Quote:
Originally posted by Nefir
onetime2, not speaking and age, but the mental sophistication to allow understanding of others' suffering. Its not as trivial as it sounds, and definitely not arbitrary. Until childrens' and animals' minds are sophisticated enough to understand their own motives and not care about the suffering of others, you can't say they are cruel.
We can't really prove that animals perceive other animals as living things that feel pain, but for most of them, evidence (like the mirror test, as posted above), shows that they don't think of the animals they see the same way as they think of themselves... Make of that what you will.
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So the shrieks from a dying mouse aren't recognizable by cats as resulting from the bites/scratches that come immediately prior to their broadcast? I don't buy it. Certainly there are no studies that point to this along the lines of a mirror test. I would think that predatory animals have an instinctual ability to recognize sounds and associate them with certain actions. After all, that is a key part of hunting.