Back in the days when I watched pro wrestling, the announcer would say something along these lines frequently when a wrestler used excessive violence. Basically animals are much more violent than humans are. It amazes me that 5 people in the world believe this. Why do phrases like this one catch on while others don't? How does a person go about getting their phrase mainstream attenion?
"Acting like an animal"
- Thread starter rainforests1
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Not trying to start an argument, but just as those announcers went too far in one direction, I often hear people romanticize the actions of animals and go too far the other way.
For example:
"Animals don't kill for sport, only people do that (or animals only kill what they eat)."
Actually wolves and cats (all sizes) will kill for the "enjoyment". Cats often play with animals before killing them, and if prey is abundant they'll often leave the carcass to rot. Wolves go on killing sprees (most often seen against domestic animals) killing and maiming many animals without taking any as prey - I've seen this myself with sheep and heard of it with chickens and llama. Other animals also display this behavior.
For example:
"Animals don't kill for sport, only people do that (or animals only kill what they eat)."
Actually wolves and cats (all sizes) will kill for the "enjoyment". Cats often play with animals before killing them, and if prey is abundant they'll often leave the carcass to rot. Wolves go on killing sprees (most often seen against domestic animals) killing and maiming many animals without taking any as prey - I've seen this myself with sheep and heard of it with chickens and llama. Other animals also display this behavior.
Clueless Git
Plant powered
I assume you're correct. There may be up to 100 million species in the world. You'd expect a few of them would do this. I would think humans do it on a much more regular basis than any other animals.
Blobbenstein
.......
Predators probably usually like hunting and killing. Enjoying what one has to do is a naturally evolved motivator for behaviour, I would think.
SummerRain
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
Plus it enables you to practice hunting for when you need the food, and hone your skills/techniques. Also, my understanding is that it is thought that cats play with animals before killing them to tire the prey out, so that the prey is less likely to hurt the cat when it's finally killed.
I think that it doesn't make sense to characterise animal behaviours as either bad or good. I don't think most animals can be either... I don't think it's wrong for one animal to kill another if it needs to to survive or has no capacity to empathise/understand the value of the lives of other animals.
In my lifetime I've had several pet cats, and all of them at one time or another played with prey animals, be it rodents or even grasshoppers. They don't do it for any purpose other than the enjoyment of it. In the fall we had to watch out that the cat didn't sneak live mice into the house for this purpose.
All of a cat's play is hunting oriented so this is easy to understand. I've also occasionally seen this behavior with big cats on t.v.
Wolves on the other hand are less easy to understand, as they will on occasion, go into a frenzy and kill and maim everything around them. It in no way improves their hunting abilities, it's just killing and maiming for no apparent purpose. There is most likely a good reason behind their behavior, but I don't know what it is other than blood lust. (weasels will also do this with chickens).
Freesia
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All animals have cruelty in them, including humans. But to say a human is acting like an animal is silly, as humans are animals, of course they will act like an animal.
Also, if the statement is to try and make a moral judgement suggesting humans are morally superior to non humans, we lose on that count too, as we commit acts just as bad as non humans,
but we are given intensive moral training from childhood which non humans do not receive, yet we still often fail at not being cruel.
So actually non humans are better than us, really.
Also, if the statement is to try and make a moral judgement suggesting humans are morally superior to non humans, we lose on that count too, as we commit acts just as bad as non humans,
but we are given intensive moral training from childhood which non humans do not receive, yet we still often fail at not being cruel.
So actually non humans are better than us, really.
Blobbenstein
.......
humans have bigger brains, and I think more can go wrong psychologically with them. Humans can be more intellectual, where as most animals are more instinctual, and more likely to be emotionally healthy.
Clueless Git
Plant powered
I have heard it is confusion caused by a lot of prey that 'won't' run away, DK.
Like in the wild the instinct is to attack whatever you can attack and then whatever is injured becomes the easy target.
In the wild the chances of injuring more than one target is slight as all other targets tend to scarper pretty pronto.
Penned and cooped animals can't scarper, for obvious reasons.
That results in the initial frenzy to injure and incapacitate whatever doesn't scarper quite pronto enough having no 'logical' ending.
It may be that the instinct to kill and maim as much as possible is the default predatory behaviour.
A default behaviour that rarely gets the chance to be engaged in naturaly but is massively enabled when humans make the escape of large numbers of prey animals impossible.
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Freesia
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Having interacted with some very intelligent animals, and having met some very instinctually driven humans, I am not sure if that is true.
Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It may be that we observe ourselves more.
I read someplace that George Schaller did an extensive study of wild African lions. He spent many hours in the field watching them, and observed several instances of lions killing other lions (mind you, this isn't even counting the number of times he saw lions hunting and killing individuals of other species to eat them!) If you took the number of hours he spent watching lions, the number of lion-on-lion "murders" he witnessed (including when a new male drove out a pride's resident male and killed the cubs of his defeated rival), and figured out the "murder" rate in lion society, it was much higher than the human-on-human murder rate you would normally see (even in high crime areas, if I remember right).
I saw a TV documentary where a female lion adopted a baby antelope (after killing it's mother) and a young male lion (who had been warned off by her earlier) waited until she was separated from the baby antelope, grabbed it and pulled it into the brush, Where instead of killing it, he tortured it and the female lion by strangling it and then letting it bleat (which upset the lioness - as was his intention). He repeated this action several times.
I changed the station so I don't know how it ended.
I've also seen where two young lions killed and ate an injured lioness.
King of the jungle - bah.
I changed the station so I don't know how it ended.
I've also seen where two young lions killed and ate an injured lioness.
King of the jungle - bah.
Clueless Git
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Yeah, I watched a doccie where two brother Lions ousted the previous male from a pride.
They bit his genitals off and left him to bleed to death rather than kill him outright.
Killing cubs sired by other males; Standard Lion behaviour.
Male chimps banding up and hunting down baby chimps of neighbouring troups and cannibalising them; Now known to be standard chimp behaviour.
Killer whales playing 'cat and mouse' with still live Seal catches ..
Seems that Beatrix Potter and Wind in the Willows were NOT true reflections of animal nature.
