Why do humans care about the human rights of animals (see details)?

Animals provide comfort and care to humans. Some of them, anyway. People expand on that and tend to anthropomorphize a lot of other animals—believing that those animals are like humans in the emotions they feel and the thoughts they think.

Since animals can be so good to humans; indeed, they can be crucial for a human’s mental health, a lot of people feel they are very much like humans, only better. They tend not to be as devious as humans.

I think humans care because they get so much from animals.

Kill all the food, watch your species die.

You need to be able to fit in with nature, species that take it too far tend to die out. It is possible to go extinct because you are just too good at hunting.

However I seriously doubt any of that has anything to do with evolution, you can’t naturally select to prevent extinction without actually causing it.

EDIT:

We are probably evolved to feel the urge to protect anything with a large head and eyes.

Companionship, it’s not just inter-species. Companionship is a great “benefit”. You’re also forgetting that our lives are much different now.

Even animals show compassion when killing. They usually go for a quick kill. They don’t hurt their prey and let it linger in filth or injured before they finally kill it. What does it say about us as a species to be cruel before the kill.

It is believed that cats domesticated themselves. Some brave cat realized that with humans came food and affection. It suited humanity to nurture this relationship because the cat was a bigger benefit alive than dead.

That’s just one example of the symbiotic relationship between man and animals. Destruction of one creature effects an entire ecosystem—that includes humans as well.

I guess some animals are more useful to man alive than dead, or with no contact at all.

I think this is a very narrow view of man’s relationship with animals and nature, just like all evolutionary explanations.

@Blackberry Our lives may be different now, but our goal as a species are the same, to expand and maintain our existance.

Domesticated animals have provided benefits for humans. Keeping livestock reduced the amount of time hunting, dogs were bred to protect the livestock, cats controlled vermin in grain stocks. The companionship came second and is what continues in times when we don’t all need our pets to work for us.

@PhiNotPi We can do that without killing everything that isn’t human, though. People use animals to transport items across great distances, or to help them hunt, for example.

We’ve become big softies, and animals are fucking adorable. So I think that’s about it.

@Pandora There are a few species of animals that will wound their prey and watch/play with it for a time. Orcas do it with seals/seal pups. Cats sometimes do it with mice/squirrels.

It’s an extension of our evolved tendency to treat our compatriots well. As we evolved, humans who paid heed to the needs of the fellow members of their tribe did better than those who were totally selfish. The ability for compassion is not restricted to the human species, and there isn’t any evolutionary reason it should be.

We respond best to the animals that somewhat mirror us.We have more compassion for gorillas than wolves, more for wolves than rats, and more for rats than cockroaches. We also react positively to animals that look like us- especially when they look like human babies, a concept called “neoteny.” It’s why some people find pugs adorable :>)

I also would say that very few people have a deliberately-reasoned approach to animal ethics. Most of it’s emotional. This actually allows a lot of atrocities to happen- few of us would consider bashing pugs or baby chimpanzees over the head for dinner while people have far less mercy for cows or pigs. Our innate sense of animal justice, if there is one at all, is very primitive indeed.

Your understanding of the effects of evolution are warped.

For example, you wrote, “I would think that any species would not hesitate to kill any other animal if it would somehow benifit the species in any way.”

Consider that such an animal would be very destructive. Even if there was some benefit of killing another animal, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take a lot of energy to kill that animal, which the benefit would need to exceed for it to be a good idea to kill that animal, AND going around killing things all the time tends to have longer-term side-effects that come back to end up not being good for everyone’s survival in the long run.

@Zaku But then they don’t benefit the species if they have long term side affects or take more energy to kill than the animal provides. Also, what would happen if a more powerful, very destructive species came across humans? We wouldn’t last very long. When it comes to primitive life on a big planet, and a species expanding in outer space, there is always room to expand. Only when a species controls all available space does conservation matter.

I think maybe it has become ingrained in us. From having lived with and domesticated many animals during our evolutionary advance through time.

@Schroedes13 That is why I said they will usually. Not always. Some animals will wound an animal and let its young do the final kill. Some do it because they love the chase. But we don’t do it to train and we don’t do it to keep our skills fine tuned. We do it out of indifference or plain cruelty.
Since we do have larger brains, you would think that we wouldn’t do what isn’t necessary to survive. We don’t need to treat animal cruely. And a healthy respect for our food is good for us over all. If we all appreciated the animals we ate, than we wouldn’t let meat go to waste. We through food down the drain like there is an unlimited supply. When we let our cows grow up in filth and they get sick, than we have to kill them and throw away the meat. The same for pigs and chickens. When we throw trash in the oceans we make sea animals sick. If you mess with the a species and kill it off before its time than you more than likely will affect the lives of other animals.

