Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

It's dismissive without substance. The point is discussing if the whale feels grief. A blanket dismissal of all animals feeling anything "just because" is not a critique. If there is some reason science should dismiss everything like this as valueless and not worth even considering then I don't know it yet and a comment talking about that would be constructive.

> We will drive away the predators that keep you in constant alert and savage your children, and in exchange we will determine how and when you die (quickly, but perhaps also fearfully).

Maybe once in the past, or in places that still graze their animals. I don't think the average factory farm situation can be framed as mutually beneficial for the animals.

> But there is _no_ version of a carnivore or meat-eating omnivore that does not involve killing and savagery

Absolute statements are not useful in this context. Vultures are obligate scavengers who eat the flesh of already dead animals as a practice. The dead animal could be due to death from natural causes (diseases, old age, injury, poisoning, starvation) or hunting by other animals. So there are some versions.

Also, as a couple of examples, the animal world is not one that has consent to sexual intercourse or empathy in killing an offspring who’s not their own. So your (or our) morals cannot be absolute for one purpose (killing an animal to eat the flesh) while being considerate for other aspects. In other words, we don’t gain much by pointing to the non-human world as a justification or excuse for our actions.

Not so fast:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-killer-wha...

My assumption is that the weight of including vegans socially is too much to bear for some. On the extreme end, you can't use store pasta because it was made in a facility that processes eggs and dairy. But even on the lighter end, social eating modification is pretty extreme: don't use butter when cooking, or eggs, or honey, etc. It's a lot easier to accommodate vegetarians than vegans.

Though I do have a vegan friend that always brings her own food to gatherings, and it does make things far easier.

The problem I have always had with veganism, as someone who has had stints of vegetarianism, is the absurdity of certain restrictions. Milk, I can agree, is bad because of how it's derived. Honey and eggs (sourced ethically) are a restriction I cannot stand behind. I think the dislike of self-labeled vegans is aligned with someone publicizing an extreme decision.

The problem with veganism is that, unless you grow your own food, it does not change the fact that an immense amount of pain and suffering is inflicted on other beings in the production and transportation of the food you eat. It's pure virtue signaling. If they genuinely cared about minimizing suffering, they'd be Jains, not vegans.

Why would the calves be kept near the cows?

They’re not gonna feed the milk that their mothers are producing for them, because that would mean less milk to sell and less milk for people to consume.

And so why keep the calves in the milking side of the facility when you can move them to the fattening side for meat/leather or to get them to age so you can forcibly impregnate them every year for their milk, depending on their gender.

That’s how we get all their milk, how we get meat (the calf isn’t kept around for more than a few weeks/months), and rennet to make cheese (it’s the digestion liquid that’s in their stomach while they eat milk, must kill the animal to extract it)

Same with eggs, they don’t exist in a vacuum. To get eggs you have to have chickens, and to have chickens you must grind male chicks alive as they hatch because they don’t produce eggs. And hens aren’t supposed make eggs year round but we make them anyway with artificial lights etc, which drastically shortens their lifespan.

Because you want to get the milk.

Veal.

I’m gonna guess it was somewhat tongue in cheek.

Humans aren't always rational and that's okay, we're all human after all :)

Have you forgotten your priors about human bias? ;)

Most vegetarians decide to choose that diet after contemplating the suffering of the animals involved. Or had you never thought to ask why someone would be vegetarian?

Not really common to 'animals' in general, for example reptiles only have the very basic instincts of eat, reproduce, fight.

Insects don't have emotions, they barely have hyper specialized sensors as brains.

However, emotions efficiently direct behaviours in mammals. They enact immediate and persistent responses.

We can say without much doubt that emotions in mammals are similar to our own emotions.

The big unknowns are animals further away from us, which are demonstrably intelligent, like birds and octopuses.

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Practicality. To put it bluntly, the majority of humans do not think it is immoral in principle to kill and eat an animal. After all, that's how biological life just is. At an individual level, you can choose to think it's wrong but you do have to simply accept the fact that not everyone agrees, and very likely there will always be someone who disagrees.

To most people, killing an animal for food is not a problem conceptually. Causing undue and unnecessary suffering is a problem for pretty much everyone with a functioning moral system.

But given that mass farming will not be stopping tomorrow, would you rather the animals suffer more? Or is less suffering better? Should we actively torture the animals on the way to slaughter or maybe not?

All that aside, if we stopped farming tomorrow, a billion or two people would have to stop eating. So we do the least worst thing and give the cow a pat on the head before we grind it up.

That said, most people would probably prefer if no animals were killed at all. Once cultured meat starts producing at the required scale, industry farming will probably end very quickly.

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So here is a person who has reduced suffering for animals. And your idea is...what?

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Yeah, we eat vegetarian / vegan every second night.

It's pretty bleak, I agree. I'm concerned regular people are going to be more and more trampled on in the near future.

It's easy, first step just stop watching the news. There is no FOMO or if you really need your dosage keep it to end of the week roundup.

Because in reality there is nothing you can do.

You can't have a shot of vodka with Putin and ask him to stop war.

You can't stop Twitter and Elon from raging, nor can you can't Isreal.

What you can stop is giving these puppets headspace time and hold compassion to those who are involved in the conflicts.

It's pretty common for would-be vegetarians to be "carbotarians" and fail to feed themselves properly because they simply don't know any better and eat primarily bread and pasta. I also had this experience of being a ravenous carbotarian, but my roommates were all vegetarians and taught me. If you don't know vegetarians, look to athletes and home chefs for advice.

Tl;Dr combine a grain with a legume at least once a day to obtain a full protein. Beans and rice is a good staple, for example (but to reduce exposure to arsenic you should parboil the rice[1] as well as rotate through some other staples). Put peanut butter or peanut protein powder in stir fries, put hummus in your sandwiches, eat eggs, etc. And, I know it sounds obvious, but it's a reminder I needed, do actually eat vegetables.

It's not difficult but if you've eaten meat your whole life you may need to change some habits, because you have more room to get away with a poor diet if you're eating meat.

[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-this-rice-cookin...

I guess it's not eating flesh, but it's still causing a lot of harm is what I'm hearing.

In our family, we eat vegetarian every second night. Basically vegan 3/4 nights a week. However I do find myself running to the fridge for cheese or a whey protein shake for desert quite often.

I also hope you never experience being filleted and cooked.

The orca is a mammal[0]. Salmon, while also impressive, are fish.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca