Can we eliminate predation?

[CurtC]

Another thought - if you consider what would happen by taking away predators, then every species that was the prey would have a population growth checked only by starvation. Is it morally better to have more animals starving to death, or to have a lesser number die at the tooth of predators?

 

[Earthborn]

I think the people in this thread who argue that stopping predation would cause widespread starvation of predators are missing the point. Randfan started this thread because of a discussion he had about technological advancements that make it possible to produce meat through tissue engineering, making it unnecessary to feed predators actual animals.

Moral equivelance of human or animal caused killing

Some vegetarians consider the suffering of animals to be immoral. For such a philosopy to be logically consistent, such a person cannot justify the suffering of animals in the wild with a mere "well, that's nature." After all, the same can be said of animals suffering from human actions. Humans are just an animal causing suffering to other animals, so if we assume it is immoral for humans to cause such suffering, it is also immoral for other animals to do the same.

I see no reason why it should not be theoretically possible to end predation entirely. All animals that cannot survive on plant material alone can be given tissue engineered meat. Predators could be physically seperated from prey animals to prevent killing, or both predatory and prey animals can be taken away from their mothers at a very young age and made to grow up together. That way they will be imprinted to eachother and predators never learn to understand the prey as food and the prey will not learn to understand the predator as a danger. Raising them together and teaching them that food comes out of the food bowl makes it unlikely that the predators will try to eat the prey. Dolphinariums around the world manage to keep orcas and dolphins together without the orcas trying to eat the dolphins as they would in the wild. And I think we can all remember the animal home videos that show housecats and mice or rats playing together without the cat ever getting the idea that the mice or rat might be food. In individual cases, it is doable to prevent predation.

Arbitrary judgements

There will of course be enormous practical obstacles. It would require humans to micromanage not only their own societies, but the entire natural world. The first question that needs to be answered is how far such micromanagement needs to go. Do we plan to prevent all predatory insects to hunt other insects? Bacteria that eat other bacteria? How about flesh eating plants? Or do we need to draw an arguably arbitrary line between 'higher' and 'lower' animals where we only prevent predation in the higher ones? If such an arbitray line is drawn, the question arises why such a line between humans and other animals is invalid. Perhaps a society that tries to prevent predation in the wild, simply takes the position that the arbitrary line should be drawn to what is technically feasible, and it should try to prevent predation in as 'low' a species as possible.

Reeducating predators

Teaching predators to not eat their prey will have often not be easy. Let's suppose we take away baby cheetahs and baby impalas from their mothers and make them live together as brothers and sisters. Through imprinting, the cheetahs will probably have no trouble seeing the impalas as siblings. The problem is that they will also treat them as such and want to play rough with them as they do to their actual siblings. The playful biting and scratching will however not be pleasant to the impalas who will feel as if they are harrassed. It is even possible that during this play, the impalas are are wounded or killed, and the cheetah cubs get a taste of impala flesh. And that's exactly what needs to be avoided.

If the impala runs away from the harassment, the cheetah cub will interpret it as if it wants to be chased and runs after it, just as if the cubs chase eachother. As the cheetahs grow up, their play becomes increasingly dangerous to the impalas. The cheetahs may not have learned to kill for their food, but they will likely kill the impalas anyway. Perhaps they will feel disappointed that their impala playmates can no longer move when they are caught in what seems to them an innocent game of tag.

This shows it is not enough for predatory animals to learn from childhood that their natural prey is one of their own. The opposite is true: the impalas will be in direct danger when cheetahs treat them the same way as they do eachother. Cheetah and impala temperaments don't mix even if they grow up together as brother and sister. This is not necessarily true of all predators and prey however: zebras and lions may be more compatible. Lion cubs are also pretty rough, but zebras don't necessarily run away when they don't like the way they are treated. More likely they will give a good kick from the hindlegs teaching the lions cubs from early on not to mess with them. Zebras will probably band together with the other zebras, and the lions with the other lions, but if the lions are taught early on that their food comes from humans filling their bowl, this perhaps does not necessarily lead to behaviour that appears predatory. Their agression may limit itself to infighting.

