Absolutely, animals do have emotions similar to ours. They express joy, fear, love, and sadness in ways that are often very relatable. For anyone considering investing in their pets' well-being or other personal projects, exploring private lenders for high-risk personal loans can be a great option. These lenders can provide the necessary funds even if traditional banks might hesitate. Understanding our shared emotional experiences with animals can deepen our bond and commitment to their care.
Is the user base on lemmy really large enough to warrant an AI bot to shill payday loans?
Like, come on man, let us have nice things for once in this goddamn hellscape of an internet.
Humans can have more complex emotions. We can be stressed about theoretical concepts that animals just are not equipped to understand. We can be excited by the prospect of future events.
Most animal emotions are immediate. They enjoy some food they eat, they find a nice warm spot to bask in, they see a predator and run away. Most animals lack the mental capacity to think beyond the immediate.
If that's the case, then there's also something more complex going on - animals can certainly learn to anticipate things at specific times, like food, a dog gets excited by a doorbell because they knew that means somebody is coming, they can get stressed out by innocuous things if they associate it with bad experiences like beatings.
Not saying you're wrong, but it warrants further explanation, because as is it doesn't match the simple experience of living with a dog.
I mean, that could just be a fault in observation. The same line of thinking was utilized by people like Thomas Jefferson to validate his own use of slavery.
The language we use to describe intellect and emotions are inseparable from biased interpretation by humans. Can all humans "stress about theoretical concepts"? If a human lacks the ability to do so, do they become less human, or more animalistic?
Pretty sure every human who understands the concept of death are stressed about it at some point in their life.
Right, but how does one express their anxiety over the concept of death? And if someone does not express their anxiety in a perceivable way, does that mean they do not experience it?
If we took away a person's ability to vocalize their grievances, what kind of behavior of theirs would we attribute to an existential crisis? And how would we determine that type of anxiety from normal interaction with the external environment?
Pretty hard to argue against radically different biological design between our brains. There are animals who can be more emotionally nuanced than humans, like elephants, but for pets those emotions are generally more basic and more extreme. Yes, humans can be psychopaths and sociopaths.
Pretty hard to argue against radically different biological design between our brains.
I don't really see the argument.... For one, all mammals share fairly similar brain structures, with the main difference being the over or under development of particular regions of the brain.
However, even if we accept the claim that they are "radically different". A mere difference in brain structure does not preclude the ability to have complex emotions.
Yes, humans can be psychopaths and sociopaths.
I'm not sure if that's really relevant, sociopathy and psychopathy are defined by the subjects inability to conform to social mores. These terms cannot definitionally be applied to animals. However, there are plenty of examples of animals being shunned by their social groups, or animals who choose to stray from their social norms.
I'm not claiming animals share the same emotional capabilities as humans, but it's unscientific to claim that they are incapable of complex emotions based on the evidence presumed in this thread.
Imo there's been a bit of an overcorrection in science when it comes to trying to curb anthropomorphizing. And a lot of that is due to people like Thomas Nagel, who have a vested interest in stripping animals of terms like consciousness.
I'm pretty sure, that both cow and calf are screaming when they are separated shortly after birth. Alnost like a mother and her baby have an emotional bond.
And even the smallest farm will absolutely kill them once they aren't profitable anymore, or they'd have an ever increasing population of animals.
Ummm.... We don't typically have just one pen or pasture for the animals. The males and females are typically kept separate from each other, except for when we specifically want more animals.
We didn't have cattle. Just horses, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, a couple turkeys, and rabbits.... Tons of rabbits accidentally one time. We let them do their thing when we wanted more.
On second thought youre probably really young in which case I want to apologise. You're right that I neither argued for the claim in the link nor against your claim, I don't care about either of them since their irrelevant to the main point. Word of advice though, these kind of "fallacy debates" about irrelevant details are not productive I have never witnessed someone being swayed by it. Find something you actually care about then argue about that. Argue why you care for it, people are much more convinced by emotion than some stylized formal argument.