“The question is not Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
—Jeremy Bentham

First, no one cares about the human rights of animals because animals cannot have human rights. Only humans can have human rights. What people sometimes argue is that animals have natural rights. Alternatively, people who do not believe in anything like natural rights—Bentham, for instance, referred to the entire notion as “nonsense upon stilts”—could still argue that animals are part of the moral community for other reasons.

Ultimately, then, people caring about animal rights seems to be part of the morality meme. People hold certain views about morality, attempt to justify them, realize that their justification yields no principled reason to exclude animals from certain moral rules, and come away with the view that animals must therefore be covered by those rules.

This is no doubt amplified by the tendency, noted by @poisonedantidote, for humans to favor beings that have certain physical features. Those animals get included in the moral community first, then someone notices that only the “cute animals” are getting special protection. Thus a new set of animals gets brought inside the protective ring of morality. This can continue until there is a principled reason for not expanding the community any further.

There are competing morality memes, however, which is why the subject remains controversial. Commonplace morality does not adhere to any single theory, but rather operates on an internally inconsistent set of guidelines. Thus, moral theorists compete to get their particular views/memes adopted more firmly into the commonplace morality. Since elements of all the various “pure theories” can be found in commonplace morality, no one is obviously “correct.” It’s all a matter of which rule of thumb we decide applies in this case.

The quote at the top of this post represents one moral meme, and a rather popular one at that. Moreover, it seems to set the borders of our moral community in a rather intuitive place and suggests that killing animals (e.g., for food) might not be as bad so long as they are treated well beforehand. This is all rather attractive to many people, though not to everyone. Still, it is ultimately just one more moral meme (though I confess to finding it rather attractive).

Ask the wolf. The caribou isn’t in the wolf’s gene pool, but if they didn’t care and respect the caribou and they just killed all they could at will the population would die out. Thus killing off the wolf population.

Human evolution favors compassion.

With our pets you see a symbiotic relationship where both human and pet are rewarded. Human gets companionship and pet gets free food, housing, healthcare and companionship. With farm and research animals you see a parasitic like relationship in that humans take full advantage of the animals for mostly human benefit and the animals get very little.

Why do humans do what we do? Because we can.

@YARNLADY I would vehemently disagree!

I suggest reading The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. It’s evolution for the average person.

@Schroedes13 Can I please hear why you disagree with Yarnlady’s statement?

@Schroedes13 Ok, why?

@Blackberry This will be slightly off topic though, but I would say that throughout history, the average person can view events that have actually suggested a degenerative process in people. I think that man is generally selfish and greedy. One of the ways this can be seen overtly, especially under this topic, if the method in which man believes he can treat animals. From hunter/gatherer societies, animals were seen as objects of reverence and sustenance. However, man has debased animals to the point of mass-production, torture, and killing.

@Schroedes13 Ah, I see where we diverge. You are referring to the “greater picture” i.e. 20,000 people starve to death every single day of the year and I am referring to the individual situation where we want to save one (or several) animals.

@PhiNotPi I gave that example to point out that the way you are thinking about evolution and about killing is not very accurate or logical. It also answered your question, in that it is not a positive thing to do, for your own species’ survival, to go around killing other animals indiscriminately. In fact, it is best if you only take what you need from nature, and develop positive symbiotic relationships with it, so that everyone survives well. That model works very very well for survival, and is what humans generally do as indigenous tribal behavior.

It’s what pretty much every animal on Earth does, as well. Take what they can take efficiently, leave the rest.

The trouble starts when humans start developing agriculture and cities and kings and territories and taking as much as they can, wiping out other species and nations, etc.

Why that isn’t an answer to you, maybe points to where your logic is flawed.

You wrote, “would happen if a more powerful, very destructive species came across humans? We wouldn’t last very long?” Why do you ask?

You wrote, “When it comes to primitive life on a big planet, and a species expanding in outer space, there is always room to expand. Only when a species controls all available space does conservation matter.” I don’t think that’s exactly accurate, and/or you don’t define what it means to “matter” (I assume you are trying to apply evolutionary theory here). However it does show what the matter is with trying to control all land and use it for agriculture and industry – it tends to wipe out the other species, which eventually gets you wiping out yourself.

