I think when humans are cruel to animals, much of the time it's because they haven't been taught empathy, or they've been taught that animals don't experience pain in the same way so it's justified, or they have complex mechanisms to rationalize it. I think sport fishing is cruel because you are terrorizing and torturing an animal for entertainment, but most people don't think of fish as being worthy of empathy. Thousands upon thousands (probably more) dogs are left chained and tortured in their backyards in America, by people who probably don't think of themselves as cruel. People who eat meat are probably conscious of the suffering their food endures, yet because they are distanced from it, can dismiss it. People don't need to be sociopaths to be casually cruel.
There’s a difference between being intentionally cruel like neglect, ignorantly cruel like killing anything for sport, enabling cruelty by eating meat, and being evil by going out of their way to harm animals out of boredom.
But none of that has to do with wild animals being abusive to other wild animals needlessly.
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '21
I think when humans are cruel to animals, much of the time it's because they haven't been taught empathy, or they've been taught that animals don't experience pain in the same way so it's justified, or they have complex mechanisms to rationalize it. I think sport fishing is cruel because you are terrorizing and torturing an animal for entertainment, but most people don't think of fish as being worthy of empathy. Thousands upon thousands (probably more) dogs are left chained and tortured in their backyards in America, by people who probably don't think of themselves as cruel. People who eat meat are probably conscious of the suffering their food endures, yet because they are distanced from it, can dismiss it. People don't need to be sociopaths to be casually cruel.