this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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So cows and pigs - like many fruiting plants - co-evolved with the creatures that fed on them. In both cases, those creatures became necessary for their long-term survival.
Angiosperm co-evolution goes back hundreds of millions of years. Animal husbandry goes back what, 10,000? That's an evolutionary blip. Yes, long enough to select for traits we prefer, but not long enough to develop the kind of symbiosis we see with fruits. Domestic pigs and cows do get some benefits from being kept, but we certainly aren't necessary, except maybe some sheep.
Why does the length of time matter? Domesticated varieties of cows and pigs would go extinct if humans stopped raising them for meat. The only niche where they can survive is a farm. They are in symbiosis now even if they weren't 10,000 years ago.
Time matters because that's how evolution cements biological distinction. Domesticated cow and pig varieties can certainly survive off of farms. There's the famous example of the cow that escaped to live with a herd of bison, and feral pigs are a well known phenomenon. Yes they are in symbiosis, but it's not biologically obligatory symbiosis.
By that reasoning, fruit is not in a biologically obligatory symbiosis with the animals that eat it. There are many cases of fruit falling to the ground uneaten and forming a new plant near its parent. Those plants eke out an existence just as feral pigs do.
Yes, and this is an undesirable result. You can eke out an existence with no legs, but it is not the preferred state of things. You're just debatelording now.
Yes, it's possible but undesirable for both pigs and fruits to survive without assistance from humans. In both cases, that assistance is offered because humans eat the creatures they assist.
You still haven't explained why this relationship is good for fruits but bad for pigs.
Because "good" and "bad" have nothing to do with my point, which is about purpose. The purpose of fruits is to be eaten, that is their explicit function. While the pigs get some benefits (in principle, in practice factory farms are horrific places which are absolutely less desirable to the pigs than the wild) they do not volunteer themselves for slaughter the way plants volunteer fruit for consumption.
Being eaten is the core benefit of fruit, and all else being equal being eaten is preferable to not. All else being equal, the pig benefits more by not being eaten, and just living peacefully on a farm.
And how did you determine what the purpose of fruit is? It certainly can't communicate its preferences or desires.
All you can observe is that the species as a whole thrives when fruit is consumed. But the same is true of farm animals. You are simply projecting the motivations you want to see, like self-sacrifice, onto one but not the other. After all, many fruits are poisonous. That suggests that fruits don't want to be eaten, but animals evolved mechanisms to safely eat some fruit.
Finally, factory farms certainly cause animals to suffer but from an evolutionary perspective thriving is not about avoiding suffering. It's about producing offspring, and in that sense farm animals thrive. And given that the OP is about the potential suffering of plants, I don't see why fruit farms are any less horrific than animal farms.
I don't know of a single fruit that's poisonous to every animal. There are fruits that are poisonous to certain animals, but that serves mostly to select for particular animals. A popular example is capsaicin, which is painful for mammals to eat but doesn't affect birds. This suggests that these fruits do want to be eaten, they're just selective about which animals eat them.
And even assuming the most woo-woo levels of plant consciousness, fruit farms create nowhere near the suffering of factory farms. Factory farms are a life of constant suffering, fruit farms are just plants vibing.
Again, you're just debatelording at this point.