@Zaku The question of “what happens” when “species meets species” is relevant in our experience since that is all we have to base our alternatives on. We see the interaction in our history/existence, and that is what we rely upon. Any other scenario is merely speculative.

@rock4ever

“The caribou isn’t in the wolf’s gene pool, but if they didn’t care and respect the caribou and they just killed all they could at will the population would die out. ”

Evolution doesn’t work this way. When wolves have the opportunity (such as finding animals trapped in a snowdrift), they will kill all that they can. There is no inbred brake against killing in wolves. Instead, as wolves get better at catching caribou, caribou get better at escaping wolves. It’s an endless arms race.

We care because we make moral calculations – we have a sense of fairness. Whether that is innate or acquired is irrelevant.

@Zaku

“it is not a positive thing to do, for your own species’ survival”

Evolution doesn’t care about the survival of species. It can’t. Evolution only “cares” about the survival/reproduction of individuals. Other than humans, no individual animals routinely sacrifice opportunities to enhance the survival of their genes. Sometimes the best ways for genes to survive may seem like sacrifice to us (such as the beta wolf who feeds the alphas’ pups but has no pups herself) but when examined, the “sacrifice” always involves real reproductive benefit to the individual (if the beta wolf had pups, they would likely starve in competition with the alpha’s pups, and she is related to the alphas, so she helps her genes survive by helping those pups survive.)

Anthropomorphic descriptions of “evolution”? lol

This discussion has to decide whether it’s going to discuss individuals, populations, or even the entire species itself!

I don’t believe evolution favors anything except the strong and the adaptable. Something has to lose.
People can be bird lovers and love eating at KFC at the same time.

Animals don’t have human rights. Maybe understanding that would help.

@perspicacious That threw me too, but I went along.

@Schroedes13 Whichever level we decide to discuss, I think your view of humans is inaccurate. Pure selfishness will continue to exist in some humans, I’m sure, but it is evolutionarily maladaptive. This is because human beings have memories and alter their future behavior on the basis of past experiences.

Consider a very famous thought experiment: the Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is a philosophical problem that has become a fundamental element of modern game theory. Here is a formulation of the problem from Wikipedia:

“Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?”

The problem need not be taken literally. It could apply to economic situations, personal favors, etc. Nor do the costs and rewards have to be set up exactly this way. It could be, for instance, that the only way to achieve the best personal result is for both players to cooperate. Regardless, life is often like an iterated prisoner’s dilemma (that is, a series of decisions to cooperate or defect). Human beings tend to cooperate until someone defects on them. That is, they are helpful until people refuse to return the favor. They remember defectors and do not help them (with some exceptions).

This is not purely altruistic, but it is not purely selfish either. It is reciprocal. Again, there are exceptions—some people are altruists (always cooperate), and some people are egoists (always defect). But most are reciprocators (cooperate until crossed). They look out for themselves, but they also look out for others.

One interesting thing to note here is that this fact actually makes pure egoism self-undermining in many prisoner’s dilemma scenarios. That is, egoism should recommend abandoning egoism given the fact that being a routine defector is likely to get you in quite a bit of trouble. This is especially true in scenarios where the cost and reward structure is changed such that both parties cooperating achieves the mutually optimal result (no prison time for either suspect), both parties defecting achieves the mutually pessimal—i.e., least optimal—result (one year in prison for each), and one party defecting while the other cooperates results in a less than optimal but greater than pessimal for each player.

Thus being purely selfish quickly becomes a losing strategy—especially if the welfare of others in any way contributes to our personal welfare. Egoists will claim that it is consistent with their view that they should do things that benefit others under certain situations. Specifically, they will say that they should do so whenever it will (ultimately) benefit them. Yet the realities and complexities of our social interactions are such that these instances quickly multiply. And as the number of instances multiplies, they become less and less clearly egoistic. Consequently, the egoist cannot long defend the contrast between his view and its rivals. Insofar as egoism is supposed to be a departure from classical theories of morality, though, this contrast is essential to the view and its loss is detrimental to the theoretical distinctness of egoism. Parts of it remain, but none that were not already accepted by most moral theorists (reluctant as some of them might be to identify those parts as such).

@SavoirFaire I also believe animals have memories. You can see that in various ways that apes teach their young to use tools, orcas can teach their calves to kill great whites, and rats remember which buttons not to touch in scientific experiments.

