I think some anti-meat activists really gloss over how humanity spent 1000s of years molding dogs + cats into companions and co-workers who pretty intuitively understand our emotions- we haven’t done this with pigs and cows.
It’s not exactly shocking that many people thus don’t want to eat pets.
Because dogs and cats are considered companion animals - even those born in the wild who have never encountered a human. Horses are considered utilitarian, and the shift from "work animal" to "food animal" isn't a huge one.
Eating a dog feels closer to eating a human.
I tried horsemeat once upon a time in Italy. It was in a traditional spiced stew called pastissada, and especially in Southern Italy, it's considered very normal.
Yes, and I also think in the US in particular, we've got a very very specific limited idea of the way we interact with companion animals, one that's evolved even over the last decades into the fur-children idea.
Many people no longer think of dogs or cats as animals that have JOBS for example.
If your society views an animal like a cow or horse or chicken as something here for a PURPOSE like laying and milk and transport, it is natural to use the animal for something ELSE once it's outlived the use, regardless of your emotional connection.
But we no longer USE cats or dogs.
I'm seeing in some sectors, chickens evolve into this as well! People into getting urban chickens for eggs are now making them into internet celebrities, snuggling on them, they are pets.
And they are NEVER gonna eat that chicken.
Well, the use may be that of a cow in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, which is, basically, to be around, and to bless the environment. It's also a job, but one that you never outlive. I think US cats (and to a lesser degree, dogs) have kinda ascended into this realm...
Right, that's why I was referencing the US in particular here.
It's interesting the idea that cats and dogs have ascended to this! I feel like it's slightly different in that we infantilize them much more....it's FEELS different I'm trying to figure out why.
I think for cats at least the reverence is stronger than the derpiness. And even derp-appreciation becomes a part of the reverence.
For dogs, yeah, it's way more condescending. I think :) But of course I'm not sure!
We should run a study or somethin!
I grew up in a rural area where yard dogs, guard dogs, and pets were treated differently, but none of them were treated like the livestock.
With dogs, a modern trend is using dogs as a soft prep for parenthood. Very different, of course, but if you/your partner cannot handle a dog…
This is a huge digression but when you manage systems at scale, "cattle, not pets" is a mantra used when discussing naming schemes. At a certain point you need servers to be 100% replacable and if you give them unique names they end up sticking around when they shouldn't.
A Russian study with foxes showed that domestication can be as few as 9 generations. Generations are short, so this could have been a single individual doing this. (Not saying that's how it happened.)
While my parents were in Zimbabwe, a local African wild cat (wild species) was starving while tending her litter during the dry season. They started leaving dry fish for her to eat on the porch.
*Mama Kitty* ended up coming back to the states with them a year later.
Her offspring stayed around their house however and kept it remarkably snake free while everyone else had poisonous snake problems. Some remained fairly wild and some others were more friendly to human contact.
I've now gotten to really know a bunch of dogs from a litter of 9. There's a huge range in looks: long silky hair, short sort of reedy, black, white, brindle, brown. But also temperament: Afraid, aggressive, to friendly with everyone. It's crazy. DNA shows 10 breeds.
Friend feeds feral cats. They stay feral. But there's lots of hunting available nearby. This is the usual. He also has a dog, and the cats still come around.
Mama Kitty basically domesticating herself was seemingly a replay of how cats attached to human dwellings (where the mice and rats were) thousands of years ago. Some of her offspring still didn't make that transition and others did.
I was a bit shocked to learn that there's evidence that we domesticated ourselves. Cats doing it sounds extreme, but they do like to eat. That's what the Egyptians hired them for. I assumed it just sort of happened.
That study has been criticised in recent years, as the foxes he used for breeding stock were revealed to have been sourced from Prince Edward Island; a population that has been exhibiting features of "domestication syndrome" since well before the experiment took place.
also im far from an expert about that but i think "shows visual indicators and behavioral tendencies similar to domesticated animals due to intensely selective human intervention" is not necessarily "actually domesticated" (especially if we're comparing to dogs, which are fully co-evolved with us)
There's genuinely a lot to critique about the Russian fox experiment, how it was designed, and the value of the data produced. Many of the physical and behavioural changes observed have been exaggerated, and the animals don't seem to be any more affectionate or biddable than typical "tame" foxes.
Recall that while Darwin had a wrong guess on where white doves came from, he was completely baffled by dogs. They've been with us so long. If fox domestication is compared to dogs, that's going to fail. And yet wolves can interbreed with domestic dogs - in some sense, same species.
This is why we should absolutely get to work on cuttlefish and corvids if people gathered around a big pile of shiny objects and mice at night thousands of years ago we’d have hundreds of crow breeds by now
jfc is this going to be the discourse all day? Like bsky isn’t already hard enough to look at with all the (justifiable) stuff about our slide into fascism?