Another debate term. I'm not arguing with you. I don't care about the truth value of that statement since it's irrelevant to the point that I wanted to make. Please stop seeing every conversation through the lense of which fallacy can be applied. Not everything is a debate.
You'll see it's a much more freeing and fun way to interact with people, I promise.
if you don't care about whether what i said is true, and alli did was state a fact, then why are you responding at all? it seems to me you very much want to discourage me from keeping the discussion truthful, and i speculate it is because the facts damage your own position.
And then when someone brings a topic to discussion related to these issues
"I can't be vegan, i'm allergic to a lot of stuff", suddenly it's not about having a discussion anymore but rather to push one side of the story without consideration for others.
You can still care about animal cruelty and be ethical, even if you have an allergy. Having a medical condition doesn't give you a free pass to do whatever you want.
You can still care about ethics and animal safety, and you are allowed to avoid foods you cannot eat due to allergy, even if that comes at an unfortunate cost
Plants scream when they die, we just don't notice it. They release all sorts of pheromone type chemicals that warn other plants that there is danger. That's definitely a scream.
I'm not saying eating meat is better, I'm just saying that seemingly the only truly ethical things to eat are raw minerals, and I don't believe that's possible, other than salt. Salt seems to be the only tasty rock.
Silly vegoon, only the cute animals I didn't want to eat have feelings. The others are unfeeling slabs of meat that is magically created by wholesome farmers being folksy.
As a new parent the agriculture propaganda from the very start is crazy! Look at this happy farmer and his cute pig its so happy in its mudpit, what a wholesome picture!
Its tough finding good media, almost anything pre 2000 is out because of some sort of bigotry and even after that it gets iffy sometimes, and if you filter for copaganda, zoo propaganda, agri propaganda and corporate propaganda there is not a lot left...
I was going to ask about your home language, as dogs definitely do not "wa" in the US 😹 I love those differences.
Edit: Also, I think of German children's stories as being very bloody: kids get maimed, and the world is generally dangerous. Is that still present at all, or am I out of date by 100+ years?
the latter lol it's just been bog-standard racism the past century. There's quite the movement to create inclusive childrens books though, to normalize different family structures and cultures right from the start, but animal books for vegans are still quite sparse.
edit: there's one book where spousal abuse is played for laughs a couple times though, by a very popular author too, extremely weird shit
I don't eat meat, but the more we learn about plant intelligence, the less I can say with confidence that plants do not have their equivalents of things like pain and emotion. It doesn't help that we have great difficulty defining what emotion means.
But we know a lot about plants now that we thought were animal things. Grass "panics" or "screams" by sending out chemical signals when you cut it as a warning to others of its species that they are seriously injured and danger is coming. That's what the smell of fresh-cut grass is. Sure, calling it a panic or a scream is anthropomorphizing it, but it's kind of hard to describe it in other terms.
We also have learned about "mother trees," which will send resources to their offspring if the offspring let the mother tree know they are in desperate need of them. Which sounds very much like parenting in animal species. There's also lots of evidence that plants can learn from experiences and retain some sort of memory of them in some capacity.
Do I think plants have the same sort of sentience as animals and will I stop eating broccoli? Of course not. But I will still have to admit that at the end of the day, I might just be choosing to cause a different kingdom of life pain and suffering because it's far enough away from my species that I don't consider that to be pain and suffering.
If you're eating meat, then you're contributing to the death of all of those plants that had to feed the animals you're eating. Even if you grant plants sentience, veganism is still the more ethical option.
Is "more ethical" really enough if you accept that plants can suffer? You're still essentially saying one group of living things' suffering is acceptable to you. Isn't that like saying the holocaust of the Jews was bad, but the holocaust of the Roma at the same time was fine because there were fewer Roma than Jews? Does "less" matter when we're talking quantities so massive?
I don't think there are easy answers to any of these questions. Not if you want to approach them from an honest philosophical level.
