what do titmice feel when they eat sparrows?
hi @nostupidquestions@lemmy.world ! I was told titmice eat sparrows. what do they feel when they’re ripping out a fellow small bird? do they understand titmice and sparrows are kinda alike? do they have bad feelings about killing them for eating, then? or are they completely indifferent?
Most wildlife isn’t capable of that level of thought or empathy.
For most animals that hunt, the thought process is “I’m hungry. This looks like something I can eat. Now I’m not hungry”
That thought process probably applies to most humans too tbh
I was going to say that maybe elephants are intelligent enough to feel this conflict, but then I remembered that elephants only eat plants. Maybe that’s why.
Dolphins are considered very intelligent, along with chimps, and they both eat other animals. Hell, dolphins will bite a fish in half and use the head to jerk off with. That’s not to say they can’t feel empathy for other creatures, but can we tell? Have we observed it?
Well yeah, dolphins are fucking assholes lol
There are certainly some exceptions, but 90+% of species are not.