Posted on 12/22/2005 10:49:03 AM PST by aculeus
The crying out comes WITH the feelings. It is merely a response of your human machine. You do not make a conscious decision to do it. It is part of your human machines defensive mechanism. And, unlike animals, we can make a conscious decision to suppress it, if need be. Animals don’t.
This makes no sense whatsoever. Why cry out? What's the purpose? If the animal feels nothing, there's no point in crying out! For crying out loud....
There are several beneficial reasons for quickly crying out, actually. Heck, watch March of the Penguins.
A cat is most definitely a living being; a car is not. I love both, but I'm well aware it's my CAT that experiences pain, whereas my inANIMate car does not.
You believe your cat experiences pain, but being a human and not a cat, you cannot know, and both the cat and the car can be programmed to scream. You lower the bar too much. The bar is not “being alive”. Plant’s are alive.
Surely you don`t really believe animals are incapable of feeling pain? If that was true, why will a dog cower in fear from someone who beats it?
My grandfather use to do that to snakes in the road, not to put them out of their misery but, to make sure they were dead.
A few years ago, I saw a duck and a bunch of ducklings in the cement median of a highway during rush hour. There was no way they were getting out of there alive. I gavem brief consideration to sliding over and performing a quick mercy killing. I didn't but there were a bunch of dead ducks on the median the next day.
I'd come back with a line about children but I'd get in trouble,
Again.
"Surely you don`t really believe animals are incapable of feeling pain? If that was true, why will a dog cower in fear from someone who beats it?"
Is it fear, or self preservation and anticipation from what it has learned.
I believe an animals brain receives the same sort of impulses that a human brain does if you step on it's toe. I believe it is the conscious interpretation of that signal that is different. In humans, it is called pain. In animals, it is pure stimulus, response. And it is often what keeps them alive - which is the whole point.
Animals are around for various purposes on this world. Meat, companionship as pets, workers as draft animals or protection as guard dogs etc, or just fitting in as parts of God's grand plan.
Animals don't have souls, but they DO experience physical pain and suffering just as we do. To cause an animal to suffer needlessly is cruel. Recognition of that cruelty is what makes us different from animals. A cat will toy with a mouse and torture it without any thought of how the mouse feels about the situation or implications of "right and wrong".
Many animals DO also show some evidence of limited emotions. A dog will show all the signs of being lonely or sad when he's left alone, joy when you return, fearfulness, remorse when he knows he's been misbehaving, and even a sense of humor at times.
If your experience with the animal world is limited to chickens, you just might have an incomplete view of the world from which to base your opinions on what animals are capable or incapable of experiencing.
Heartless bast**d!
(Giggle) Stupid damn robins all fly low over the roadways. They're at the bottom of the bird gene pool for intelligence.
Even a small animal is sensitive to its owner's emotions and pain. Our family dog would sit by my bedside (when I was a child) when I was sick, and wail. There is definite psychic interaction between animals and humans. I believe animals have some genetic, God-given capacity to understand human emotional needs so that they can interact well with humans, which helps guarantee their survival.
Actually, I think animals "appear" to suffer as humans do, but they don't have the consciousness to experience it as pain as we do.
I was in South Dakota a few years ago and I came across a patch of road where about a hundred Pooks (I think that is what they are called) were congregating on both shoulders. They are the grey waterfoul with the red eyes. We have them here in Seattle. Anyway, there were about 12 dead ones in and around the road. When I passed through they ran across the street and I hit at least four. They weren't too bright either.
I DID slow down because I didn't want to damage my rental car...
I think, folks, that this was a well-intentioned pu**y (no pun intended) who didn't have the stones to get out of the vehicle and do the right thing for the poor cat.....and ran over it repeatedly instead rather than soil his soft little hands.
Wrong! Animals are clearly capable to experiencing pain and feeling it consciously. Human consciousness is not by any means the only consciousness necessary to perceive pain.
Anatomists used to nail the four feet of a cat or a dog to a board and proceed to disect the living animal in front of medical students in the 1700s. The excuse was that the animals had no consciousness and could not perceive pain when they clearly were in....agony.
The only people I have no empathy for, are people are cruel to animals...inotherwords.. inbreds.
I like cats. But... There's been quite a few times in my life when I had to put some poor animal out of its misery when it had run afoul of some piece of man-made equipment. It's not a pleasant thing to have to do but you gotta do it.
A family hit a deer once in their car and stood there watching it thrash about with a broke back. Poor critter was trying to run away on its front two legs. I stopped my car, took the .38 from under my seat and dispatched it even as one of the kids was saying 'Please Daddy, don't let him kill the deer!'.
I come across a pigeon on a city street once who had been hit by a car. He was screwed up but still flapping around in the middle of the road and its mate was trying to stay with it even though cars were driving past. I walked out and stepped on its head (much to the horror of many bystanders) and then picked it up and placed it on the sidewalk so its mate could mourn over it without getting run over itself.
I don't think this guy should be put in jail at all. He probably could've done a more efficient job but just damn. You can't be putting somebody in jail for trying to put an animal out of its misery.
Even worse, surgeons operated on human infants claiming -- stupidly -- that their immature nervous systems were incapable of feeling pain. For that matter boy infants are probably still circumcised without anesthesia for the same reason.
Agreed. In reading the thread it's apparent that we certainly have, er, diversity at FR.
He should've been given a bronze star!
That's funny!
I can see it now.
Haggerty: (slam, vroom, vroom, screeeech)
Cat: "Meow"
Haggerty: (slam, vroom, vroom, screeeech)
Cat:"Meow"
Haggerty: (slam, vroom, vroom, screeech)
Cat: "Meow"
Haggerty: (slam, vroom, vroom, screeech)
Cat: "Meow"
Haggerty: (slam, vroom, vroom, screech)
Cat: "Meow"
Haggerty: (slam, vroom, vroom, screeeech)
Cat:
Haggerty (to shop owner): "I'd like to return this cat."
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