Preventing predators to hunt their prey will be very difficult and likely requires a lot of experimentation to figure out the interactions between the 'instinctive' behaviours of predator and prey. Also, such experiments will not likely be pleasant to the prey animals. But hunting behaviour of predators is largely learned behaviour, so by removing them from their mothers it can be overcome. They will then not learn to hunt and their play will not change into hunting behaviour.

Replacing ecosystems

Ending predation requires humans to interfere in nature to a much greater extent than most vegetarians would be comfortable with. The number of predatory animals will no longer be limited by the amount of prey that is available. Instead it will be entirely dependent on how much food humans want to tissue engineer for them. The number of prey animals will no longer be limited by the number of predatory animals, and its growth is only limited by the amount of plant food available to them. Their habitat will become overgrazed quickly, leading to widespread famine. Obviously such animal suffering is not any more acceptable than the suffering caused by being slaughtered by predators.

Humans will not only have to feed the predators and preventing them from killing other animals. They will also have to regulate their reproduction or else you'll end up with too many meat eaters to produce artificial meat for, and too many plant eaters for habitats to sustain. All the feedback loops that normally regulate ecosystems, but cause animal suffering, must be replaced with by human micromanagement. Humans will have to design a technology of birth control for millions of species, measurements and criteria to decide how many individual animals there should be in each habitat. The natural world as we know it will cease to exist, and basically become a global zoo, managed by human beings.

There is a strange irony to that: the whole endeavour is considered because humans are not superior to other animals, so what is true of humans (morally or otherwise) must also be true of other animals. But to get it all to work, humans will have to become superior to all other species. Become their overseer and guardian. But this is the only way all animals can be protected from suffering.

Achieving equal rights for animals

Some animal rights activists believe that animals should have equal rights to humans. If such rights are to be implemented, forced birth control of animals may become unacceptable, making it impossible to regulate the global zoo. Perhaps instead forced birth control of humans will become acceptable, to keep the rights equal for humans and animals. Will we become just another animal in the zoo, regulated and cared for by the omnipresent state that governs every aspect of the living world? To care for millions of species of animal, the mechanisms used to care for all animals without causing death and suffering must be highly automated. This is also necessary to prevent human screw-ups or individual humans cheating the system for their own gain.

The automation of life

Humans will be superior in the sense that they created the system that regulates animal life. But this does not necessarily mean the system needs to treat them superior. If animals and humans are to have equal rights, the system needs to treat them in the exact same way. Machines are necessary to achieve this. Machines that for all intents and purposes are Godlike in their capabilities. That hardly means that it will forever be impossible to create a world without animal suffering at the hands of other animals. But it does show that we still have some time to go before it becomes possible.

Life will be easier for animals and humans alike. But it will not be world where those who feel uncomfortable living as an animal in a zoo will want to live. All animal species including humans will live in virtual captivity. Well cared for and free of suffering. But never in actual freedom. Only time will tell whether humans will care enough for animal rights for such a system to be implemented. I don't think there is at this time any reason to assume it is impossible to outdo nature, and create a world without death and suffering. Whether people will care enough is a different matter.

 

[El_Spectre]

How about: Smart animals eat less intelligent ones. It's worked for 3 billion years. No arbitrary morality need apply.

To quote (again) Tool:

"This is necessary,
Life feeds on life
feeds on life
feeds on life"

I appreciate that (moral) vegetarians think they are in the right. That said, I think their views are simplistic and more emotion than reason. That's fine, as long as they don't expect me to subscribe to their emotional view.

Also: a cow is not equivalent to a human. We think in the abstract, are self aware and overall have progressed far beyond the "stand in a field and chew" stage that cows are at. So, we ascended the food chain and get steak.

 

[Earthborn]

How about: Smart animals eat less intelligent ones. It's worked for 3 billion years.

Has it? Would you be prepared to swim with hungry crocodiles to prove this thesis? Personally I don't think they will recognise your superior intellect and allow you to eat them.

We think in the abstract, are self aware and overall have progressed far beyond the "stand in a field and chew" stage that cows are at.

This largely because we live in an intellectually more challenging environment. By putting cows in a situation where all their needs are cared for, they don't have to show their problem solving capabilities.

