Gedusa wrote:Yes
Or alternatively just destroy everything

These data also suggest something that might seem a bit radical: if we follow the guidelines of care that provide food, water, comfort, and necessary items for behavioral expression, domesticated animals are not only likely to be as happy as their wild relatives, they’re probably happier.

This applies to livestock as much as it does to a guinea pig, in spite of the fact that we raise the livestock solely to be killed and eaten.

[Wild animals] have to struggle to survive on a daily basis, from finding food and water to another individual to mate with. They don’t have the right to comfort, stability, or good health. [...] By the standards our governments have set, the life of a wild animal is cruelty.

tog wrote:Going on my own subjective experience, these experiences are only really bad when they play into some complex cognition that animals might not have (for example, stressed humans can torture themselves with worry, and get upset that they're stressed rather than happy, whereas a squirrel used to being chased presumably doesn't).

Ruairi wrote:like why would they have gained that response mechanism, what would ahve been the genetic mutation.

Ruairi wrote:so yea its possible that insects react to noxious stimuli without actually feeling pain, just a reaction, but if they didnt have pain to inform them it was noxious what other evolutionary tool might they use?

Invertebrates, it seems, exhibit nociceptive responses analogous to those shown by vertebrates. They can detect and respond to noxious stimuli, and in some cases, these responses can be modified by opioid substances. However, in humans, at least, there is a distinction to be made between the "registering" of a noxious stimulus and the "experience" of pain. In humans, pain "may be seen as the response of the whole awake conscious organism to noxious stimuli, seated.., at the highest levels in the central nervous system, involving emotional and other psychological components" (Iggo, 1984). Experiments on decorticate mammals have shown that complex, though stereotyped, motor responses to noxious stimuli may occur in the absence of consciousness and, therefore, of pain (Iggo, 1984). Thus, it is possible that invertebrates' responses to noxious stimuli (and modifications of these responses) could be simple reflexes, occurring without the animals being aware of experiencing something unpleasant, that is, without "suffering" something akin to what humans call pain.

Ruairi wrote:i thought tog was suggesting that maybe animals dont view death the same way we do?

Ruairi wrote:you dont see other animals grieving over the loss of a loved one in the same way you see humans, usually.

the Indian elephant which sheds tears of pain when injured, or tears of grief when a family member is killed. Amazingly, elephants seem to have a concept of death and enact long burial rituals.

Mother seals who see their babies clubbed to death by hunters shed tears.

Alan Dawrst wrote:I think there's something to what you're getting at with the "subjective experience" point. "Getting upset" at stress or pain is what turns an ordinary recognition of a stimulus into suffering. This is why I'm not sure whether insects can suffer -- I don't know if they have a sufficient level of self-reflection for their aversive reactions to feel bad. I tend to assume that squirrels do have this level of reflection, since they departed ways from us evolutionarily only a few dozen million years ago, but I could be wrong.

One thing to note is that if squirrels don't suffer in these cases, then they also aren't happy when good hormones are flowing through their bloodstreams. In that case, they vanish from our calculations entirely, right?

RyanCarey wrote:Sanalaxy, welcome to the site. Unfortunately, this is not the right place to start a new discussion. Instead of clicking "submit" in the reply section, you need to find the "new topic" button.

Ruairi wrote:oh like if one of us was chased it would be a really traumatic experience and you might suffer from post traumatic stress but for them its very different!

Animal models that are characterised by long-lasting conditioned fear responses as well as generalised behavioural sensitisation to novel stimuli following short-lasting but intense stress have a phenomenology that resembles that of PTSD in humans. [...] Weeks to months after the trauma, treated animals on average also show a sensitisation to novel stressful stimuli of neuroendocrine, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal motility responses as well as altered pain sensitivity and immune function.

LadyMorgana wrote:but you should still think carefully about what happy experiences wild animals have that could outweigh the stress that they clearly do experience to some degree, and the pain of being, say, eaten alive (which I imagine is about the same level of suffering as it is for a human).

Arepo wrote:it's conceivable that animals could be kept alive while being eaten, but without the capacity for suffering (say the nervous system is shut down) - though I don't know of any cases of this