Comment by teiferer

> Naw bro. These pets are domesticated. They are evolving via natural selection to be suited for living in houses, they already pretty much can’t live in the wild

Natural selection has little to do with how pets are bred. The criteria their genes are being selected for by breeders have nothing to do with optimizing their happiness and more with what maximizes profit (which only losely relates to owner happiness).

Incidentally, lots of domesticated cats could survive in the wild just fine, just like lots of somewhat functional dog breeds. But that has nothing to do with whether the conditions keep them in are still painful to them.

Most humans can't survive in the wild. Put any of them in solitary confinement and you will see how much natural selection has done for them. We are social animals, just like dogs.

> You don’t shoot an old person just because he has hip pain.

No, because it is a human that has human rights. Which include the right to live. (Arguably they should have the right to decide the end of their life too, but religios groups are still having a strong grip on laws about that.) Animals don't. A friend of mine is a vet for farm animals and she always gets angry about how people treat their suffering pets. Cow has a painful broken leg? Bolt through brain, suffering ends immediately. Same with similarly injured sheep, goats, etc. No point in letting them suffer unnecessarily. Already horses are special because people get attached and sometimes they are worth tons of money so people rather pump them full with antibiotics. But dogs and cats? Man, people attach wheels to the lower end of dogs so they can keep their beloved buddy for another 2 years, even though that poor thing can't even go for a pee anymore. You can see owners drag their terminally ill dog through the streets which has clearly lost all will to live. We let pets suffer much more than cows or goats and it's cuel.