-awareness from other animals if we had a better way of testing for it.

After all, there's nothing so special about Humans and Parrots in particular, is there?

[botexpert]

Citation for what? Animals are by law treated as property. I just explained why someone would think of a solution as ridiculous as that. Parent points out that the solution is not practical but it's clearly demonstrated in the video that it is.

Given that the world we live in is focused on human convenience, with gluttony based on non-human animal flesh, it's really hard to be surprised.

When you have engineers making efficient assembly lines for slaughtering chickens, cows, pigs, all sentient, feeling animals, how is using eagles for fetching drones not the same act of dismissing animal's wishes as morally relevant, or starving dogs for finding truffles, or any human centered activity that risks the life and well being of another non-human animal?

[tim333]

Here's a guy facing 2 years prison for hitting a dog. I'm not sure your legal argument holds. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/plumber-faces-...

[botexpert]

https://www.animallaw.info/statute/ny-cruelty-consolidated-c...

Imagine that, and yet here's French police training eagles to fetch drones. Each training session a risk of serious injury. If something happens it obviously wouldn't be considered cruelty.

Animal cruelty is a different matter. For example, lifetime imprisonment of a dairy cow isn't cruelty. Or free-range boxed-in-a-huge-building chickens in the dark isn't cruelty.

Truffle collectors that starve their dogs - also isn't considered cruelty.

[perfmode]

advocating for ownership over beings, huh?

[botexpert]

Of course not. I'm advocating for humans to stop using sentient feeling beings and risk their lives in their solutions to problems (from diet, clothes, companionship to catching drones). Aren't we more creative than that? Human anthropocentrism at its finest yet I get the scorn.

[cmdrfred]

I presume you live without the benefit of modern medicine then?

[botexpert]

Good thing that utilitarianism is a well known concept. If I weren't aware of that I'd be living in an absolutist nightmare of a world where everything was made necessary for use and abuse of non-human animals.

Do take in mind that animal testing is an old practice, and there's plenty of evidence that data collected on non-human animals is useless in most cases. So, modern medicine would do a lot to find new ways of testing and making in-vitro or some other models of human biological system.

Here's a nice popsci http://www.livescience.com/46147-animal-data-unreliable-for-... article of how bad of a classifier non-human animal testing really is.

I guess now you will point to my inability to use antivenom when miraculously a snake bites me under my office table.

[cmdrfred]

Animal testing is reasonable for pretty much all medical advances in use today. Simply claiming it is not does not make it so.

Remember, you can't use most vaccines or epinephrine either. Do you carry around a alert bracelet informing EMT's to not revive you should you require epinephrine?

[botexpert]

Never claimed it wasn't reasonable. It's not as efficient as one might think. Having an 8% precision is ridiculously low.

Given that all of vaccines and medical treatments are tested on animals it is quite obvious I should not want to use any of them. I thought your initial remark made that point but it seems to me you were looking at the ingredients.

The amount of animals being abused by medicine has dropped significantly, I'm not an absolutist and yes I'd definitely do my best not to require medical attention. Would I be stupid enough to endanger other animals by not vaccinating myself or my children?

Your last remark is a little bit more inventive than the "anti-venom" one but it is still coming from an absolutist framework.