 

[Mosquito]

A lot of text snipped for band-width.
I don't think there is at this time any reason to assume it is impossible to outdo nature, and create a world without death and suffering. Whether people will care enough is a different matter.

You seem (to me) to be making the common fallacy of thinking animal = mammal.

MOST predators are not mammals. Most prey (both in numbers and in biomass) are not killed and eaten by mammals. Spiders eat more kg of meat than lions, cheetahs, and probably all other cats *combined*. Ants probably eat more meat than all non-human mammals combined.

The thing to remember here is that the larger the animal, the more food it needs, so the less there can be of said animal. And to maintain prey, it has to be a LOT less of the big predators than the small ones. This translates into a few lions and a LOT of ants.

And this brings us to the real issue of my reply:

MOST predators do not learn hunting and killing for food. They are hard-wired to do so, as they would die off as a species in about one year if they weren't.

You can't teach a spider, a scorpion, an ant or a venus flytrap not to kill it's prey. OK, you can feed the flytrap, but you can't teach it not to kill the occational fly landing in it.

And spiders, scorpions and ants kill larger number of animals than all mammals combined. They even kill&eat more kg of animals. Which, considering the size of their prey, says something about the number of kills they do.

And fish... You can't teach fish not to eat fish, not all fish, anyway.


This boils down to you having to "manually" feed *every single predator* on the planet. Or kill them. How do you feed 1.000.000.000.000 ants in order to avoid any of them to ruin your day by feeding themselves?


In short: It can't be done without reducing the number of predators in the world drastically. There is not enough energy available to do it, by machine or by hand.


Mosquito - standing up for "the little guys"

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Also: a cow is not equivalent to a human.

Well, the argument is that both humans and cows suffer and feel pain, and that this emotions are more or less equal in both cases. Something Im willing to believe.

Now, if this is the case, would you still feel confortable knowing that those animals are treated in the way they are treated in order for you to eat them?

And, before anything else happens, I have to tell that Im not a vegetarian (my wife is), but I would never ask for someone to kill some animal so I could enjoy a nice meal (normal, everyday circumstaces, forget about being in a desesperate situation).

If the meat is already in the fridge, I can enjoy it, if it is still on the cow, give me my vegetables!

 

[El_Spectre]

Has it? Would you be prepared to swim with hungry crocodiles to prove this thesis?

Fair enough. I should have said "better adapted". It just turns out that, for humans, most of the recent adaptation is in terms of the brain. Crocs are certainly better adapter to their environment, so that kinda makes my point.

By putting cows in a situation where all their needs are cared for, they don't have to show their problem solving capabilities.

Domesticated (american) cows have been specifically bred to be docile and manageable. And they live a boring, controlled life. So, ok, life is boring for them.

Lets take a very wild relative, the bison. Go watch one... if the "problem" is "not enough food" or "gotta poo", then they've got the answer. Of course, the same can be said of a termite.

I'm not saying any animal should be abused, but to call them as equal with humans is incorrect. For what seems to matter to us, brain power (we don't worry 'bout eating dumb 'ol bugs), most are far inferior.

The apes are an exception of course... I can see drawing the line where an animal becomes self aware, maybe.

 

[Mosquito]

Has it? Would you be prepared to swim with hungry crocodiles to prove this thesis? Personally I don't think they will recognise your superior intellect and allow you to eat them.

Umm, swimming with hungry crocodiles is not intelligent. So, by being intelligent El Spectre will not do something as stupid as that. That's the real survival advantage of intellect. Don't do stupid things.

This largely because we live in an intellectually more challenging environment. By putting cows in a situation where all their needs are cared for, they don't have to show their problem solving capabilities.

In effect, somewhat the opposite of humans, then. When all needs are cared for, humans tend to get bored and start looking for things to do. Admittedly, some of these things are really stupid, but that's how we managed to get art, science, culture etc. By having time left over to do other things than just survive.

Mosquito - standing up for "the big guys"

 

[El_Spectre]

Well, the argument is that both humans and cows suffer and feel pain, and that this emotions are more or less equal in both cases. Something Im willing to believe.

Pain is a sensation, not an emotion. We don't know if cows have emotion (they certainly sense pain).

