Crosspost from https://lemmy.world/post/13527741
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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This is fucked up, but is this functionally worse than freezing mice and rats for snake food? Would we be more comfortable if he had been freezing lambs or piglets for his snake to eat? Should he have euthanized the snake once it grew too large to live on rats? Snakes are carnivores and eat meat. Puppies are just a really cute and loveable configuration of meat. Puppy mills, COVID lockdowns, and the increase in living expenses have resulted in a crisis of too many pets that need homes. Too many dogs are being bred, and too many dogs are being euthanized.
I'm not in any way condoning snake owners freezing puppies to death. It's just weird the way we compartmentalize animal abuse so we can ignore the suffering of animals we arbitrarily choose not to care about.
Mice are cute, but dogs communicate trust and love for us so very clearly. Betraying such trust is for monsters.
So do cows. And pigs are smarter than dogs.
The line between food and friend is arbitrary.
Pigs are better problem solvers than dogs, that doesn't mean they're carte blanche smarter. Dogs have a level of social intelligence and selected-for ability to interact with humans that no other species does.
Pigs definitely have a social intelligence that at least rivals those of dogs, if it doesn’t surpass it. Just because we keep them in a way that traumatises them from an early age on, doesn’t mean pigs aren’t socially intelligent. Wild boar and the like form highly complex social structures and are quite able to communicate in between one another. The only thing pigs actually express more than dogs is the utter disregard for anything but their own survival when under duress. This however might be explained by the way they reproduce. Pigs are K-Strategists, whereas dogs aren’t.
And cows have a very high emotional intelligence and are also extremely social creatures.
The best piece of literature I've seen regarding cow intelligence and social capacity was measured in terms of their ability to bond and empathize with other cows, their ability to bond with humans didn't come close to that of dogs
Rats form extremely close bonds with their human companions, and anecdotally I have family in Mexico who have told me about their cows that have tried cheering them up when they were sad.
I see what you're saying, but when we say "smarter" in English and we typically mean problem solving, not social skills.
If you spend some time with lambs, piglets, and calves, you will probably find similar communication.
I'd like to.
I'm not sure about mice but rats can 100 percent do the same as dogs and are smarter than some breeds of dogs.
I used to have some rats, and I agree. Can't deny the stigma associated though.
This is the answer. We domesticated them. We’re responsible to them. Collectively we owe it to them not to cause them undue harm.