>Why do humans assign greater value to the lives of animals that are bigger?
Absolutely.
We do that instinctively by discriminating between sizes for anything. It's wired in our brains.
Yes, but you have to remember that people are told they should be nice and they are told to think like that. It's brainwashing, they're victims of a complete lack of logic. So take it easy on them.
A dog is an exception.
But general wildlife we do generally take more value with the larger species.
Hence why no one gives a shit about grass or bacteria when we eradicate it. Size matters because that's how things get our attention to begin with. The smaller a thing is, the less attention we give it generally.
>clean food, we don't like scavengers
Not only are the two most popular pets and some of the few animals people default to having empathy prone to scavenging, but both evolved to scavenge even more than their wild ancestors under our care. And by popular I mean the only animals that most people will keep just for company, without being some weirdo outlier. Everything else was a tool or food, closer to a car or a fruit tree than a friend. We are also scavengers, and have all the biological and behavioral traits of a scavenger from now back to when humans first diverged from the other great apes. Humans have no natural hunting behavior or "prey drive", to the point that hunting behavior is PURELY cultural and all instinctive human behaviors are more in line with typical ape socialization, and prefer the taste of meat that has been dried out or "aged" (old but not diseased yet) to fresh flesh.
It is a minor evolutionary feat for a fruit picker to become a carrion picker. Far more likely than a prey-item best described as "giant squirrel" evolving into a natural hunter right off the bat.
humans don't even need their stomach acid to digest food
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7684463/
it's JUST for sterilizing carrion. if you were served fresh meat raw or cooked you would gag for the former or find it low quality for the latter, eating it has to be learned and in one very small population has limited adaptations in its favor, at the cost of their health. if you were offered aged meat ripped off the top of a rotting corpse and cleaned up a little with a sharp-ish rock and a bit of water you would say "thank you for the jerky. this is delicious."
the small amount of meat you need to survive does not suit a hunter either, nor does the human tendency to be a picky eater, but it suits a scavenger-gatherer who will eat some meat, and many other things, and pick and choose what they like from that meat, as they found it, rather than investing energy in killing it. humans used their intelligence to force themselves to be hunters only because finding enough good carrion requires cohabitation with other predators and a bit of luck, and said predators also hunt humans. even then... man takes his fresh meat, ages it to be like an air-dried chunk of corpse, and then cooks it to further decompose it because he abhors fresh meat.
Tbh fish rots so fast that only hardcore scavengers can permit it to sit. Humans are notoriously picky with their scavenging since they’re still primarily frugivores and insectivores (you have to wonder if the behavior started with eating maggots off carcasses on the savanna)
People eat cured/fermented fish all over the world. Aging/fermenting are all essentially spoiling but they are very controlled spoiling made to preserve the food for a longer time. Predators also hide their prey on trees or bury then for later so your scavenger theory is invalid. Humans are generalists, we can eat all sort of animal, plant and fungi so we can thrive in any environment from a mostly plant diet to a mostly seafood diet to a mostly meat diet. We metabolize theobromin in chocolate and caffein have mild effect on us. We are not able to digest cellulose like many specialized herbivores do (with the aid of bacteria) but we can eat a much wider variety than they do.
humans don't even need their stomach acid to digest food
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7684463/
it's JUST for sterilizing carrion. if you were served fresh meat raw or cooked you would gag for the former or find it low quality for the latter, eating it has to be learned and in one very small population has limited adaptations in its favor, at the cost of their health. if you were offered aged meat ripped off the top of a rotting corpse and cleaned up a little with a sharp-ish rock and a bit of water you would say "thank you for the jerky. this is delicious."
the small amount of meat you need to survive does not suit a hunter either, nor does the human tendency to be a picky eater, but it suits a scavenger-gatherer who will eat some meat, and many other things, and pick and choose what they like from that meat, as they found it, rather than investing energy in killing it. humans used their intelligence to force themselves to be hunters only because finding enough good carrion requires cohabitation with other predators and a bit of luck, and said predators also hunt humans. even then... man takes his fresh meat, ages it to be like an air-dried chunk of corpse, and then cooks it to further decompose it because he abhors fresh meat.
umm, wtf, why am I spending so much on fresh food then.
>Humans have no natural hunting behavior or "prey drive",
They certainly do. We play stalk things in our youth and often behave very much like a predator when just observing wildlife, totally naturally. We also get hunting euphoria, and it's intense. When you make a kill it can feel akin to orgasm. I am not joking. There's a reason why some people sit in a tree for 8 hours just for a chance at killing a single deer, and it's not really for the trophy or meat. Those are just bonuses.
It's also psychologically a lot easier to kill something as it's running or fighting than passively captive. The chase and struggle bypasses our empathy almost entirely. We're social predators.
A few of those are just straight up untrue. I mean look at how popular various reptiles, amphibians, fish, and even invertebrates are due largely to the pet trade. In all likelihood a lot of the species that are popular to keep in aquariums and terrariums are likely to survive almost anything due to being in popular demand as pets.
do they really? i think it depends more on the context, like you wouldn't kill a rat that was someone's pet, but people have no problem killing octopus despite their size, or intelligence
Because the bigger animals are more like human
>Why do humans assign greater value to the lives of animals that are bigger?
Absolutely.
