Orcas are known to play with seals they've killed and never eat as well. Chimps also participate in clan wars [0]. I'd venture to say that the more intelligent an animal the more capacity they have for needless killing, or at least killing for reasons other than food. What that says about humans specifically I'm not sure, but what I dislike about these conversations is the need to feel like we are so special compared to other animals. We are unique and I'm positive we'll reach a point where we won't need to kill animals for food, but we're not there yet and until then we'll need to be a responsible component of the natural food chain.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

The thing is an orca isn’t going to mass-kill a bunch of seals because that’s wasteful (of energy). Sure they can kill and play with seals for entertainment, but they don’t (can’t?) cross the line of ecological torture/waste humans have.

On the human side: the problem is the producers (of meat/dairy) hide the torturous aspects from consumers by abstracting it away. We go to the store and get some chicken breast, steaks, or pork ribs, but we don’t do ANY of the work to prepare that animal. It’s prepared by underpaid/exploited foreign labor.

In contrast, even if a wolf killed a bunch of sheep for sheer pleasure: they are doing the killing, which takes energy. And if the sheep has a herd of rams with them the wolves might come out bloody themselves.

NOTE: I’m talking about factory farms and large scale production. There are farms which follow good, holistic procedures—where the farmers do care about the well-being of the animals and the cycle of life, even when animals are slaughtered.

I think the problem in our case specifically is that we centralise our food production, unlike other animals. Given our population size this sort of makes sense, but what you end up with is these death factories of concentrated animal slaughter. I would say the energy argument isn't a good one; factory farms are maximally efficient by design (which is why they're terrible for the animals) and humans definitely waste very little to nothing in these facilities since every inefficiency costs money.

I definitely think there's a disconnect between the average person and their food and it allows this sort of thing to happen more easily. I'm not sure what the right way to handle it all would be until we can 3D print all our food needs, but free range farms and farming animals that require less space (such as insects) are probably the best we can do currently.

> farming animals that require less space (such as insects)

Do you seriously believe majority of people will eat that?

Newly introduced species can have that same effect though?

Wolves are known to just kill a dozen sheep, either to train the young or because they can. Most predators are known to have behavior which involves killIng and/or maiming inefficiently and for reasons other than food. Even worse is that you have plenty of prey animals that will also go ahead and kill or maim each-other for social reason (elk, zebras).

So there are evolutionary reasons baked in such behaviors? Regardless, it's not quite the same as building factory for the sole purpose or killing, and esentially kill for pleasure. The equivalence would be an ongoing massacre which is not seen in nature to my knowledge.

Nature is ongoing massacre.

How so? Predators get tired, they dont have machinary that helps them kill thousands of preys everyday

I dont see a difference between using a mchine and using claws and teeth.

I dont see a difference between mother killing prey for her cubs and butcher doing it for me.

I dont see a difference between farmer raising lambs and lion protecting his territory.

Is efficiency your only qualm? The only difference it makes is amount of life, not it's quality.

Very ignorant, the difference is clearly the number, and the fact that humans kill for pleasure (taste) and convenience, but let's just focus on the number. Do you see the difference between murdering one person and murdering 10?

What's this quality of life horseshit? So if a person has "low quality of life" then i guess murdering them will get you a lighter sentence?

Sorry for using murdering as examples, I just dont have a better way to make the point.

> and the fact that humans kill for pleasure (taste) and convenience, but let's just focus on the number.

Well sorry, not sorry for trying to enjoy the only life that I have.

Taste is a proxy for nutrition. Murdering people is bad not because of some abstract causing of pain or whatever(otherwise youd have nothing against killing people with heroin would you?) but because murder begets murder, making existence of organized society very hard and inefficient. Killing animals doesn't cause such problems so it's irrelevant.

Meat animals exist to be killed.

> Taste is a proxy for nutrition

Please explain ketchup

> Murdering people is bad not because of some abstract causing of pain

Let’s just say it’s not, pain and suffering are still bad things youd want to minimize

You could say that the bad thing about death isn’t pain itself but the lost of life (otherwise an instant death would not be bad), based on the axiom that life is a good thing. You could also make your own axiom that only human lives are good.

> murder begets murder, making existence of organized society very hard and inefficient

So massacring uncivilized tribals that are not part of your organized society, like in the colonial days, is OK?

> Please explain ketchup

Do you eat ketchup without anything? It has little value on its own.

> So massacring uncivilized tribals that are not part of your organized society, like in the colonial days, is OK?

Am I back to country side? Why is there so much straw here?

> Meat animals exist to be killed.

Says one meatbag to another...

Predators are not counted in billions and aren't conscious enough to say "Hey, Jake over here eating barbeque while I have to eat plant crap" either.

That is 100 percent unadulterated bullshit, that's what it is. Animals will happily grow their population till they ram their heads into whatever limit they reach.

They're not constrained by thought or conservation, they're constrained by environmental limits.

Cats, Orcas etc are known to do the same. But only humans have perfected the art and science of torture and killing on an industrial scale. Here is an example

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8372727/Thousands-p...

We can't control what orcas do in the oceans, but we can at least try to not be complete monsters to the animals we raise.

We're simply more capable. That's really all there is to it. Animals are not limited by some magical conservationist instinct, they're limited by capability and environmental limitations.

And presumably there is some kind of genetic advantage to this. The cat probably doesn't know why it plays with the mouse or that the mouse is suffering. It is just following instinct.

An instinct that humans have is to project their own kind of consciousness into animals. We imagine the world through their eyes, but from a human perspective. So some animals are wicked, others show love. But it is really unfair to project human expectations onto animals.