Would you save your pet or a stranger's child?

[NotADailyMailJournalist]

Hello all

Slightly inspired by another thread where posters were surprised that people were more interested in someone's dog than their baby...

If you have a cat/dog and you could only save it or a stranger's child/baby, what would you choose?

For the purposes of this thread, no-one would ever find out you'd been given the choice, so you wouldn't face any consequences.

Thanks

You have a societal responsibility to protect children

How far do you extend that?

I mean, as someone said upthread, if you had 5k earmarked for something important to you, and a random media appeal said that a family you'd never met needed 5k to travel to America for life saving surgery for their child - would you hand over your money?

If not, why not?

The vulnerability argument doesn't work either as animals.are more vulnerable than humans.

Love my pets mean the world to be .I'd save a child over anyone of them surely that's what everyone would do

My dog or cat any day, but I'm not a fan of people outside of my bubble. My dog would choose me over another dog's puppy, so I owe the same to her. Someone else's child is their problem.

And that's exactly what the question was. Your pet or a child you don't know, you , which obviously involves your circumstances.

I am very sorry for your loss.

The ones who would save their pets are fine then with their own children potentially being left to perish so a pet can be saved?
I suppose it’s a consolation to them that they’d have saved the pet too in the same circumstances 🤷🏼‍♀️

This is sort of where my stance comes from too.
My dog would (& has) risk her life for me without question. She guards me by default. I couldn't kill her in order to save someone I've never met.

I've noted that a pp said she's a 'Well trained animal' Well no, she isn't 'well trained'.
Of course she is in terms of not jumping up, not doing her toilet business in the house and knowing 'sit' and 'come' etc but I never trained her to guard me or protect me. It's her nature and loyalty. She'd choose me over anyone. And I respect that.

In what scenario other than the hypothetical one in the OP, would this happen? It's my duty to protect my child and my pet. Same as it is the hypothetical parent of another child to do the same. It isn't mine.
If a big talking hand came down to me and said 'a random child at the other side of the world is going to die unless you stab your dog to death right now', I'd not kill my dog.

The question was would you save your pet or a strangers child. I imagined fast flowing water or a fire.
Where the hell has stabbing your dog to death come from?!

The exact same place your imagined scenario came from.

Haha no. Stabbing your pet because a big talking hand appeared from the sky, what 😂

People saying the child will save more lives as they get older. What if it was baby hitler versus your pet? and you know exactly what kind of human he will be

Losing a child was so life altering for me that I would choose the pet (for reasons explained already). I wouldn't have before.

I imagined a scenario the same as you did. Nobody else said anything about a random child and your dog both falling into fast flowing water, or a child you'd never met randomly being trapped in a burning building along with your dog, either (name me a scenario in which that could happen?).

I brought up this argument too. We don't know that this imagined child will be a good person. Even if they're not hitler-esque, they may just be an awful person who's abusive, hurts people, sponges off the vulnerable while sitting around in their pants all day smoking weed and abusing their own kids.

He wouldn’t say save the pet. He would probably say that morally in this situation where similar interests are at stake- both the non-human animal and the human are about to die- then the choice to save either is equally valid, unless you can identify something about saving the child that doesn’t happen when the pet is saved. If we want to say that those who would save the pet are morally wrong, then we need to identify what that something is.

For example, a rational argument might be, when the pet dies then only the “owner(s)” and potentially other family members in the household (including other pets) may suffer as a result. If the child dies, the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, teachers etc may all suffer. However that’s not actually a logical distinction, because in theory you could have the single parent of a newborn with no family where only one person was going to suffer. So what else can you look to.

Lifespan is another way to try and rationalise that only the child is a valid choice. The child will almost certainly live longer than the pet. But that rationale only works if you would save the pet if their lifespan was more e.g. if child had a terminal illness.

Instinct is pretty obvious and most people’s instinct would be to favour their own species or empathise with them more. It’s not rational or particularly logical but in a choice between two equal harms it’s a a sufficiently valid basis for a personal choice, but not to say another choice is wrong.

Level of suffering might be a way to rationalise it, but it’s hard to prove- in mammals, is there any pain worse than a parent losing a child? Do people really grieve as long for non-human animals as they do humans?

As I say I’d save the child. I made the decision nearly automatically and then tried to justify it with lifespan or suffering related arguments but really, it’s just because I empathise with humans more, which is not rational, but when the stakes are exactly the same I don’t need a logical basis for the choice. I think level of suffering probably also factored into my decision, as I find it hard to imagine the loss of a dog could ever be as painful as the loss of a child.

So how would the scenario ever occur that you could save one or the other? Surely in the hypothetical question posed in the OP it’s having pet and stranger’s child in the same dangerous predicament, and the ability to save only one?
Perhaps I read the hypothetical question wrong and it is “would you let your dog die now to save a random child across the world who you can’t see?”

Yes but all your language is biased towards pet being the ‘right’ answer. ‘Too scared’ is when people were saying they’d choose their child, ‘brave’ and ‘confess’ when people said they’d choose their pet. Ask the question by all means, but when you’re clearly so convinced that pet is the right answer, what’s the point?

Well, exactly. Not all children grow up to be good people.

Going by the thread, "most people" would without hesitation choose the child.

Would your choice change if there were consequences? Your life saving was public, you were the only person within reach, and able to be within reach to save either the baby or your dog. The mother was nearby screaming for her baby. You knew it was being recorded, your decision would be obvious to the world and likely to go viral/be in the press with pictures of the child? The police were on scene and watching (is there a crime around not saving a child from harm/putting a child in a place of harm? I don't know).

What would your decision be then?

I’d also be interested if the scenario changes people’s view. I’m imagining a pet and child drowning at same time type scenario and you can save one. If it’s more like “the box” and you can either watch your pet die or a child you don’t know somewhere dies then I can see how emotionally that might be different. If it’s stab your pet or a child somewhere dies that’s different again and I imagine more people might choose the pet. Finally if it’s stab your pet or stab this 3 year old, I think that is the most horrifying choice and different again. I would choose the child every time but I think scenarios 2 and 3 make that a harder choice.

It's not 'A' pet over a child. It's MY dogs over a child.

There is a difference.

I chose my dogs.

But someone else's dog over someone else's child then I would save the child.

The mother was nearby screaming for her baby. You knew it was being recorded, your decision would be obvious to the world and likely to go viral/be in the press with pictures of the child? The police were on scene and watching

So why wouldn't the police or the child's mother be held responsible in those scenarios? Why would it be down to a random stranger?

After losing my child, my place in and the opinion of wider society has little meaning for me anyway. You'd never know to watch me go through life, I'm still caring and generous, but my child has been through enough and I will save their service animal. I would die for my child's well being.