As for the prisoner’s dilemma, I agree that sometimes even an egoist will work toward the greater good, but that does not mean that their actions are generally altruistic. Also, there are people who are generally altruistic, but will sometimes, for unknown reasons, commit an egotistical action.

IMO, people will usually do what is best for themselves, sometimes with damaging results to others, unless their are given a higher reward than their personal gain.

@Schroedes13 Animals do have memories, though few can do the kind of long-term planning and grudge-holding we can. But among the species that can, you find similar behaviors. I also think you have missed the majority of my point: most people are demonstrably not egoists. They are reciprocators, which is different. One of the main differences is that their default behavior is to help even if they won’t get anything out of it. This holds until someone defects on them. We have actual scientific data on this, so your opinion that it isn’t true doesn’t really hold much muster.

@SavoirFaire the great thing about science though is that you can find studies that will help pretty much whatever your case is. Science is quite diverse and multi-faceted.

Other studies which show some of the diversity of human nature are the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these show results which could be used to show that people generally don’t care about others above themselves.

@Schroedes13 That’s not what the Milgram experiment shows. It’s about how people are influenced by authority. Evolutionary studies of morality have a long history, and this is a very consensus view within the field. There may be studies that give a modicum of support to everything, but very few positions have the bulk of research behind them.

@SavoirFaire Yes, I know that the experiment shows the power of authority over others, but it also shows the more base nature of humans. They can do things that completely go against their “good” nature and commit hurtful actions.

@YARNLADY I don’t follow. @PhiNotPi was asking what happens if humans met a destructive species that was more powerful than us, and I was asking him why he was asking that. I would say that we have never met a truly destructive species the way that agricultural human civilization is destructive. No other earth animal, including non-agricultural humans, attempts to eradicate another species.

@Schroedes13 The ability to do bad things does not prove egoism, however, be it the psychological or moral version. No one denies that humans are capable of some truly horrific things, and no one denies that some humans are primarily or even purely selfish. What the data of evolutionary morality shows, however, is that humans are neither purely altruistic nor purely selfish by nature—at least not in general. We are something in between that is not usefully categorized as altruistic or selfish.

@SavoirFaire Yes, I agree that each humans has the ability for good or evil, morality or immorality, egocentrism or altruism. However, I just think that many people, when given the choice, will choose whatever benefits them the most a majority of the time.

@Zaku

“No other earth animal, including non-agricultural humans, attempts to eradicate another species.”

We can’t really attribute intent to nonhuman animals, but species wipe out other species all the time, especially introduced species. Look at the history of any tropical island and you’ll see a litany of species driven extinct by imported cats, mongooses pigs, dogs and other animals. And, again, animals survive by being better at escaping, not because of any innate wish not to eradicate another species. Keeping with the wolf theme, wolves will kill coyotes whenever they get a chance. If they had the opportunity, they would wipe out every last coyote without a qualm. The reason they don’t isn’t any innate morality, it’s because the coyotes are too smart to keep getting caught (and it’s the smart ones that live to reproduce)!

Humans are just a lot better at killing other species.

@crisw That’s the reason I’m glad animals have a hard time understanding gun powder and other such inventions!

@crisw Absolute horse poop. Evolution is merely the tendency for positive survival traits to survive over great periods of time, and the domain in which survival occurs is not the individual animal, but an entire ecosystem. And it absolutely does not mean that every individual is always doing everything it does for a survival-oriented reason, and certainly not one that is going to always make sense to every human thinking about it.

Because humans can connect with animals (mammals and birds) on an emotional level.

I feel that some of this question has been misinterpreted. This is probably my fault. I was trying to ask why we care about animal testing and animal abuse. I completely understood the benifits of keeping food alive so that you can continue to hunt them. But animals such as horses, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, etc. are not usually considered food.

@PhiNotPi Those animals are considered food in other places. We care about animal testing and abuse because some realize there is a moral conflict. Animals can experience pain. A rock can not experience pain, so this why we don’t care about rocks as much as animals, or even insects.

@zaku

“Evolution is merely the tendency for positive survival traits to survive over great periods of time”

Nope. The scientific definition of evolution is the change in the proportion of alleles in the population over time. People often make up definitions of evolution, but that is all it really is.

“the domain in which survival occurs is not the individual animal, but an entire ecosystem”

We aren’t talking about survival, we are talking about evolution, and that requires genetic change. Ecosystems don’t have genes. Individual animals do. Ecosystems don’t reproduce. Individual animals do.

“it absolutely does not mean that every individual is always doing everything it does for a survival-oriented reason”

That is overstating what I said. What I specifically said is that animals do not have evolved brakes on their behavior to keep from wiping out other species. Instead, predators evolve to catch prey, and prey evolves to escape predators. Again, if we test this by looking at situations where predators have unimpeded access to prey, we see over and over again that the brakes do not exist. Ever seen the result of a fox or weasel or coyote getting into a henhouse?

@crisw “We can’t really attribute intent to nonhuman animals, but species wipe out other species all the time, especially introduced species.” Yes some species sometimes do cause the extinction of others, but the point is they don’t do it intentionally or methodically to wipe them all out, and neither do indigenous humans – only agricultural and industrial humans cause destruction and extinction on the scale we do, in an organized way based on a system of ideas rather than on instinct, and only we have the potential to change our understanding and our plan.

“Keeping with the wolf theme, wolves will kill coyotes whenever they get a chance. If they had the opportunity, they would wipe out every last coyote without a qualm.”
– No, only if humans thought like “civilized” humans do. Wolves don’t think of the world as something they can conquer and eliminate all coyotes from, and set out plans to do such things. It’s not the kind of thing they think about, because they don’t have the human history of ideas to build such a concept, etc.

“Look at the history of any tropical island and you’ll see a litany of species driven extinct by imported cats, mongooses pigs, dogs and other animals.”
– Yes, which is humans carelessly importing animals from other ecosystems, generally because civilized humans have acted as agricultural/industrial imperialists, without sufficient attention or care for non-human environments. It is absolutely not the case that those imported animals realize that they are hunting a prey species to extinction, or that they would if they had the choice. Watch a well-fed housecat hunt and catch a bird or mouse, and you’ll generally see it even try to keep it alive as long as possible so it can play longer. Cats prefer an abundance of things to jump on and chew.

@Zaku

I am not sure what your point is. Yes, humans plan and animals do not. However, that doesn’t change the base fact, which is that animals do not have evolved brakes on killing, and you haven’t really presented anything to refute that.

As far as the cat, such play serves an important evolutionary purpose in practicing for the hunt. In addition, domestic cats engage in such play more for two reasons- neoteny and short-circuited behavior. We have bred domestic cats to be more like kittens their entire lives, so they stay friendly. This leads to more kittenlike behavior, such as prey play. In addition, some cat behaviorists claim that while hunting is innate, the killing bite is learned. if this is the case, then cats that have not learned it don’t actually know how to kill a prey animal. They pounce, it moves, they pounce again…

@PhiNotPi “I was trying to ask why we care about animal testing and animal abuse. I completely understood the benifits of keeping food alive so that you can continue to hunt them. But animals such as horses, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, etc. are not usually considered food.”

Evolution isn’t the mystical all-controlling force that some theory junkies seem to think it is. It’s just the natural conclusion of modelling populations, survival risks, mutation and inheritance. You’ve got a population of various species and individuals with various traits in an environment where there are various interactions and risks, and let it do whatever it does for millions of years, and new mutations and traits appear just because DNA doesn’t always replicate the same way, and it recombines in sexual reproduction to produce individuals with different traits, and eventually new entire species.

Over time and especially during circumstances which greatly threaten survival or reproduction, the tendency is that more individuals with traits better for the conditions at the time survive and reproduce, tending to have those traits, and the other traits that were with them on those individuals, survive. But that does not mean that there won’t be traits that have no survival/reproduction benefits, and it certainly doesn’t mean the survival benefits will apply to current conditions and be obvious. It also doesn’t mean that every bit of every being is somehow scheming to survive and reproduce all the time.

I could offer plenty of theories why liking to have fluffy pets and not killing everything on sight would be advantageous for survival and reproduction, or even why side-effects of survival traits can have negative survival effects and still be selected by evolution, but that would avoid pointing out that traits can and do exist without having any positive effect on survival.

Maybe if I point out that trying to force all traits to be survival traits, is a bad survival strategy, it will cause an aha moment. ;-)

@crisw The reason I was saying those things was that @PhiNotPi seemed to me to be following the flawed theory that evolution (collapsed with “survival of the fittest”) means that killing off other species is a positive survival trait expected in all species. Part of my barrage of counterexamples is that animals don’t systematically work to kill off entire other species, that in fact those few that are predators generally kill what they need, and leave the rest, and that’s what indigenous humans do as well. Your example of predators killing other predators is by far the exception rather than the rule. Predators kill prey, but they stop hunting when they are full, because there’s no good reason to kill more either for the individual or for the population. If predators over-hunt their prey, it causes a serious survival crisis for the predator.

House cats was another of your examples of animals driving others to extinction when introduced to other ecosystems, and my counterpoints about those are:
* Housecats are exceptionally efficient hunters.
* Housecats are not found in those ecosystems and the animals threatened had no evolved defenses to them.
* Humans introduced housecats, so extinction by housecat is more extinction by human than by a natural animal.
* Housecats aren’t just felix domesticus in the wild, but are supported (and as you point out, modified) by high-tech industrial humans.

@Zaku I’m not talking about killing just to kill, I am talking about killing when it is benificial for the species. “would not hesitate to kill any animal if it would somehow benifit the species in any way.” (original question)

The “in any way” was to show that benifit does not need to come from the animal being food.

@Zaku

“Predators kill prey, but they stop hunting when they are full, because there’s no good reason to kill more either for the individual or for the population.”

This really doesn’t have anything to do with any evolved tendency to conserve. Instead, every hunt by a predator is a proposition of benefits and deficits. Chase a deer when you are full and don’t need the calories, and the risks (getting hurt) outweigh the benefits (negligible; you don’t need the food). On the other hand, come upon a rich food source that presents little risk, such as a nest full of eggs, and many predators will indeed take it all; eating what they can and caching the rest for later.

There have been quite a few studies of surplus killing. All kinds of predators engage in it, including grizzlies killing musk oxen, foxes killing birds, dingoes killing marsupials, wolves killing deer. orcas killing seals, pygmy owls killing mice, and crows killing mice Surplus killing is by no means a rare or unusual phenomenon.When it provides an energetic benefit at little cost to the animal, or when predatory behavior is overwhelmingly triggered (such as the fox in the henhouse) it will happen.

And yes, indigenous humans did it too. Look at the buffalo jump, for example. By no means were all the buffalo killed in such jumps used (sometimes only the tongues were taken), but they were an easy way to obtain lots of food with little effort.

@PhiNotPi Ok. So your central question adjusted is “I was trying to ask why we care about animal testing and animal abuse.”?

I think the answer to that question is that we have a traits of sympathy for others, and (for those of us who aren’t sociopaths) a trait of conscience for others, and as you observe in yourself, and as I observe in myself, and in many others I know, we extend those traits to animals, plants, even objects that others care about.

I think you mean to also ask, why, in the context of evolution, we have those traits, and my answers to that are:

1) Evolution does not preclude having traits that have no survival or reproductive value. We have an appendix. We have lame teeth that get infected. Our women tend to die in childbirth without help. Etc. Just because we have a trait does not mean it has positive survival value.
2) Some traits that do have positive survival value in some ways, have other aspects or side effects that have negative survival aspects, or have different survival value in different circumstances. Perhaps the survival value gained from caring about your family, is very high for humans, and the side effect of liking animals gets us help from animals we include in our tribe, and that even means we waste a little resources on a hampster, that’s ok and isn’t going to cause any deaths or lack of reproduction.
3) Not damaging the health of the ecosystem and community around you can be a positive survival trait.
4) Being a likable loving person can make you much more likely to be kept alive and supported by your tribe, than being a dangerous destructive bastard.
5) Having a population with a variety of traits, which have positive survival traits in some circumstances and not in others, can be an overall survival trait.
6) Etc. Etc. Etc. I could go on all day thinking of reasons why survival is not hyperdeterministic and why its not violent or even why being nice to animals would be a better survival and reproductive strategy than killing left and right. But the argument look a left turn back when someone confused evolution with some sort of competitive survival game.

@crisw Lots of good examples of gratuitous killing. They are not the mainstream behavior though (why argue about the definition of “exception”?), and they aren’t aimed at eliminating another species. They’re more like causing a lot of destruction to the prey, with relatively little (or no) gain for the predator, and they’re studied and noticeable as not being the usual thing animals do to each other. They’re also not usually good survival tactics, because they destroy more than is needed.

@Zaku

“They are not the mainstream behavior though”

Actually, I don’t know of any predator that will not engage in surplus killing if the opportunity to obtain much food at little cost is presented. Every study that I know of shows that a predator given the opportunity will take it. Can you point me to any studies that support your position?