No worries. My point was that I cannot make a claim at this point that plants definitely do not feel pain and suffering regardless of whether or not I am willing to eat them. There are other reasons good not to eat meat, such as environmental reasons, but I cannot honestly say for certain that when I eat a plant, harvesting it did not cause it pain and suffering because the more we learn about plants, the more we learn that they do have similar systems to animals in many ways even though they do it differently.
Does that make it more ethical in terms of causing pain and suffering to eat a plant rather than an animal just because their pain is not from same sort of nervous system as an animal's? Can we be certain that their reactions to being harmed or in trouble in some way, such as the chemical signals and the mother tree examples above isn't an expression of pain and suffering? I honestly do not know. We all have to eat to survive, so we have to make choices on this regardless of what the science tells us. The only way out of this, as someone else pointed out, is Star Trek replicators.
We also just don't know enough yet, so this discussion is more speculative because we just don't have good definitions for 'pain' and 'suffering' outside of our limited human perspective. It sure seems like all mammals feel pain. It's hard to tell if insects feel pain. It's really hard to tell if plants feel pain.
Pineapple tries to eat you back when you eat it, if that makes you feel any better. That painful sensation in your mouth that fresh pineapple causes is a digestive enzyme that the fruit releases to prevent animals from eating it. Works on humans about as well as capsaicin.
Like I said, I'm going to keep eating plants. It's just something to think about in terms of what suffering means and what people are willing to interpret as suffering and what they will accept when it comes to killing a living thing.
It’s the fish argument all over again. Some vegetarians reason they can eat fish because fish has simple enough nervous system that it can be aware of its suffering. Sure it reacts to pain, but is it aware?
Similarly, grass may react to damage, but have such simple systems that you can’t even call it pain, much less that they have any awareness of pain
Not at all, it’s just a reaction. When you drop your mentos into Diet Coke, you see a very excited reaction, but do you really call that an emotion or can you really connect that with any entity’s awareness?
Mentos and Diet Coke are not alive. Plants are. Mentos and Diet Coke are also not having reactions to being damaged that signal that damage to other cans of Coke and packs of Mentos. Plants do. That is not a good analogy.
There is an interesting catch to this argument, which is that in a human body we can eliminate pain by using general anesthesia or nerve blockers. Locally the body still reacts to damage but the actual person doesn’t experience any pain because it isn’t communicated to their consciousness. If we accept that being unconscious precludes experiencing pain then it follows that consciousness is a pre-requisite for pain.
On the other hand if it’s still unethical to inflict damage on a living thing without consciousness then is it unethical to operate on a sedated person even though they don’t consciously experience pain?
Very interesting points, and this was the sort of discussion I was hoping to have. These are complex ethical questions without simple answers and in 100 years, people may look back at any eating choices made in this time, be they vegan or 100% carnivore, to be absolutely nuts because none of us have figured out that the real key to good and ethical nutrition is everyone eats a soup made from cloned moose DNA and petroleum. Science is constantly changing and moving on, so who knows? But it's an interesting thing to talk about, at least to me.
For now, I am on the side of those who say it is not ethical to eat meats, but it is ethical to eat plants. In 20 years of plant science? Who can say?
If our ability to modify ourselves reaches sci fi levels, allowing us to photosynthesize and fix amino acids from nitrogen in the atmosphere (or if there's any hope of making that happen), then that likely will be the new vegan position.
I know you're being flippant, but I do like the idea of coming up with a variety of ways for humans to get food which don't require life at all. Finding a way to make a construction worker photosynthetic but also finding a way for an office worker to be chemosynthetic. Hydrogen and methane are in abundance on the planet and bacteria can use them as food. Maybe one day we can too
I can only think of one that does: utilitarianism. it's frought with epistemic problems not to mention it can be summed up "the ends justify the means" which most people think is itself unethical.
"Yes, your honor, he did kill my wife and I did give him money. However, I gave him the money afterwards, and effects cannot occur before causes, so there's no possible connection."
surely you can see that there are going to need be more evidence. some kind of communication prior to the fact is probably going to need to be established.
