this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Yes, but for vastly different reasons. Almost all mammals but humans destroy non-viable infants, so I don’t get what point you were trying to even discuss here?
The topic being, most other mammals would destroy their young before they died of hunger or thirst, so it’s a uniquely human issue.
If it’s not viable, you don’t need to destroy it. It’s already not viable. You also don’t know why an animal does something. I’ve seen a dog nurse a kitten before. I have no idea what it’s thinking and why it’s doing that.
My point is that you’re putting humans on some pedestal like our behavior is vastly different than the other animals when it’s not. We’re more social than other animals, but we have the same instincts and base behaviors. After all, we are animals.
We definitely are animals but are you saying humans have a natural instinct to eat their young?
No. Neither humans nor other animals have an instinct to eat their young. No one has claimed that’s instinctual. I’m saying that humans have killed their young, just like other animals, and humans have instinctual behaviors, just like other animals.
Some animals are psychopathic and kill all their young. Some humans are psychopathic and kill all their kids. It doesn’t mean that’s instinctual behavior.
And when pushed to the extreme, like starvation, some animals will die, and a few will eat their young. Humans will do the same, some will die and a few will eat their kids.
So you are going to waste precious resources until it dies? Putting the rest of the litter at risk? You have to destroy it, a predator might find it, and your nest as well. Animals know what they are doing.
Because our behavior is vastly different than most species? The social part is maybe what makes us unique? When one family dies, we don’t destroy their young to protect the rest like other species, we adopt them and provide for them. Hence why they can die from hunger and thirst unlike other species……………
Ok so by destroy it, you mean like eating or burying a stillborn? Humans have always buried their stillborn infants. That’s the same behavior.
Humans adopt orphans. Again, you’re assuming animals never display the same behavior. They do! Animals will adopt the abandoned or orphaned young of others. I literally just told you about a dog who nursed a litter of kittens. I saw it. With my own two eyes. You can’t tell me that doesn’t happen because I’ve literally seen it.
And again, you’re ignoring all of the times that humans don’t do what you’re talking about. How many orphans have starved to death in history because no one took them in? Countless.
If you really want to put humans on that pedestal, make room for most other mammalian species, and several non-mammalian species too. Or, you know, just recognize that humans are animals, and our behavior is not too dissimilar from other animals.
If you bury it, that’s a wonderful beacon for predators.
Im done here.