• JackRiddle
      2·
      21 hours ago

      How do we determine which animals are sapient and which are food?

      • palordrolap@fedia.io
        1·
        21 hours ago

        My point was partially that out here in the real world, we don’t care or turn a blind eye and do the murder anyway. In this cutesy cartoon where even plants can be sapient, the same ugly scenario is actually worse and it’s staring us in the face.

        • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
          1·
          21 hours ago

          Your point, as I understood it, is that for the vast majority of us, our food animals don’t talk to us in recognizable language. If pigs and chickens suddenly started speaking English, I’ll bet the meat market would change pretty drastically, pretty quickly. Westerners largely balk at eating apes just because they kind of look like us; speaking is a bigger deal.

          • palordrolap@fedia.io
            2·
            20 hours ago

            My point also covers the excluded category of “doesn’t look like the consumer, doesn’t talk AND is sapient”.

            We’re horrible hypocrites, but the vibe implies they shouldn’t be, and yet…

            (By “we”, I mean non-vegan humans, of which there are many and I’m one. This may or may not include you. By “they”, I mean the characters in the comic.)

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        21 hours ago

        Animals that demonstrate an ability to communicate abstract concepts indirectly and symbolically are the sapient ones.

        There are many non-sapient specimens among the ironically-named “homo sapiens” species. However, if one wishes to be cautious one must assume that all members of a species where some individuals have demonstrated sapience may nevertheless possess latent sapience.

        It can be very frustrating though, because so many of them absolutely deserve to be food – especially the “wealthy” ones.