this is my new favorite field of study. animals are absolutely incredible creatures (including us, but i'm talking non-human animals). it's a whole other world you don't even realizes exists -- the world around you that isn't human, but is a live being. the range of emotions, feelings they experience are very similar to humans in many ways, and some seem to show signs indicationg consciousness. they feel pain, they deeply grieve, they are happy, they are sad. they greet each other with handshakes and pats on the backs. they take care of each other. they fight.

there's a reason dolphins save humans from sharks. there's a reason large felines have protected children in the wild, and left them as soon as officials found them. there's a reason why mice and snakes become friends. any pet owner knows this if they've paid any close attention to their pets -- you don't become emotionally attached to your cat or dog like you do a goshdarned cell phone. think about it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8305836/

Ethiopian girl reportedly guarded by lions
Authorities: Cats chased off men trying to force her to marry

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.

She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.
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“They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest,” Wondimu said.

“If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage,” he said.

Tilahun Kassa, a local government official who corroborated Wondimu’s version of the events, said one of the men had wanted to marry the girl against her wishes.

“Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people,” Wondimu said.

Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.

“A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they didn’t eat her,” Williams said.

--

are these beings in automata, or do they know what they're doing? perhaps it does not know your capacity as humans, as we do not them, and it is acting as we would.

Cool shit, Ceebs.
I've always been facinated with the stories of dolphins proctecting humans from sharks, but I had never heard of lions.
I had never heard of inter-species "friendships" before either. It certainly would never happen with leopards and crocodiles. http://www.theskyiscrape.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=77515

i don't get what you're saying here

the miracle of life
I like this advertising, by the way:



groetjes,
Mirella

Animals are amazing, which is why I don't eat them. They have emotions and feelings. If a cow could look at you and say verbally "Please don't kill me" we wouldn't eat them. I guess the fear and sadness in their eyes isn't enough for our selfish gluttonly.

That's silly. People kill other PEOPLE who can ask them not to, and not even for food.
Animals eat other animals. Humans evolved as omnivores. It's sad, but true. And a lion won't stop itself from eating you if you ask it not to.

People kill each other out of rage or mental illness. Animals kill based on instinct. Most humans don't even kill animals. They pay others to do it for them, and in the process this 'evolution' has turned into a world of cruelty and depravity.

But, since you're so into the whole thing, how much chicken would you eat if you had to go kill and defeather every one? What about pork chops?

People don't mind what happens because it isn't in their face. We do that with impoverished nations and mass killings as well. People in Darfur are in a living hell, but we're all pissed because gas is $4 a gallon and that's cutting into our 'disposable' income.

Face it, we suck.

If I lived out on a farm and had to be self sufficient, I'd have to raise and kill my own chickens to eat. Plenty of people do it. However - living conditions and population numbers make that rather impossible. There just isn't ROOM for 300,000,000 farms. You can't raise cattle in Manhattan. It's not even legal to keep chickens where I live, there's no room. So I do have to rely on other sources. Yeah, in general, it sucks. I wish we could all survive on rainbows and puppy farts, but that's just not how it is. I can't go vegetarian. I tried. I got really sick - I became anemic and found out that I have a bit of a soy allergy. If you want to be a vegetarian, go for it. Makes no difference to me. I don't look down on anyone for their choices. I only ask the same.

This is absofuckinglutely retarded and the exact reason why I get into arguments with vegetarians so often. For somebody who's worked on a ranch for four years and looked into cattle's eyes as it's slaughtered (there's nothing going on in there, by the way), I can honestly say that people like you are simply giving human emotion to animals. If they could somehow communicate or feel any emotion other than the propagation of their own survival, they would possess some kind of collective (or even individual) consciousness, yes? What have you ever seen would propagate that kind of thinking?

Have you ever worked on a farm? Other than just passing by some veal production plant and uttering "oh, that's so horrible." I mean ever gotten in there and killed a chicken with your own hands? The more I dealt with them the more I realized they have absolutely no parallels with us. At all.

first, we must define consciousness. is it awareness of self? i admit we can't know for sure if cattle know what it's like to be cattle. but cattle, if conscious, wouldn't know what it's like to be a human, would they?

perhaps there's a different test we should use: sentience, or the ability to feel pain and suffering. and isn't that what most, if not all, of our moral questions are really about? pain and happiness.

we know many non-human animals are awake and responsive, and show that they feel pain, and happiness. cattle and chickens, for our purposes, pass this test with flying colors.

