I think that agricultural breeding stuff also wierds people out a little, on first hearing. Our instinct to notice this sort of impropriaty is keen.

But being an agriculture practice, goal-oriented... most people leave it at weird and move on.

Here, there's more eccentricity. LSD, interspecies communication, alien languages, animal personhood.... It doesn't take many leaps to get to "drug fueled bestiality."

I think a better analogy is the q-tip method of relieving a female cat in heat. They have a need, it is interfering with day-to-day life, you help them out.

I'm more intrigued by the moral code that finds sexually stimulating an animal on its request morally wrong, but force-feeding them LSD a-okay.

>Today nobody blinks twice when a horse needs to be manually gotten-off to ship off the semen to other parts of the word.

That's perhaps a city thing. In farms people did similar things (to cows etc) all the time as part of routine job.

Yup. This is literally where milk comes from.

Yeah, that too, though I was thinking of this:

http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/semenev...

I'm relatively certain that's not where any milk I've ever had came from...

Heifers don't produce milk until after calving. It's a whole lot easier managing artificial insemination than a live bull.

So yes, that is where the milk comes from.

You missed the point...

Goodness I hope not.

I think the difference is that in the horse example one presumes the horse does not enjoy it and the aim is to breed the horse. In the dolphin example the dolphin appeared to have a romantic attachment to the lady researcher and thus enjoyed the experience. That's still weird in this day and age.

> the horse does not enjoy it

That's a bold statement. I don't even know where to begin, there are so many levels here. Like, why would you even make such a claim? I mean I'm not against the claim per se, but it does not seem like you have any evidence, or that you even looked for it. Seems to come right out of some human moral position instead, one that is not rooted in nature, given how many "weird" sex stories and video documentation we can find easily these days about all kinds of animals. Like dogs humping pillows, chimpanzee "using" a frog, quite a few stories about dolphins, etc.

Back to the human/dolphin story here, there also is a pretty well-known (or at least well-published) "man had sex with female dolphin" story, example article: https://www.unilad.co.uk/animals/guy-who-had-sex-with-a-dolp...

From a moral standpoint, it doesn't matter if the horse enjoys it. The point is the get the semen, not for the horse to enjoy it.

Whereas with the dolphin example, the point was for the dolphin to enjoy it. There was no "morally purer" point.

> From a moral standpoint,

You mean from your (current) moral standpoint. "Moral" is not exactly something fixed, it is varies greatly depending on both space and time.

are you saying it's not non-consensual sex because the point is not for the horse to enjoy it but it is non-sensual sex with the dolphin because the point is for the dolphin to enjoy it.

I'm saying that intent informs morality. eg: Murder and Man Slaughter.

The intent here seems to have been to discover if the dolphin could get high.

The shocking thing is the way that Lilly started with the assumption that dolphins were sentient and worth communicating with, and ended with "It's just a dumb animal, so why should we care how it feels?"

The turning point seems to have been the observation that it didn't start turning cartwheels - metaphorically or otherwise - when dosed up on acid.

Basically he dismissed it when it didn't turn into an acid freak - ignoring the fact that it was demonstrating curiosity, the ability to relate and form attachments, and many human-like elements of language.

All of which were far more convincing as evidence of real sentience, and more worthy of research, than the fact that it failed to trip balls on cue.

so if i rape someone and i didn't intend for them to enjoy it then it's not rape? or is it that the person hasn't been raped?

You escalated your example a bit fast (putting it squarely in the territory of a maybe overly emotional argument), but you touch on a not unreasonable question. Does the horse's right to decide who it has sex with not factor into this decision at all?

In an amusing twist of fate the horse would probably not exist had it not been for a long line of humans deciding which horses bred with which other horses to produce the breeds we know today.

i'm sorry i escalated? the person i was responding to cited the distinction between murder and manslaughter?

>I'm saying that intent informs morality. eg: Murder and Man Slaughter.

Try not to get outraged by your own misquote. I clearly said "one presumes", as in without evidence.

If there was a case where a horse was infatuated with the person doing the deed and the person was doing it for the sole purpose of the horses enjoyment then that'd be just as weird.

Clearly the weirdness is rooted in human morality. I don't think it's unusual to judge the behaviours of humans differently to animals. Otherwise it'd be acceptable to fight to the death over "access" to females; sexual consent would be a very loose concept and defecation on street corners would be acceptable.

Who could forget 'Mr. Zoo'...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMslljAllgg&t=29m45s

I notice that your analogy ends with the collection of the semen...

As others pont out, the purpose matters. It’s like when people go to a sperm bank and do what thry need to do. The context is different. Context is important in these things.