It's called supply and demand. They know there is a demand for meat so they grow animals and feed those animals plants. Continuing to eat meat supports a system that consumes more plants than a system where humans only eat plants. You shouldn't need your hand held for this, it's pretty basic stuff.
When you eat animals you give the market a financial incentive to breed and slaughter more animals, who inevitably have to eat a bunch of plants to grow. It's not that you eating a burger kills a cow, but you eating a burger helps make it financially sound and socially acceptable to murder cows for burgers.
It doesn't help that we have great difficulty defining what emotion means.
There was this thing about fishing with hooks. Apparently it's ok, since fishes don't have the facilities to process pain as anything different than a robot would interpret sensory input.
Plants do have incredibly impressive defence mechanisms, but that doesn't mean onions are crying when you cut them. There's no central nervous system, you are anthropomorphising. That is very common whenever this topic comes up, but it really is magical thinking, and the garden is already magical enough without imagining fairies at the bottom.
Why doesn't it mean onions are crying out? Why is a nervous system necessary for pain or suffering? How can we know that? How am I anthropomorphizing if we do not have a functional universal definition of 'suffering?' If you're going to make that claim, you're going to say I can't prove cows suffer.
I studied plant signalling/phytohormones during my MSc, it's genuinely fascinating but it doesn't imply consciousness. Cows have a central nervous system. Beyond that, it's magical thinking. You are making an unfalsifiable claim, and that's fine, but please acknowledge that you are adopting a faith-based position here. I could claim the sentience of crystals and be similarly obstinate when challenged.
A (potentially) thinking or feeling plant has to be killed in order to eat it just like an animal has to be killed, and there's no difference between the two.
Did you not read what I wrote? I made it very clear that there were a lot of differences.
And the fun part is that you're the second person to tell me that I was trying to justify eating meat when, again, the first four words of my post are "I don't eat meat." I couldn't have been more clear on that point.
no dude its about the resources, like you claim that plants can feel pain or something stupid like that, read up on it.
Also
But I will still have to admit that at the end of the day, I might just be choosing to cause a different kingdom of life pain and suffering because it's far enough away from my species that I don't consider that to be pain and suffering.
sure sounds like think the "pain and suffering" of the two "kingdoms of life" might be equal.
Oh man how do we even define emotion, like what does it mean for something to be in pain, where do we even draw the line dude at sentience or at pain, what a quandary this all is
is what I got from your post. And its easily answered by "plants dont feel pain".
You're conflating very different processes here. While there is the hard problem of consciousness and we can't falsify ideas like panpsychism consider a few things.
If you amputate my hand and press on it it will emit nervous signals. Does anyone feel pain? If you destroy most of my brain but keep me alive, then stab me almost all the nervous activity and hormones etc associated with injury will happen. Is there any reason to believe there is any pain felt?
I would say no in both cases, pain is not emitting nervous impulses, or something that precedes releasing endorphins and inflammatory factors etc. Pain cannot even necessarily be reliably correlated with stress markers like heart rate, and in the case of phantom limb syndrome pain can even be associated with a complete lack of signals.
There are good evolutionary reasons to exhange information and resources, even unwittingly. Apparently some bacteria in my tummy are in conversation with my body constantly but I'm not at all aware or actively participating in that. Maintaing pain only really seems to offer advantage if you can do something about it, while it's possible for things to exist accidentally it's not like grass can move to places without mowers or trees shade themselves. In all animals with nervous systems the nervous systems are the vastly most expensive thing to keep alive. In fact there are a few creatures who when entering an immobile stage of life rapidly digest their own (a good explaination for both tenure and retirees!).
Plants don't have rapid long distance communication in their bodies, they don't have centralised organs, they don't even have anything approaching the levels of activity we associate with the simplest nervous systems.
It's probably best to think of grass "screaming" as skin cells "screaming" for resources to make more melanin when exposed to UV. Or lymph nodes "screaming" when releasing hormones to heal a wound and stuff. This is all vastly below the level of consciousness.