Now, if this is the case, would you still feel confortable knowing that those animals are treated in the way they are treated in order for you to eat them?

Depends on the treatment. If you mean some of the pretty horrific abuse that folks like PETA like to show, then no, that's neither cool nor safe. That's why we have laws.

If you mean: graze for a few years, then shuffle into a building where they are humanely shot in the head... yeah, I'm OK with that.

And, before anything else happens, I have to tell that Im not a vegetarian (my wife is), but I would never ask for someone to kill some animal so I could enjoy a nice meal (normal, everyday circumstaces, forget about being in a desesperate situation).

If the meat is already in the fridge, I can enjoy it, if it is still on the cow, give me my vegetables!

Is there a difference who kills Bessie, if you're still generating demand? (I'm way too big to be a vegetarian, but as long as we're gonna talk morality...)

 

[Mosquito]

If the meat is already in the fridge, I can enjoy it, if it is still on the cow, give me my vegetables!

Similar arguments have been used to defend collections of kiddie-porn^*. I'm not saying you're involved in anything like that, but the *type* of argument is similar.

And it is a fallacy, because of supply and demand.

If you don't want to ask anybody to kill the cow for you to have a nice meal, you have to avoid creating a demand for cow-meat, otherwise cows will get killed to satisfy the demand you are helping to create.

If you are uncomfortable about having an animal killed for your food, you need to go vegetarian, and even that doesn't help. Not really.


Mosquito - happy as a non-veggie

*Not meant as "poisoning the well", nor as an insult.

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

It should be possible to design artificial food (there was a thread about that I think). Let the rest of the animals to behave as they need, I believe we should not cause any unnecessary pain or suffering to them.

Am I wrong? Depends who you ask.

Maybe, but why when living food is around?

Why do you believe this? What does it matter if we kill cows for food even when we don't have to? Cows aren't human. The death of a cow for food doesn't hurt the survival of the human species. Ever hear of moral relativity? If a lion eats a human is the lion evil? No, just hungry.

I love this quote: "If the cow could eat you, it would."-Greg Proops

 

[El_Spectre]

Just to up the ante

I have a friend who grew up on a farm... he jokes that he wears leather and eats beef because 'cows are stupid and need to die'.

'course, I've also heard him order milk to drink 'so baby cows will starve' ... I have odd friends

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

And it is a fallacy, because of supply and demand.

I resent the first part of your post. But that aside, its not a fallacy. The fact that I cease to eat meat will do NOTHING for the supply demand cycle. I realize that, and so I can enjoy a nice meat.

I might do more expressing here about my feelings regarding animal suffering.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Maybe, but why when living food is around?

Why do you believe this? What does it matter if we kill cows for food even when we don't have to? Cows aren't human. The death of a cow for food doesn't hurt the survival of the human species. Ever hear of moral relativity? If a lion eats a human is the lion evil? No, just hungry.

I love this quote: "If the cow could eat you, it would."-Greg Proops

Good quote indeed. Cows are not human, thats right, but there are reasons to believe that they feel pain and they suffer emotionaly. I dont believe that, just because they are different, we can abuse them. Call this whatever you like, maybe it is not a rational argument, but and emotional one. Im fine with that definition.

I dont like animals to suffer. Thats it.

 

[El_Spectre]

Good quote indeed. Cows are not human, thats right, but there are reasons to believe that they feel pain and they suffer emotionaly. I dont believe that, just because they are different, we can abuse them. Call this whatever you like, maybe it is not a rational argument, but and emotional one. Im fine with that definition.

I dont like animals to suffer. Thats it.

If they don't suffer, then is it OK to devour them? Also, where's the threshold between annoyance and suffering. Does the animal need to have some minimal level of intelligence before it matters?

 

[Earthborn]

You seem (to me) to be making the common fallacy of thinking animal = mammal.

No, I'm not. But I do discuss mainly mammals, because of my argument in the 'Arbitrary Judgement' section: if society would want to end predation in the wild, it will likely start with large mammals because these would be easiest to reform and there are fewer of them. Such a society would try to end predation in the parts of nature that it technically can end predation in and try to increase its technical capability to end predation in 'lower' species.

