Comment by sitkack

I want to live, and think others do too- so Life must have some kind of Greater Meaning. Yet, almost everything else seems to prove the opposite based on how fragile life is, and how little things change when one is lost.

See, I never swore off beef, even with that. I took it as a reason to make sure they live their best lives, and to do my best to ensure that their deaths are as quick and painless as possible. I understand the hypocrisy or whatever that might be, but beef has kept my family out of bankruptcy when full time job income has not. I do apologize and thank every animal, for whatever that's worth. It doesn't feel great, but such is life.

I swore off lamb after trying to make a couple lamb stews. It is clearly an acquired taste if that.

Cows seem to inherently know when it's down, and choose rainy nights exclusively to go on a tear around the neighbor's fields instead of my own.

We had pigs for one terrible year. Pigs know when the electric fence is down because the sociopaths regularly push each other into it. I think they do it to a) test the defense and b) because they're bastards that enjoy watching other creatures suffer.

I hate pigs entirely, by the way. We raised them for one year and decided they weren't worth the hassle. They're the worst.

I had a college professor who steadfastly believed that pork was a no go because pigs get sunburned. Not because they're resource and time intensive. Not because they're intelligent and weirdly similar to humans.

Sunburns.

I have no idea

Interesting! I'd never thought of that.

Still, though... bivalves?

Missing pets are because people don't spend enough time with their animals to form a pack attachment (for dogs) and cats just don't give a shit.

Or. . . The encroachment of suburbs in currently rural areas means coyotes and pets come in contact. . .

Also I still live on the farm. And animals here can be dumb as hell as well. Our neighbors miniature donkey regularly escapes, just to get his head stuck in the fence trying to get to his food trough from the outside.

Maybe they run away exactly because they are smart.

The hexagon is the best-agon

Well, kind of. :D Wasps do not produce honey, they just collect nectar and sugary substances for immediate consumption, and propolis is specifically a bee product made from tree resins.

That said, wasps are still quite intelligent for insects with regarding to spatial memory, individual recognition, learning, problem-solving, and social cognition. In fact, their intelligence is comparable to honeybees in many respects.

Contrary to popular belief, wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment. :)

There’s something like four thousand species of bees native to North America [1], so while there are lots of reasons to be unenthusiastic about honey bees [2], that still leaves lots of room for bee related enthusiasm :)

[1] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-role-native-bees-united-state...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...

I‘d give it a chance. After all it can’t be any worse than Seinfeld for Bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie

Why would what you said curb my enthusiasm for bees though?

Can you provide me more specifics on this by the way?

> This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.

What are those adversarial effects, what other pollinators, and how does it hurt the ecosystem more than it helps?

I do not mind bees having kept in higher numbers, and beekeepers can do it anywhere without affecting the ecosystem, I believe.

We sound nearly identical, though I may consume more dairy and fish than you.

Thank you for responding also. I felt like you were someone who had similar values just through the subtext of your response and I was curious if we aligned.

Out of curiosity do you extend this to gelatin? My daughter has recently take a stance against pork. She doesn’t make a fuss, just doesn’t eat it or gelatin because of the prevalence of pork bones used to make it.

By "tastier" do you mean more physically pleasurable because you could ensure the animal's good health, ethically preferable because you could ensure a (mostly) good life, emotionally enjoyable because you can fondly remember interacting with them, or something else?

>>You can’t avoid the reality that’s your life depends on something else dying. Either plant insect or animal

There are more nuanced ways of thinking about this. A good example is Jainism's version of vegetarianism which requires paying attention to what one consumes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism

"Jains make considerable efforts not to injure plants in everyday life as far as possible. Jains accept such violence only in as much as it is indispensable for human survival, and there are special instructions for preventing unnecessary violence against plants."

Chickens are very intelligent, it just happens that most people ever see chickens in overcrowded small spaces where they behave idiotically. So would you if you would be in the same situation.

You think that a mushroom is more capable of intelligent thought and emotion driven decisions than a chicken?

lmao

Observing animals' behavior (in the wild and through experiments like the one here) and studying how their brains work to see that they often have the same kind of mental features as us (including whichever you'd classify as consciousness) - just at varying degrees of sophistication.

Some would argue that "consciousness" is something non-physical that has no impact on the physical world, and so is not physically detectable or responsible for any behavior, but I feel then it inherently cannot be whatever we mean by "consciousness" that we're directly aware of and talking about in the physical world (because that itself is a physical impact).

Dogs are on top but just below cats haha

Interesting you mention jumping spiders, I just saw a rather interesting video talking about exactly this and includes some interviews with scientists involved in some of these experiments [1]. One interesting fact I learned is that they have a sense of numeracy, and can distinguish between one, two and three-or-more objects.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QF6kaOAuYg

Aaj, Children of Time reference! Always wondered why the author chose that specific species in his story, now it makes sense