Animals That Speak

[Jarhyn]

So, something that has been happening recently is that people have been teaching animals to talk. The prime example I could hold up is @whataboutbunny on TikTok https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeAuULtq/.

This is an example of a dog whose learning of language is being documented. This is a dog at least as communicative as an ape, and the dog is not even very old. There are also cats and all manner of other critter that has been convinced to start using language.

What implications do you all think this may have on the fact that we eat them?

 

[untermensche]

The dog hits random buttons and the human strains to make sense of it.

 

[Jarhyn]

The dog hits random buttons and the human strains to make sense of it.

Actually watch some of the videos if you want to make that claim. When children first start babbling, they do so randomly and the adults strain to assign sense to it, too.

Many months in, now, and Bunny is learning to combine words to generate intersectional ideas.

 

[untermensche]

The dog hits random buttons and the human strains to make sense of it.

Actually watch some of the videos if you want to make that claim. When children first start babbling, they do so randomly and the adults strain to assign sense to it, too.

Many months in, now, and Bunny is learning to combine words to generate intersectional ideas.

I'm very familiar with the work and the work with gorillas.

You have a women desperate to make some kind of sense out of random button pushing.

The dog may associate some produced sounds with a certain reward as dogs can do.

But it isn't language. Not close.

 

[Jarhyn]

The dog hits random buttons and the human strains to make sense of it.

Actually watch some of the videos if you want to make that claim. When children first start babbling, they do so randomly and the adults strain to assign sense to it, too.

Many months in, now, and Bunny is learning to combine words to generate intersectional ideas.

I'm very familiar with the work and the work with gorillas.

You have a women desperate to make some kind of sense out of random button pushing.

The dog may associate some produced sounds with a certain reward as dogs can do.

But it isn't language. Not close.

Your mere assertions that "it isn't" are about similar to what I've seen said about Coco, or other apes before her. There have been whole pieces of popular media focusing on such immediate attempts to say IT CANT BE, in cavalier abandon to the eventuality of discovering IT IS.

That some dogs talk is not in question for the purposes of this thread. I think I made that rather clear. The purposes of this thread is to consider the ethical implications of eating things that can speak.

Your insistence that they cannot does not constitute a rigorous disproof of it happening and if you wish to get into the natural science of it you can create a natural science post where you disprove with rigor that this dog is communicating.

 

[untermensche]

No dogs talk.

Dogs can bang their paws onto objects.

 

[fromderinside]

Why animals make and hear sounds? Not a tough one. Extending from touch and scent and muscular expression to aural communication. Why not extend interpreting similarly.

 

[laughing dog]

So, something that has been happening recently is that people have been teaching animals to talk. The prime example I could hold up is @whataboutbunny on TikTok https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeAuULtq/.

This is an example of a dog whose learning of language is being documented. This is a dog at least as communicative as an ape, and the dog is not even very old. There are also cats and all manner of other critter that has been convinced to start using language.

What implications do you all think this may have on the fact that we eat them?

Speak for yourself - I don't eat dogs or cats.

As humans learn more about other species, we are getting more evidence that many animals are not "dumb" but sentinent beings capable of recognizing themselves and others as separate entities and who communicate.

 

[Treedbear]

So, something that has been happening recently is that people have been teaching animals to talk. The prime example I could hold up is @whataboutbunny on TikTok https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeAuULtq/.

This is an example of a dog whose learning of language is being documented. This is a dog at least as communicative as an ape, and the dog is not even very old. There are also cats and all manner of other critter that has been convinced to start using language.

What implications do you all think this may have on the fact that we eat them?

All animals communicate, although I wouldn't describe that dog as talking. To me talking means using sounds to communicate. Slightly different that speech, which can be written or some other non-aural mode. But I think it's probably a bad idea to eat an individual animal that has demonstrated the ability to communicate with humans. It would diminish the value of human life in general since it uniquely characterizes what it means to be human.

 

[skepticalbip]

So, something that has been happening recently is that people have been teaching animals to talk. The prime example I could hold up is @whataboutbunny on TikTok https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeAuULtq/.

This is an example of a dog whose learning of language is being documented. This is a dog at least as communicative as an ape, and the dog is not even very old. There are also cats and all manner of other critter that has been convinced to start using language.

What implications do you all think this may have on the fact that we eat them?

I fail to understand your 'reasoning'. What makes our eating an 'intelligent' species that can't or don't communicate with humans in a manner that the human can understand no problem but a less 'intelligent' species that does manage to communicate a little that humans can understand immoral to eat?

