• dlpkl@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I do, and if you don’t think that chihuahuas are capable of being more emotionally intelligent than a rat then you haven’t spent much time around them. A family member of mine had one growing up, and while it was a chatty little shit it was also incredibly emotional.

    I agree that there are absolutely differences amongst breeds and that would probably extend to other species as well. I don’t agree with eating animals or raising them to kill them, especially in the ways we do.

    I don’t understand what you mean by manufactured, it’s a result of the co-evolution between our two species that’s occured for thousands of years, and by all means natural. I don’t agree that cows can feel more or equally to dogs, I still think that dogs are a more emotional animal and deserve person status. I want to, but I can’t say the same about other domesticated species, including cats. Some other animals that I would consider affording such rights to would be primates, cetaceans, elephants, and octopuses. I haven’t seen the evidence that rats and cows are at that level.

    • PotatoKat@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      then you haven’t spent much time around them

      I would argue the same to you about rats and cows. My cousin had a chihuahua, I never said they weren’t emotional.

      We specifically bread dogs to be the way they are. They didn’t just evolve along side us, we chose the wolves that were less aggressive and specifically bread them, breeding out the traits we found undesirable over the years and breeding in the mutations we liked. We never did that with any other animal except to make them more dense for eating. That’s what I mean by manufactured, humans (through an extraordinary long amount of time) created the dogs we have now. It’s not like it just happened out of nowhere, we made it happen (I’d actually argue our bond with cats is more natural in that sense).