Comment by mcswell
11 hours ago
> House cats recreationally kill billions of birds and small mammals > every year that they don't need or want to eat.
"Recreationally" is carrying a lot of weight here. I suspect that cats kill birds and mice because that's their instinct; it has nothing to do with conscious thought, much less a need for recreation. And that probably is the explanation for most (maybe all) of your other examples as well.
Why do you believe this? Do you believe cats and other animals have no consciousness, so every behavior they exhibit is just instinct? Or do you believe they have some conscious behaviors, but killing birds is not one of them, this thing in particular is just an instinct?
For the first position, I think it is quite clear to anyone who studies and spends time with animals that they have something that is at least of the same kind as our consciousness. I just don't see how you can ascribe the wide gamut of complex, situatuonally and mood appropriate but still varied behaviors of animals to being purely instinct driven.
For the second position, I would like to see some study or some rationale behind it - especially since cats don't kill every bird they encounter, so if it's an instinct, it must still have some trigger, and hunger is not a viable explanation for most of the killings referenced here.
I wasn't arguing for whether cats have consciousness, and I agree that they do, to some extent. (We just lost a 23 1/2 year old cat who had lots of personality.) But killing birds or mice is one of their instincts. One of the triggers is nearness. Young cats will watch a bird through the window with their tail twitching, and the closer the bird is the more excited the cat gets. If they could get through the glass I'm pretty sure they'd go after it. Older cats (my old cat in particular) watched, but either they understand what glass is, or they're too tired to do much about it.
I just meant recreationally to mean "not out of necessity for survival". And I don't think conscious thought is relevant for this specific thread, I was just responding to the question of whether other animals besides humans can be needlessly violent.
The same can be said for humans. Where do thoughts come from?