[bjornjajayaja]

There’s a huge difference: in the animal kingdom all species play their part and live freely—yes there is predators and prey, and the wilderness can be a violent place. But humans breed animals in cesspools, and humans rip mother cows from its children to mass produce milk and beef—much of which is tossed in the dump in the name of “food safety.”

Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary. Humans will over-fish and dump shit all over the place killing marine life and filling oceans with oil.

I could go on and on. But you know, we’re all fucked from this behavior. In the name of money we will all perish at the hands of our fellow cheek-turners.

[tux1968]

> Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary.

I don't think that's true. Have seen many a cat catch mice to "play" with until they're dead and not eat even a nibble.

[michaelscott]

Orcas are known to play with seals they've killed and never eat as well. Chimps also participate in clan wars [0]. I'd venture to say that the more intelligent an animal the more capacity they have for needless killing, or at least killing for reasons other than food. What that says about humans specifically I'm not sure, but what I dislike about these conversations is the need to feel like we are so special compared to other animals. We are unique and I'm positive we'll reach a point where we won't need to kill animals for food, but we're not there yet and until then we'll need to be a responsible component of the natural food chain.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

[bjornjajayaja]

The thing is an orca isn’t going to mass-kill a bunch of seals because that’s wasteful (of energy). Sure they can kill and play with seals for entertainment, but they don’t (can’t?) cross the line of ecological torture/waste humans have.

On the human side: the problem is the producers (of meat/dairy) hide the torturous aspects from consumers by abstracting it away. We go to the store and get some chicken breast, steaks, or pork ribs, but we don’t do ANY of the work to prepare that animal. It’s prepared by underpaid/exploited foreign labor.

In contrast, even if a wolf killed a bunch of sheep for sheer pleasure: they are doing the killing, which takes energy. And if the sheep has a herd of rams with them the wolves might come out bloody themselves.

NOTE: I’m talking about factory farms and large scale production. There are farms which follow good, holistic procedures—where the farmers do care about the well-being of the animals and the cycle of life, even when animals are slaughtered.

[michaelscott]

I think the problem in our case specifically is that we centralise our food production, unlike other animals. Given our population size this sort of makes sense, but what you end up with is these death factories of concentrated animal slaughter. I would say the energy argument isn't a good one; factory farms are maximally efficient by design (which is why they're terrible for the animals) and humans definitely waste very little to nothing in these facilities since every inefficiency costs money.

I definitely think there's a disconnect between the average person and their food and it allows this sort of thing to happen more easily. I'm not sure what the right way to handle it all would be until we can 3D print all our food needs, but free range farms and farming animals that require less space (such as insects) are probably the best we can do currently.

[EvilEy3]

> farming animals that require less space (such as insects)

Do you seriously believe majority of people will eat that?

[8note]

Newly introduced species can have that same effect though?

[kalium-xyz]

Wolves are known to just kill a dozen sheep, either to train the young or because they can. Most predators are known to have behavior which involves killIng and/or maiming inefficiently and for reasons other than food. Even worse is that you have plenty of prey animals that will also go ahead and kill or maim each-other for social reason (elk, zebras).

[nsonha]

So there are evolutionary reasons baked in such behaviors? Regardless, it's not quite the same as building factory for the sole purpose or killing, and esentially kill for pleasure. The equivalence would be an ongoing massacre which is not seen in nature to my knowledge.

[liaukovv]

Nature is ongoing massacre.

[nsonha]

How so? Predators get tired, they dont have machinary that helps them kill thousands of preys everyday

[liaukovv]

I dont see a difference between using a mchine and using claws and teeth.

I dont see a difference between mother killing prey for her cubs and butcher doing it for me.

I dont see a difference between farmer raising lambs and lion protecting his territory.

Is efficiency your only qualm? The only difference it makes is amount of life, not it's quality.

[EvilEy3]

Predators are not counted in billions and aren't conscious enough to say "Hey, Jake over here eating barbeque while I have to eat plant crap" either.

[esyir]

That is 100 percent unadulterated bullshit, that's what it is. Animals will happily grow their population till they ram their heads into whatever limit they reach.

They're not constrained by thought or conservation, they're constrained by environmental limits.

[akudha]

Cats, Orcas etc are known to do the same. But only humans have perfected the art and science of torture and killing on an industrial scale. Here is an example

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8372727/Thousands-p...

We can't control what orcas do in the oceans, but we can at least try to not be complete monsters to the animals we raise.

[esyir]

We're simply more capable. That's really all there is to it. Animals are not limited by some magical conservationist instinct, they're limited by capability and environmental limitations.

