Watching new calves play in spring meadows is one of the most purely joyful things you can ever see. They have best friends and will avoid playing with other calves until their friend comes to play with them.
They are fellow sentient beings capable of experiencing pleasure, pain, fear, and forming social bonds. It's a lot of why I take issue with anthropocentrism, and think factory farming is an absolute tragedy. It's the industrialized denial of a meaningful life and one of the biggest examples of human cruelty.
We're only given one chance; rich, poor, all of us. One shot. You have to try to do the best with what you have.
Nothing changes when you have a big loss, only if you let nothing change. My grandpa died at 102. He and Grandma raised me and were my rocks throughout my entire life. Grandma died when I was a teenager, and I only used that to become more sad and selfish (like a teenager). Looking back, the choices I made would've made her sad for me. When Grandpa died, I chose to use his memory to do good things. Now I volunteer with multiple organizations related to aging farmers. I gather stray old people from the area for weekend and holiday get togethers.
Things changed, and my life improved because of my response to loss. The memories are hard, but they're made easier in a community of people who can share them with me.
> When Grandpa died, I chose to use his memory to do good things. Now I volunteer with multiple organizations related to aging farmers.
If this is what gives life meaning in the universe, you can’t deny that we’re snuffing it out at an industrial scale.
What a sad way to view things
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.
Give me a dumbass sheep any day over something that with chase you from one side of a paddock to the other trying to kill you the whole time.
Sunburns.
I have no idea
Societal dogma aside, I think this probably applies to all critters, including within species, including us.
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.
I had a miniature war with some wasps staking a claim on my porch
Let me say, wasps are incredibly endurant creatures. I have much respect for them.
Their architecture though... I have the remnants of their enclave. It is so stable and uniform and cozy.
I wish wasps were friends.
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. :)
Can confirm.
I had a yellow jacket infestation in my kitchen wall this fall. Every day I'd wake up to dozens of bees flying around my kitchen. But they didn't care about me, all they cared about was getting outside.
I probably killed 200-300 yellow jackets with a fly swatter over the course of 2 weeks. Somehow I wasn't stung once.
I recently read that honey bees in particular get the most attention from humans lately, so they are kept in high numbers.
This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.
[1] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-role-native-bees-united-state...
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...
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.
I don't think that's a reason to eradicate honeybees in the US or anything like that, but it does point to a misplaced focus on "just" solving colony collapse disorder while ignoring the plight of the native pollinators.
If you don't keep bees, or if you do but have a large enough property, you could put up a bee hotel. They can be bought or constructed pretty easily, and you'll get to see a wide variety of who's around your area!
Here some more articles / discussions:
* https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=44505552
Are you vegan?
I also keep my dietary preferences very low key. In a social setting, if I accidentally eat something I try and avoid, I don't make a fuss.
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.
Of course I treat my goats well, and I love them. But this doesn't factor much into the ethics of why we eat them in the first place. If I didn't eat them they wouldn't exist. The entire problem is close to nonsensical.
> If I didn't eat them they wouldn't exist.
Does that mean that if I bring something into existence that anything I choose do to it is therefore ethical, or is eating special? (To be clear, I think there are a number of solid arguments for eating animals, I just don't think that's one of them.)
How and why you draw the line on what is acceptable to kill is mostly arbitrary
I’d argue a mushroom or a bee are more “conscious” than most chickens
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."
My favorite thing is them cooperating against a common enemy (a dog that was eating their food sometimes, which we've tried to mitigate but not being much successful).
Then once they had a discussion in the opposite corner about the problem and launched a stealth attack, covering themselves behind the trees while approaching the dog without the dog knowing it. Then once close enough they attacked from behind, the dog squeaked, more from the surprise than pain and since then the dog never touched their food again and avoided them.
lmao
You see the problem here, right? I'm not saying that fungi have not be recorded as having potential intelligent thought. I am saying that in no world is their capability for intelligence remotely comparable to that of a creature with a fully functioning brain, especially a bird. Having the ability to react to your environment does not make you AS or more intelligent than other things that can also do that...
EDIT: I'm using intelligence and consciousness interchangeably here when I don't necessarily mean to, but my point stands.
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).
Insect wise, bees have to take the cake. Symbolic communication and counting, and now time. This all tracks for something that needs to share the location of food with the colony.
Nature sure is neat.
They can count https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=21222227
Bees play https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=33369572 https://www.science.org/content/article/are-these-bumble-bee...
All of this reinforces my belief that nearly everything is conscious and aware, we differ in a capabilities and resolution but we are all more similar than we are different.
Spider Cognition: How Tiny Brains Do Mighty Things https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=46003146