They are hard-wired to do so

I disagree. I believe that all behaviour should be explained as a result of learning and reacting to the environment. I consider it invalid to claim that something was 'hard-wired' or 'infused by God' or something similarly non-informative. It does not explain anything and instead throws the towel in the ring of scientific explanation.

as they would die off as a species in about one year if they weren't.

This is not true. If predation is learned behaviour, then all that is necessary for predators to survive as a species as that they learn to hunt. For mammals this usually means that they learn from their parents to use the skills they developed during childhood play as hunting techniques.

When predators that have lived in captivity for nearly all their lives are released back into the wild, they must first be taught how to hunt. You can see that in pretty much every nature documentary where biologists try to release animals to the wild. If hunting behaviour was 'hard-wired' this would not be necessary, as the animal would instinctively know what to do. But they don't know if they haven't learned to use those hunting skills.

OK, you can feed the flytrap, but you can't teach it not to kill the occational fly landing in it.

Venus flytraps do not hunt.

This boils down to you having to "manually" feed *every single predator* on the planet.

Well, yes. That's the plan. In practice its tricky, but it is theoretically possible.

How do you feed 1.000.000.000.000 ants in order to avoid any of them to ruin your day by feeding themselves?

In theory, but not in practice, it is easy. You isolate their nests from any possible prey animals, and you place only tissue engineered meat near the nest.

There is not enough energy available to do it, by machine or by hand.

The minimum amount of energy needed to do this is the energy that nature expends to do it now. The maximum amount of energy may be substantially higher as it is a very complex task, but is reduced by the fact that predators no longer have to spend energy to catch prey that runs away from them.
I don't think energy expenditure is going to be the biggest problem.

 

[thatguywhojuggles]

What I don't understand is that if people want humans to end the immoral act of hunting down and killing food, and they plan on doing this by feeding the predators fabricated meat, how do they expect to find the money to feed all these predators when we can't even afford to feed all of the humans on this planet.

 

[gnome]

I gotta say I don't like the idea of actually preventing animals from eating others. It would be a massive endeavor, to replace a well-balanced part of the world's self-regulating ecosystem. Can we, with micro-management, replace that? I can only imagine disaster would result with that much interference.

I'm all for synthetics completely eliminating the need for humans to breed food animals... but leave the natural ecosystem alone.

 

[El_Spectre]

I consider it invalid to claim that something was 'hard-wired' or 'infused by God' or something similarly non-informative. It does not explain anything and instead throws the towel in the ring of scientific explanation.This is not true.

It's hardly an iron-clad argument, but consider domestic cats and dogs. Both are carefully bred variants of natural predators.I've seen dogs that never once witnessed hunting (i.e. we got the puppy newborn) stalk and kill whatever they could find in the back yard (lizards, birds... a skunk - yuck). Add to this that most animals require nutrients that they can't get from plants, and I'd suggest that their bodies both require AND know how to get meat.

When predators that have lived in captivity for nearly all their lives are released back into the wild, they must first be taught how to hunt. You can see that in pretty much every nature documentary where biologists try to release animals to the wild.

If hunting behaviour was 'hard-wired' this would not be necessary, as the animal would instinctively know what to do. But they don't know if they haven't learned to use those hunting skills.

They're not particularly good at it, but most at least make a clumsy attempt, no?

Venus flytraps do not hunt.

Sure they do, in the sense that a fisherman does. How about those plants (pitcher-somethingerother) that stink like rotting meat to attract bugs. Are they not hunting?

While I obviously don't agree, I understand this issue is important to some folks. I just don't see how it's either feasible, necessary or makes sense. The planet isn't a bunch of plants and animals with us on top, different. We're animals too. We kill for food. This seems to be how the world has always worked. Much as I hate appealing to tradition, I think in this case it has value.

 

[jimlintott]

if society would want to end predation in the wild, it will likely start with large mammals because these would be easiest to reform and there are fewer of them

You say that like there is something wrong with them.

Many 'predators' also happily feed on carrion. Will this behaviour be 'reformed' as well. There will be a huge mess to clean up.

Vegetarians prey on living things that can't even run away. How sick is that?