Or are you measuring intelligence only by whether a human can understand them? If so, that seems like a slippery slope. Humans have used this measuring stick to label other humans that they can't understand as inferior... from my experience this is currently primarily those who speak English or French who see peoples who can't communicate in their language as inferior.

 

[OLDMAN]

Since dogs bark at each other and know damn well what it means...how did you ever come to the conclusion they weren't speaking until now?

 

[untermensche]

Dogs bark at a lot of things.

They are talking to none of them.

They are communicating with sound.

That is not language.

 

[steve_bank]

There are cultures that raise dogs as pets, then eat them. So what? We are in the end animals, a favt we try to obscure with philosophy and religion

Eating and procreating are genetic imperatives. Takeawy the fancy covers we have for ourselves and we a really advanced chimps. Feces flinging and driven by sex. Doin the hunka chunka and makin bacon are primary activities.

 

[Tigers!]

What implications do you all think this may have on the fact that we eat them?

For some people they will still be just as tasty.

 

[skepticalbip]

There are cultures that raise dogs as pets, then eat them. So what? We are in the end animals, a favt we try to obscure with philosophy and religion

Most Americans are too isolated from their food source to accept reality. They seem to think (or like to pretend) that the chunk of meat they have for dinner originated in that little Styrofoam tray covered in saran wrap.

I've often thought that it would be a good object lesson if people had to at least once catch, kill, and dress a chicken before they were allowed to eat chicken.

 

[Treedbear]

There are cultures that raise dogs as pets, then eat them. So what? We are in the end animals, a favt we try to obscure with philosophy and religion

Most Americans are too isolated from their food source to accept reality. They seem to think (or like to pretend) that the chunk of meat they have for dinner originated in that little Styrofoam tray covered in saran wrap.

I've often thought that it would be a good object lesson if people had to at least once catch, kill, and dress a chicken before they were allowed to eat chicken.

If they did it wouldn't make a difference. People have killed and prepared animals for food ever since we've been human. Just because we're currently ignorant of the facts doesn't change the facts. We eat other animals. Chickens and most birds eat other animals. Everything in the sea eats everything else for chrits sake. And if there were no predators the prey would soon deplete their own food source. Deer need wolves in order to exist. And compared to being run down and torn apart by a pack of wolves the modern slaughter house is the preferred way to go. OK, killing and gutting one chicken might change a few people's minds today, but it wouldn't teach them anything. It might even teach them the wrong lesson because an amateur's attempt would probably be far more cruel than how chickens are killed on a farm. If they actually depended on raising their own food it would soon be no big deal.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^ ^

I agree that it wouldn't change anything except maybe be a lesson that would make people aware of the real world.

When visiting friends in Mexico, I can see the children playing with the kid goats. One of the kid goats will then be slaughtered (the children, always curious, watching) and we have goat tacos for dinner. The children accept this as just the way life is and really enjoy their goat tacos. Most Americans don't seem to have that level of acceptance of reality.

 

[Treedbear]

^^^
Well it does force one to think about it.
The last time I went fishing years ago and caught a small perch I dispatched it promptly by cutting off its head and gutting it. I did feel a twinge of sorrow and also a sense of guilt that required me to think realistically afterwards about what happened. Me and my friends ate it for dinner. I became a vegetarian for about seven years after that. My health suffered so I switched back to omnivore and never looked back. So you might be right. It takes a while to figure things out so you might as well get started early.

 

[DBT]

As we consider it to be wrong to kill and eat other people, there may be reasons to consider it wrong to kill and eat some other species of animal.

Perhaps degree of sentience may be the metric.

 

[southernhybrid]

I have two pet birds who do speak. They say bye bye to me when they see me leaving the house. The say night night when I put them to bed. One says "Hi guy" whenever I walk into the room. She also says, "Stop that Kermit" if our two dogs bark, as we had a dog named Kermit when we brought her into our home 30 years ago. I actually regret having the birds because they may outlive me, plus they demand a lot of attention and it will be impossible to find them a home where they will be as well treated as they are now. I would prefer that they die of natural causes while living with me. Dogs don't talk, but they certainly understand a lot of our language, so they do communicate with us non verbally.

I do feel a little guilty that I eat chicken, cows and pigs, but I do try to buy the kind that are supposedly raised and treated humanely before they become food on my table. I have known a few people who raised and then slaughtered the meat that they put on the table, so not everyone is distanced from the meat that they eat. In fact, that's how all meat was raised in the past.

My dogs eat dog food that is made up of other animals. Dogs are omnivores, but they need more animal protein than humans. Cats seem more carnivorous for the most part. Some parrots enjoy eating chicken, so it's fair to say that many if not most animals will indulge in eating other animals. But, most of us don't eat our pets.