“They’re more like causing a lot of destruction to the prey, with relatively little (or no) gain for the predator”

No, there is often an enormous gain for the predator, if you read any of the studies I cited. For example, foxes and crows cache the surplus prey for later feeding, and wolves will revisit the winter-killed deer for many meals.

“they’re studied and noticeable as not being the usual thing animals do to each other”

No, the reason they are rare is because most prey animals have evolved good defenses. That is the only reason that they are not more common. Again, if you are aware of any studies that show that predators given the option will not surplus-kill, please provide them.

“They’re also not usually good survival tactics, because they destroy more than is needed.”

Again, evolution is all about the individual. Not the group, not the species, not the ecosystem. Surplus killing is a great survival tactic if you can do it, because that energy bost may mean the difference between surviving and reproducing or not surviving and reproducing .

I feel that this whole argument (me and crisw vs. Zaku) has become sort of pointless. Both sides seem to turn up facts and interpret the other side as denying those facts. It might have originated with some sort of misuderstanding somewhere.

1) I agree with Zaku in the fact that wasting lives of other species when you would need them in the future is a negative survival trait.

2) I agree with crisw in the fact that despite the above, it happens anyway and animals don’t seem to care about negative effects.

3) I think that the negative effects of waste don’t really kick in until there are actually too few prey animals to support the predators and still maintian a stable prey population. Until then, waste doesn’t effect the ability of the prey to sustain the predators. Take a farmer (representing the predator species) growing his crops (representing the prey species) as an example. He is free to waste as much food as he wants, as long as he is still able to feed himself and have enough seeds left to grow next year’s harvest. Only when he doesn’t have crops to waste does conservation matter.

4) I think that evolution works on the order of species. Working together always benifits you, since the species can do more when cooperating. A cooperating species can outcompete a noncooperative species because a noncooperative species has more internal competition (fighing each other).
If members of a species do not treat members of the same species as being the same species (microbes do this), evolution works on the level of the individual. It’s every man for himself. There is no sexual reproduction, so you are your own gene pool.

@crisw I agree that a predator who can cache food that it can’t eat at the moment will do so. That’s just quibbling with the definition of what it can use. And yes, I would not say that animals have an intentional plan to conserve their prey populations, any more than I would say they have a plan to eradicate their prey populations. And yes, predators can hunt their prey to near-extinction, and the limit is largely about evasion skills versus hunting skills, population sizes, etc. I’m not trying to argue against what you’re saying about that, except many explanations of predator behavior also include that they manage their resources of energy, risk, and exposure, as well as trying to kill prey and cache extra, which will cause them to take an efficient amount rather than rampage. If a lion has a kill, he’ll tend to stop killing and eat as much as he can of that one, rather than trying to kill more, because eating is the point, and other lions or scavengers want some of the kill to. The point is to eat, not to kill, and predators will often realize it’s time to eat as much as possible, not to kill as much as possible.

I do disagree with much of your last paragraph, “Again, evolution is all about the individual. Not the group, not the species, not the ecosystem. Surplus killing is a great survival tactic if you can do it, because that energy bost may mean the difference between surviving and reproducing or not surviving and reproducing .”

* Evolution is not only about the individual, except that it is the unit of action, survival and reproduction. Even if you frame an analysis around individuals, individuals do not exist alone – the situation that determines their survival includes the group, and other species, and even natural non-living effects, and so individual behaviors can cause unbalances which can come back to be negative for the individual.

If I’m on a desert island where we need chickens to lay eggs to survive, and I am a self-centered fool who likes to eat chicken and thinks I will get more protein than the others and decides to kill and cook chickens for myself, likely outcomes include that the others will kill or subdue me and not breed with me, or they won’t notice in time, and we’ll all die.

If there are ten desert islands like this, the islands which have self-sustaining ecosystems will have its current inhabitants survive, and that means there are positive survival traits for individuals and groups and ecosystems in not being overly destructive or harmful, and in stopping destructive behavior in oneself and in others.

@crisw actually they do have an inbred break for killing caribou. When the caribou’s population decreases less wolves breed and they have smaller litters. Also they only eat very few caribou. They prefer mice because they’re easier to catch. A healthy caribou doesn’t run from a wolf and can kill it.

Maybe compassion? I think people feel compelled to stand up for animals because they cannot do so themselves.