Or whatever, embrace panpsychism, like the invisible dragon in my garage nobody can prove it false /shrug. Animals eat plants though and thermo law 2 is a thing so even panpsychics minimise suffering by being plant based.
But what I am arguing is that is an anthropocentric view of what constitutes pain and suffering. We cannot assume either is not possible without a nervous system. It's worth at least looking into the concept even though we don't know that there would be a mechanism simply based on what we know about plants so far. I myself would put myself on the no side when it comes to whether or not plants feel pain, but I couldn't say that it was a 100% definite no by any means and I think we may feel very differently about what it means to be a plant and what plants are capable of in 20 years.
You've got to operate on evidence, there's an infinite number of things you can't falsify and you have no criteria for choosing which to believe or not.
In other animals we observe things consistent with pain such as long term behaviour modification in the absence of a persistent hormone. Things like avoiding places they were injured, becoming more cautious or less curious, even changes that destroy them like starving themselves to death.
Anyone that says "only humans feel pain" is a chauvinist ignoring stuff like rats giving up the will to live.
But trees or mosses or whatever do none of this. A tree will keep trying to grow towards a fence that damages branches in a storm, a tree never starves itself to death making thicker bark after teens carve lovehearts into it, a tree doesn't stop reproducing after 3 droughts kill all its children and so on. Leaves might change colour in response to periods of high or low sunlight but these changes are like tanning, they don't modify anything about how the tree trees.
We can't know is true, but we also can't know I don't have an invisible dragon in my garage. you should definitely not live your life thinking I have an invisible dragon in my garage. Why? you don't have any evidence to suspect it's real that is distinguishable from a random lie. We have no evidence of behaviour in trees indistinguishable from chemical signals we know are below the level of consciousness in ourselves.
But trees or mosses or whatever do none of this. A tree will keep trying to grow towards a fence that damages branches in a storm, a tree never starves itself to death making thicker bark after teens carve lovehearts into it, a tree doesn’t stop reproducing after 3 droughts kill all its children and so on. Leaves might change colour in response to periods of high or low sunlight but these changes are like tanning, they don’t modify anything about how the tree trees.
I don't know why any of this means that our nebulous definitions of 'pain' and 'suffering' cannot apply to plants.
If I stub my toe, it doesn't modify anything about how I human. But it hurts.
It does though, you will stop walking. Clutch your foot, say ow, look at where you hit the thing, be more careful when walking near there, move the object, pad the object, maybe wear protective covers on your feet, maybe dress a wound if the nailbed was damaged etc. If your toe keeps hurting you will travel to a doctor for assessment, or splint the toe and so on.
Unless you don't notice, in which case you feel no pain despite the toe signalling furiously.
Along side this a bunch of cellular processes will happen to repair the damage, but they happen even if you don't notice (distraction/nerve damage, anaesthetic etc) and so we can notice "huh, there are 2 clusters of things happening, one is conditional and one isn't" and that's a clue that there's something more going on than just a body repairing itself.
Damaged plants can send out signals to other plants, and chemicals to repel what is damaging them (to the specific area where the damage is being done) and repair their damage. Some plants will avoid growing towards areas that they have been unable to thrive in before.
You still seem to be talking about things from a purely human perspective. Dogs will damage their feet and not even let you know sometimes. They will get a piece of glass in their foot and they won't stop walking on them or try to do anything about it until they literally can't do anything about it. My dog tore her CCL and the only reason we knew anything was wrong was that she wasn't limping and then she was a few moments later. She didn't make a sound, she didn't react with any sort of signal that indicated that she was aware serious damage had been done to her, she just was unable to use that leg. Are you going to argue that she felt no pain?
Damaged plants can send out signals to other plants, and chemicals to repel what is damaging them (to the specific area where the damage is being done) and repair their damage.
Could you please explain how this can be distinguished from wound healing in a human. Like what chemicals are sent out? what is the mechanism? are they transported anywhere in particular? are different signals collated in determining a response or does the same hormone guarantee the same response in a dose dependent manner?
