Originally Posted by pocketkangaroo

In that case, do you condone the chopping of of the noses of those with severe mental deficiencies?. How about locking severely autistic children in cages so they can't move for months at a time? These individuals can't look at themselves and reflect upon their day. So by your standards, there is really no need to show them any semblance of decency.



An animal cries for the same evolutionary reason we cry. It played some role in their ability to survive. Crying in both species is just a set of hormones releasing and brain receptors triggering. It's completely biological in both of us. The fact we can sit and write poems about our sadness doesn't make our emotion more "real".

And the statement that we are the only creature on the Earth with feelings is a complete lack of understanding of biology. The limbic system which handles emotions in our brains has been found in species all the way back to tetrapods.

The booby is a bird that only has one partner it's entire life. Hens have hierarchy in their roosts. Lions battle each other for power. Fish have been shown to have their own personalities. These emotions from trust, to love, to respect are all in animals. We all have fight or flight receptors that determine our level of fear.

And you can try and dumb it down by saying it's only their instinct, but the same can be said for us. Feelings and emotions are all just biological aspects of our bodies that were put in place for some evolutionary benefit. We are all living off instinct. We all share many of the same neurotransmitters. So while our understanding of our emotions is much more profound than other animals, it doesn't mean they don't share many of the same ones we do.

But none of this is really relevant to the conversation. This isn't about giving voting rights to Chickens. It's showing common decency toward another animal. It's about not torturing an animal by subjecting it to unnecessary pain. Pain is an emotion all animals feel and try to avoid. If a chicken was just some mindless zombie, they wouldn't run away and screech when you pluck out one of their feathers.

All people are saying is show some level of compassion toward another species. We have evolved to a level where we don't need to resort to this kind of stuff to survive.