[7952]

And presumably there is some kind of genetic advantage to this. The cat probably doesn't know why it plays with the mouse or that the mouse is suffering. It is just following instinct.

An instinct that humans have is to project their own kind of consciousness into animals. We imagine the world through their eyes, but from a human perspective. So some animals are wicked, others show love. But it is really unfair to project human expectations onto animals.

[klyrs]

> Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary.

Bears love salmon brains. In boom years, bears will pull salmon after salmon out of the water, bite the head, and discard the rest. They're basically nature's dynamite fishers. Stray dogs will eat anything they can -- and they can and do kill themselves by overeating.

[cheese_goddess]

> Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary

Nope:

> Surplus killing, also known as excessive killing, henhouse syndrome,[1][2] or overkill,[3] is a common behavior exhibited by predators, in which they kill more prey than they can immediately eat and then they either cache or abandon the remainder. The term was invented by Dutch biologist Hans Kruuk after studying spotted hyenas in Africa[4] and red foxes in England.[5][6] Some of the other animals which have been observed engaging in surplus killing include orcas, zooplankton, humans, damselfly naiads, predaceous mites, martens, weasels, honey badgers, jaguar, leopards, lions, spiders, brown bears,[7] american black bears, polar bears, coyotes, lynxes, minks, raccoons and dogs.[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing

[mthoms]

The wiki passage lumps "saving for later" (caching) and abandoning the food completely into the same category. Which doesn't support your point as well as you think — the cached food may well be "necessary" over a longer time frame.

I'm not saying your point isn't valid, just that the passage quoted is too broad to be a strong support of your argument.

At any rate, there are always outliers, no? When someone makes a generally true statement, is it really that useful to reply with a rude "
Nope" and point to outliers?

I took the parents' comment to mean that it is a general truth, not an absolute truth.

[cheese_goddess]

> I'm not saying your point isn't valid, just that the passage quoted is too broad to be a strong support of your argument.

What is my argument? You're making some assumption there that I'm not privy to.

The OP says "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary". That's a very broad statement that obviously ignores surplus killing even for the purpose of storing more food for later (which is often also abandoned when the animals move away or find something better to eat). Anyway, killing more than you can eat right now and storing it "for later" is exactly what humans do, that the OP is trying to say animals don't do.

Hence, "nope".

I agree my reply is rude. I apologise to the OP, but it's frustrating to see how popular opinions seem to be shaped by the behaviour of Disney animals, and yet are expressed with great certainty. It's very frustrating.

[mthoms]

Would you agree that "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary" is a generally true statement then?

>Anyway, killing more than you can eat right now and storing it "for later" is exactly what humans do, that the OP is trying to say animals don't do.

The OP was referring to hunting for sport (and other similar excesses)[0]. That is, they were making a moral argument. "Saving things for later" is a weird thing to be hung up on and has nothing to do with the article or this thread.

[0] Yes I know some animals have been known to do this, but they are the exception.

[cheese_goddess]

> Would you agree that "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary" is a generally true statement then?

See: "Nope".

> The OP was referring to hunting for sport (and other similar excesses)[0].

You are putting way too much interpretation on what the OP actually wrote: "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary".

That's not true: many animals will "catch" (really, savagely kill) more than necessary, much much more. In case you consider food stored for later "necessary", that also doesn't work: animals will kill much more than they can ever eat in an entire lifetime, much more than can be expected to stay in the ground without rotting away. Not to mention, many animals will just kill, without any attempt at storing or returning to the kill.

The OP also said nothing at all about hunting. They talked about over-fishing:

> Humans will over-fish and dump shit all over the place killing marine life and filling oceans with oil.

And also about ripping "mother cows from its children to mass produce milk and beef" and other things like that. Nothing to do with hunting, for sport or not.

> "Saving things for later" is a weird thing to be hung up on and has nothing to do with the article or this thread.

I don't understand what you mean. Can you explain?

[mthoms]

If you're going to insist that hunting is somehow different from fishing (literally: hunting under water) in this context, I think I'm going to disengage. You just don't seem genuinely interested in honest discussion. Have a good day.

[smegger001]

Yup, just last week guy I know that had about half his chickens killed when a mink got into his chicken coup.

[mrighele]

Farming other animals is not limited to humans. For example ants farm aphids

[ekianjo]

> Animals will catch what they eat and catch no more than necessary

That says a lot about how much you have observed animals so far. Predators have an instinct to kill more than they have a will to eat.

[EvilEy3]

Oh noes! Anyways.