We do that instinctively by discriminating between sizes for anything. It's wired in our brains.
LARGER ANIMALS LIVES MATTER
OP is a chud
I don't.
I just assign greater value to the lives of everything that isn't a mammal.
This but the opposite and avians are lower than insects
Go kittycat go!
What is the max number of bobcats that can be birthed in a year?
Same question for rats.
ding ding ding
r/K
You got somewhat of a point, but look at people defending recreational hunting and meat-eating despite deer and cows being much bigger than rats.
Yes, but you have to remember that people are told they should be nice and they are told to think like that. It's brainwashing, they're victims of a complete lack of logic. So take it easy on them.
People assign greater value to a small dog than to a cow. As always OP is a fag.
A dog is an exception.
But general wildlife we do generally take more value with the larger species.
Hence why no one gives a shit about grass or bacteria when we eradicate it. Size matters because that's how things get our attention to begin with. The smaller a thing is, the less attention we give it generally.
>clean food, we don't like scavengers
Not only are the two most popular pets and some of the few animals people default to having empathy prone to scavenging, but both evolved to scavenge even more than their wild ancestors under our care. And by popular I mean the only animals that most people will keep just for company, without being some weirdo outlier. Everything else was a tool or food, closer to a car or a fruit tree than a friend. We are also scavengers, and have all the biological and behavioral traits of a scavenger from now back to when humans first diverged from the other great apes. Humans have no natural hunting behavior or "prey drive", to the point that hunting behavior is PURELY cultural and all instinctive human behaviors are more in line with typical ape socialization, and prefer the taste of meat that has been dried out or "aged" (old but not diseased yet) to fresh flesh.
It is a minor evolutionary feat for a fruit picker to become a carrion picker. Far more likely than a prey-item best described as "giant squirrel" evolving into a natural hunter right off the bat.
humans don't even need their stomach acid to digest food
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7684463/
it's JUST for sterilizing carrion. if you were served fresh meat raw or cooked you would gag for the former or find it low quality for the latter, eating it has to be learned and in one very small population has limited adaptations in its favor, at the cost of their health. if you were offered aged meat ripped off the top of a rotting corpse and cleaned up a little with a sharp-ish rock and a bit of water you would say "thank you for the jerky. this is delicious."
the small amount of meat you need to survive does not suit a hunter either, nor does the human tendency to be a picky eater, but it suits a scavenger-gatherer who will eat some meat, and many other things, and pick and choose what they like from that meat, as they found it, rather than investing energy in killing it. humans used their intelligence to force themselves to be hunters only because finding enough good carrion requires cohabitation with other predators and a bit of luck, and said predators also hunt humans. even then... man takes his fresh meat, ages it to be like an air-dried chunk of corpse, and then cooks it to further decompose it because he abhors fresh meat.
Fresh sashimi does taste better than old sashimi. Also fermented plants like miso, shoyu, kimchi, sauerkraut, etc are pretty tasty as well.
Tbh fish rots so fast that only hardcore scavengers can permit it to sit. Humans are notoriously picky with their scavenging since they’re still primarily frugivores and insectivores (you have to wonder if the behavior started with eating maggots off carcasses on the savanna)
People eat cured/fermented fish all over the world. Aging/fermenting are all essentially spoiling but they are very controlled spoiling made to preserve the food for a longer time. Predators also hide their prey on trees or bury then for later so your scavenger theory is invalid. Humans are generalists, we can eat all sort of animal, plant and fungi so we can thrive in any environment from a mostly plant diet to a mostly seafood diet to a mostly meat diet. We metabolize theobromin in chocolate and caffein have mild effect on us. We are not able to digest cellulose like many specialized herbivores do (with the aid of bacteria) but we can eat a much wider variety than they do.
Why the fuck did I shit my innards out last time I ate undercooked meat, then?
t. eats moldy shit all the time without any problem
immune system never adapted to ecoli when you were a child
slaughterhouses are also filthier than natural kills. seriously.
Probably makes sense, I suppose.
Well, I don't know if it WAS ecoli but I was fucking sick.
Where are chimpanzees on that scale?
umm, wtf, why am I spending so much on fresh food then.
>Humans have no natural hunting behavior or "prey drive",
They certainly do. We play stalk things in our youth and often behave very much like a predator when just observing wildlife, totally naturally. We also get hunting euphoria, and it's intense. When you make a kill it can feel akin to orgasm. I am not joking. There's a reason why some people sit in a tree for 8 hours just for a chance at killing a single deer, and it's not really for the trophy or meat. Those are just bonuses.
It's also psychologically a lot easier to kill something as it's running or fighting than passively captive. The chase and struggle bypasses our empathy almost entirely. We're social predators.
A few of those are just straight up untrue. I mean look at how popular various reptiles, amphibians, fish, and even invertebrates are due largely to the pet trade. In all likelihood a lot of the species that are popular to keep in aquariums and terrariums are likely to survive almost anything due to being in popular demand as pets.
rats are pretty large predators when you consider they predate in massive groups
Human are pretty big animals so to some bigger animals seem more human? idk
do they really? i think it depends more on the context, like you wouldn't kill a rat that was someone's pet, but people have no problem killing octopus despite their size, or intelligence
they often don't
bobcats are small game in my state, along the lines of killing a squirrel or rabbit.