Some plants will avoid growing towards areas that they have been unable to thrive in before.
This is surprising to me, is it distinct from following chemical gradients? I have never seen this, or heard about it. The closest I would say I have ever seen is not growing towards salt or dry soil. What is the evidence here please as I don't know what you're talking about. Is there a memory effect? if a grass doesn't grow south and you put it in a new area will it also not grow south?
You still seem to be talking about things from a purely human perspective. Dogs will damage their feet and not even let you know sometimes.
I'm really not, I had a whole thing about memory and will to live and avoiding areas where I specifically spoke about rats.
Whether or not you notice it (and it's true that many animals will try to hide injuries, humans included) doesn't mean there is no modifications to behaviour. E.g. licking, protecting the area (less weight on paw, lifiting it up etc), reacting to the same stimulus more negatively such as not eating or growling etc when being touched.
You literally said she stopped using it. Aka she felt pain. Ever eaten after a dentist when your mouth is still numb? you will straight up bite off chunks of your lips and keep eating. If there was no pain she would keep trying to use it and probably just be confused when it didn't work. Which btw is how she'll behave if you anaesthetise her!
Also if you've ever noticed her behaviour after removing say a piece of gravel from between the pads in her feet you'll probably notice despite no damage the first step or two will be tentative. She's anticipating pain, again behaviour modification.
Specific knowledge? My whole point here is that there isn't enough knowledge. Why do I need specific knowledge to say "this field is changing by the day and we keep learning plants are able to do all sorts of things we thought you needed a nervous system for, so it is not inconceivable that plants feel pain?"
You do know that I have never made the claim that plants definitely do feel pain, right? I never even claimed that they feel pain the same way an animal does. I even suggested that what they would feel could be described as pain even though it wasn't the sort of thing we would anthropogenically think of as pain because we do not have good definitions for the concept of pain or the concept of suffering.
I'm not sure why I need to repeat myself like this when I made all of this clear in my initial post.
Ok, and I opened by acknowledging the hard problem of consciousness but you never actually said that you disagreed with my assertion that my amputated hand doesn't feel pain.
Do you think my amputated hand feels pain? It would seem that you would have just as much (more maybe! given electric shocks or heat to the fingertips will make it recoil) evidence for it feeling pain as grass. And that all your arguments about grass signalling also apply to my amputated hand.
If you don't think my amputated hand feels pain (or could be considered at least as likely as grass to) why don't you?
I wasn't suggesting a leaf feels pain or that it would be the leaf that would have some definition of pain and suffering if it were ripped from the stem. It would be the rest of the plant.
So why are you bringing up a part that, when separated from the whole, no longer has that capacity in any living thing?
What do you mean separated from the whole? all the non hand parts of me are also no longer whole but I am willing to believe amputees, even multiple amputees, even people who have lost the majority of their body can feel pain if their brain is alive and mostly intact.
This is consistent with my belief that pain experiencing happens in a centralised mass of nervous tissue we call a brain.
If you don't think centralised masses of nervous tissue are needed to experience pain (required for plants to, given that no brain is something we can prove) what do you think is? Why would a patch of grass have that thing but not a blade of grass (grass lacks localised organs afterall) or my hand?
We appear to be imagining different scenarios. Imagine it is freshly amputated and is still alive, or that we amputate it and hook it up to an artificial circulatory system, or indeed my circulatory system but at a distance so nothing else is connected (curious if you think the pain chance changes in that situation).
I'm sorry, I could have been more explicit. It seemed obvious to me discussing a dead hand was silly but being the internet it's worth clarifying these things.
Imagine it is freshly amputated and is still alive,
Why should I imagine it when that's not reality?
or that we amputate it and hook it up to an artificial circulatory system, or indeed my circulatory system but at a distance so nothing else is connected (curious if you think the pain chance changes in that situation).
Where it would be no more "alive" than Henrietta Lacks' eternal cell line. If you have to keep it from decomposing by artificial means, it's not alive like a plant is alive. This should be obvious to you.
