To wish there was a better design than the predator / prey relationship?

[Oneandtwoanda3]

Yes, I am being fucking stupid.

Everything has to eat. But who designed it so that in order to survive, one species has to prey on another having them die in terror and agony?

Must stop watching Attenborough.

@Oneandtwoanda3

I’m not sure why people are asking if I’ve heard of evolution.

I’m not asking why it happens. I regret it has to. I mean, we don’t callously say ‘ah well, evolution’ when a child is sick!

Because you asked "who designed it". Nobody designed it, the whole system has come about because of evolution.

Unless the OP is a vegan this is quite odd.

I think people must be incredibly disconnected from the realities of what happens for us to eat (mostly factory farmed) meat if they are horrified by an animal living a free and natural life and having a few moments of fear towards the end.

Some (many?) vegans don't mind animals eating each other.
Veganism can be about human choices, not animal or divine choices.

I was thinking about the "cruelty" description of animals eating each other -- mice eat grubs, cats eat mice, is the mice a victim or a colluder in the cruelty stakes? If cats have pleasure from killing, isn't that from their advanced, play-based, adaptable learning mammalian brains? Could organic intelligence arise without biological competition and threats ?

Applying absolute standards of morality to animals or ecosystems depending on what creatures eat (or never eat) is a bizarre human value. Do intellectual vegans normally endorse anthromorphising animals? I wouldn't have thought so. That would be very unwise, potentially very unkind, and certainly not in the animals' best interests or welfare. Sounds like a rather anti vegan attitude to me.

Anyway, if someone wants to devise a whole ecosystem that could arrise from scratch without any predators or food source competition, fair enough. Maybe we all could have been carrion eaters instead.

Speaking of animals being cruel to each other... what about when a bird abandons feeding one chick and only feeds another? What about when new male lions kills all the cubs to bring pride females into season? What about male seals/walruses fighting & causing huge harms to each other just to get territory or a harem? Groups of male dolphins are known to isolate, harass and effectively force sex with single females. Maras show the firm unkindness of only feeding their own kittens & will blithely leave to starve other kittens in the area who can't find own mothers.

I mean, at least eating each other is sustenance. And it can quickly bring to an end the suffering of crippled, starving or very ill animals. It's pretty low in the cruelty stakes of what animals may do to each other.

@eldora

I think it pales in comparison to the misery we put dairy and farm animals through.

Macerating unwanted male baby chicks?
Separating cows from their young for their milk?
Forcing food down a goose neck?
Slaughtering animals within view of others who can see and understand what is happening?

Hm, I'm not so sure.

Crows peck eyes out of living prey. Magpies will go back to a nest repeatedly, pull out a chick and mash it and stab at it until it's not moving (doesn't have to be dead), then eat it. Owls will start pulling mice apart before they're dead. And so on.

A sick animal in the wild can suffer for days until either something else eats it or it finally expires.

Nature is brutal. Factory farming is, I agree, grim, but a slaughter line that is well designed well run is probably a better way to die than being chased by a pack of jackals, and then eviscerated while still alive and kicking. In full view of the rest of the herd...

@MimiDaisy11

Yeah it’s be nice if we could all get along. Oh well c’est la vie (et décès).

I don’t get either why people are bringing up evolution. You’re just saying it’s a shame things are this way.

I think people are bringing up evolution due to the OP asking that question "who designed it that way?" Evolution is the opposite of design. I.e. if you understand that it is due to evolution, then it was not "designed"

Rhetorical question …

I'm squeamish enough to wish we could all just photosynthesize. Not sure about being green and hanging my fronds out the window, but I'd give it a go in the name of inter-species civility.

You know that grass has defensive features to try and protect itself from being eaten? Why do you assume that grass isn't in fear if you think zebra are?

Just because you don't find it easy to anthropomorphise plants in the way you clearly do animals, why do you think plants don't suffer when being eaten or killed for food?

In your version, if no living thing gets killed for food, then what are all the living things eating to survive?

Tbh, I think you have to be seriously disconnected from nature and our place in it to view the 'cycle of life' as a bad thing rather than something that connects all life and makes it meaningful.

Lions, cheetahs etc kill their prey quickly and cleanly once they’ve caught it so that’s something.

Yeah but it’s not just the lions and cheetahs to worry about. Crocodiles, hyenas, even lions if you’re a cheetah (I know they don’t eat them, at least not AFAIK.)

I don’t think it’s anthropomorphism to recognise animals feel fear / pain / stress.

I also always wonder about animals being cold. Like, there's a gap between being totally fine, warm, comfortable outdoors in spring and summer, and being actually dead of hypothermia. And that gap is pretty fucking miserable. Like us animals are programmed to seek and enjoy warmth. So I can only conclude all the sheep etc are fucking cold all the time.

And I don't believe fur and wool are that efficient. I'd still be cold if I was out in ten degrees all day even if I had on a whole-body furry close fitting onesie.

And watching your child being eaten in front of you

Grow up

I don’t think it’s linked to maturity or otherwise, tbh.

It is the way it is, and absolutely nothing will change that. Everything has to eat to survive but that doesn’t mean it isn’t absolutely brutal.

It’s easy to assume that animals somehow don’t care - accept their fate or something, I’m not sure - but the older I’ve got the more I’ve realised that’s not true. That animals do feel fear and pain and stress and loss and suffering.

Which makes the predator / prey thing pretty shit!

@CounsellorTroi

Lions, cheetahs etc kill their prey quickly and cleanly once they’ve caught it so that’s something.

I worked in a game reserve in Africa for a few years and sadly this isn't always the case.

I've seen lions eat animals that were still alive. The worst were warthogs who made an awful sound as they were being eaten.

There’s a wonderful passage in a book I read recently which is about the peaceful era predating meaningful interaction between organisms. There does seem to be quite a strong link between intelligence and predator/ prey dynamics. Hunting and hiding both drive bigger more complex brains.