• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Animals Have Consciousness

I've always figured this.
 
Me too - I never really figured why some people believed they don't.
 
Why do you think it is that squirrels collect shiny metal objects, like bottle caps and pieces of foil, etc?

Could it be that squirrels simply like the look of shiny things, that they have a sense of decoration, that they have what amounts to an instinct for interior design?
 
dreeness: "Why do you think it is that squirrels collect shiny metal objects, like bottle caps and pieces of foil, etc?

Could it be that squirrels simply like the look of shiny things, that they have a sense of decoration, that they have what amounts to an instinct for interior design?" end quote.

From Wikipedia: "Usually multiple males will chase a single female until the dominant male, usually the largest in the group, mates with the female . . . "

The rest will slink away and decorate their dreys with shiny objects, crying, "I don't know, Tufty, this reproduction lark seems just so futile to me!"

The rest was all Highway Code and Judy Garland.

And so the lovely red squirrel faded away, his habitat invaded by the greys. Those wicked alien creatures, how they laughed as they tore down his milk-bottle tops, they defaced his Dustbin Bleater posters and they weed in his polenta. It was, in its way, the end of a civilization. :(
 
I was interested and pleasantly surprised to see this bill come up for debate before Parliament.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...593460-d8df-11eb-8c87-ad6f27918c78_story.html

Although the debate will undoubtedly degenerate into absurd hyperbole and silliness (on both sides), the core of the issue is simply this:

“The big picture has changed,” said Donald Broom, a Cambridge University authority on animal welfare.

“I think of the new idea as ‘one biology.’ That human animals and other animals are extraordinarily similar,” he said, “and that sentient animals are individuals who feel pain and suffering and all sorts of other things, and that should be taken into account.”

Broom said he was “not against eating or exploiting animals, but we should think about them as individuals.”

Anyone who has spent any time observing animals ( whether elephants, horses, dogs, mice, whatever) must agree that they are individuals, with their own unique personalities. This bill, in its intent, strikes me as a simple act of decency. I don't doubt, however, that any implementation may be cumbersome, burdensome, and occasionally silly.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top