Also we need to distinguish responding to the environment and even making decisions from experiencing pain.
I can make a robot from Lego that follows a line pretty well but I think we're all pretty comfortable with the idea it is vanishingly unlikely to feel pain (although there are people who feel punishment machine learning schemes are unethical lol).
Believe me vegans put a lot more thought into nutrition than omni's do. Aside from that pet ownership is not vegan. The word "ownership" being operative. If you find yourself having to care for an animal then that's a different situation of course.
Obligate carnivores in nature. Why do you care if a cat is fed with fortified plant bits vs fortified animal bits? Neither product exists in nature and the cat can live a healthy life on both. Also breeding cats to be pets is completely unnatural, so why are you fine with that?
It's not a "moral" obligation, it's how their body actually processes and uses proteins and nutrients... you know, it's probably better for me to not engage here. Stop neglecting animals based on your own beliefs.
This is bullshit because pet food exists where the proteins are denatured because some animals have serious allergies. Animals can build the proteins they need from the constituent parts. There are surely proteins unique to cats, where do you think they get them, cannibalism? Are you saying veterinarians recommending such products are harming animals?
Also who said I have a cat companion, even if you were 100% correct about what constitutes neglect it would not apply to me. But you're obviously not engaging in good faith and just want someone to paint as a monster. What's really monstrous is we have an industry that brutally harvests billions of sentient creatures every year just to feed ourselves and other animals.
The only way to not participate in this industry is to not have any carnivores as companions. Because otherwise you are killing your own sentient creature.
Nobody is suggesting we feed cats tofu and spinach. The naturalistic argument and yelling "We don't know!" a bunch really only works if you are proposing we feed cats only raw meat from fresh kills, what they would eat in the wild. Pet food isn't a pet's natural diet, vegan or not, and it all has to be fortified.
I don't believe in such a naturalistic argument though. Humans are able (key word, able, most don't) eat healthier with modern diets. Why would we assume we can't develop food that is just as healthy or even healthier than an animal's natural diet?
Indeed, the cat appears to have less capability to adapt to most changes in dietary composition because it cannot change the quantities of enzymes involved in the metabolic pathways. This evolutionary development has resulted in more stringent nutritional requirements for cats than for omnivores such as the rat, dog, and man.
Biologically, humans are omnivores. Your suggestion would work great with other omnivores. I'm all for balanced healthy humane diets for the animals we are responsible for feeding! But not to the point of neglect.
Their neurons are bigger tho. The odd case are bird brains; they work a bit different than mammalian but are as smart as ravens in a small package, while human neurons are as small as physically can be.
Elephants are the smartest land animals on earth and the complexity of their brains is comparable to that of humans. This is also clearly reflected in their behaviour. They are able to communicate with body language within their own species and even with humans, and a recent study has shown they even give each other names.
Dolphins and whales are also pretty smart, so yes, size is a big part of what matters.
I figured some of the larger species have some basic emotions. My preying mantis could certainly let me know if she was irritated, though I never really saw a "happy" as much as "content."
My tarantula and I never managed to talk to one another.
I was of this opinion until I moved in with my partner who had a bearded dragon. Reptiles move strangely, but this bearded dragon had been a classroom pet for the first few years of her life, and was surprisingly social. She'd make eye contact, gesture with her body, present her head to be gently pet around the bristles, and even flip over to be rubbed on the belly like a dog if she was not currently or just finished eating. Responsive with body language to some specific one or two syllable words like her name or the words for mealtime, and very aware of visual cues (like any of the objects she was handed a mealworm from, even just once).
I imagine a tarantula probably has some behaviors that would surprise me if it was conditioned as a pet and socialized, I know they have a fair number of ways aside from the bite to show displeasure or anxiety like flicking hairs and quickly shuffling away to show a defensive posture. I think it could be a fun experience and wouldn't turn my nose up at it instantly these days if the opportunity came along; animal cooperation is a small joy even when it's a bit foreign.