perhaps you think a defining line for this whole consciousness debate is the human ability to reason and make decisions, or our "intelligence." however, do newborn babies reason and make decisions? are they smart? or, to bring it back, do they know what it's like to be newborn babies? in this sense, slaughtering a baby shouldn't give you any more pause than slaughtering a cow, right? but, ah, we could use the awake and responsive to stimulation test for hints, and guess what: they too pass with flying colors.

even if you do not believe these creatures are conscious in the sense that we are -- they don't know what it is like to be what they are -- they clearly sentient, sharing many emotions, feelings, and neurological traits with us, and are aware of stimulus.

my reason for being a vegetarian is very simple: i don't need to make animals suffer for my survival, therefore i should not.



i haven't worked on a farm, but i don't need to to have read up on the cognitive abilities of animals, depending on scientists who have worked next to, and studied non-human animals for centuries.

all of that research has shown that there are some parallels. of course, we are not completely the same, but the science shows that, like i said, chickens, feel pain (http://www.grandin.com/welfare/fear.pain.stress.html ; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/691129.stm ; http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/public ... 115=154297) this is what we could call continuum in the theory of evolution: we don't share everything, but we share a good deal of similar traits, in this case neurologically. and that makes sense.

I can understand both sides, to some extend. First of all I am not a vegetarian. I might be one in the future, but for now I chose the middle way: I only eat meat from animals that had a relatively happy life. It's more expensive, but I don't eat much meat, so that's okay. My first father was a butcher, by the way, and he loved to work with meat. And he loved animals too. It's a slippery slope to think animals have no brain or feelings. It's the same thing people do who treat other people bad. Labeling (in war: 'the enemy') makes it much easier... Just knowing my cat, who's pretty smart and loving (and not just for food) makes me realise it everyday that animals are more like humans than some people think. Even the tiny fish in the bowl at work are happy and funny little creatures. I never knew that until I got to know them.

groetjes,
Mirella

P.S.: tonight on Dutch TV there's a rerun of Babe

This is not exactly friendship but it's interesting to see:

If the human race hadn't evolved whilst eating meat, we wouldn't have had enough protein for our brains to develop enough to determine whether or nor it was morally correct to eat animals.

You make it sound so cozy. Here is a sample of the 'other sources' you're relying on.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316624,00.html

There has been an indictment in this case, btw, but most cases result in no punishment because farm animals are generally viewed as property and not a living being.

Does this happen everywhere? I sure hope not, but do a little research and you'll find out this is by far an isolated incident. I choose not to support this kind of depravity and so I don't buy or consume meat.

I'm not looking down on people that choose to eat meat, but I do think that people should really know what they're supporting when they make that choice. Factory farms are hell holes, the animals are filled with steroids to make them grow faster (which everyone that eats meat is then eating, btw), and it gets worse with every effort to save another buck. Sad really, because this kind of rampant abuse doesn't generally happen with the small rancher, who btw is being squeezed out of business by this shit.

I'm all for fair treatment of animals and against intense farming. Which is why %90 of the meat I buy is local produce and organically bred and grown.

speaking of animals as friends, i always thought this was pretty neat. polar bears and huskys

I never worked on a farm, but I did have a job in a slaughterhouse for a while many years ago. Animals do have feelings, and maybe not always, but sometimes they do know exactly what's happening. I'll never forget the day I had to go to a farm for the slaughter of a pregnant cow (pregnant with two calves). The cow had a hip problem and hadn't stood up in days. Her unborn calves were already dead (mind you, this cow was sick -- the farmer ran a clean farm and tended well to his animals). The guy I was with used a rifle to shoot the cow in the back of the head, but as he walked up to the cow before shooting, the cow saw the rifle and stood up, screamed and started hobbling away. Almost brought a tear to my eye.

Anyway, that didn't make me want to be a vegetarian. Nothing will. Most people eat meat, always have. It's in our diet. I suppose we could go back to the stoneage and start beating animals with clubs until they die, or find something other very violent way to kill them like other animals kill their prey. I prefer to keep things the way they are though, and prosecute companies caught mistreating them. There is nothing wrong with eating meat. If someone wants to be a vegetarian, fine. Just don't be the 'holier than thou vegetarian'. I met a lot of dairy farmers in the year I lived in Wisconsin, and just about everyone of them took pride in making sure their animals were well treated.

I keep seeing examples of this subject in the news. Yesterday: a video on a site about a pair of swans who 'adopted' a bunch of young geese. Today: a British report (Biology Letters, but I could not find it online yet) about how dogs were influenced by the yawning of humans to yawn too. Interesting.

groetjes,
Mirella

Got to agree with everything you said we're a disgrace

i think it was linda mccartney who said, "if slaughterhouses had windows, there would be alot more vegetarians...