That's how predators act. Yet, we have no lack of love for birds and cats.
Anyway, don't group spiders on the "have no problem cannibalizing their offspring and mates". They are much more complex than that. Besides some vertebrates also have no problem doing that.
Just because you can't readily see the emotion, does not mean it is not there.
True to say that 'we don't know if they regret having to eat their young/mates', but saying they don't care is just as much making assumptions as saying they do regret it, merely switching the polarity.
It is also possible that eating the mate/being eaten is the most loving thing it can do, giving not only the DNA but also their entire stored energy for the good of the offspring. Or, they might be terrified. Or, they might not be sufficiently sentient to notice. Either way, what we know is that we don't know (tho there may be someone who's studied it enough, IDK).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571...
Given that neurotransmitters (adrenaline?) are so instrumental to regulating emotional state, that claim seems highly unlikely.
The most plausible possibility is that all multi-celled beings have some sense of family and parenthood.
And here with the spiders you are presented with evidence of such.
Does a mother spider feel distress with quite the same level of nuance as a mother human? Perhaps not. Is she clearly distressed? absolutely.
At the very least, mammals will kill for sport and for status. The biggest difference with humans is scale.
Seems like you glossed right over the most important part of their comment.
And the flipside of focus is blindness. Ignorance.
One thing is focused upon, seen and controlled with vast depth and clarity. While 1000 other things are obliviated away.
That obliviated part. There's a lot of bad stuff going on there. (And a lot of good stuff too, no doubt)
Intellectual/scientific/technological culture is really the mind sitting around going nothing critical is going on let’s focus on something arbitrary. And if nothing critical happens for long enough you can start to assume that’s just how things are.
Nature is beautiful but let's not pretend it's caring or loving. Cats play with their food. Spiders liquefy their preys, melting them from the inside out. Crabs eat their newborn offspring. Do any of these feel bad at all about it? No.
Find me an animal who went vegan because of empathy.
oh my cat don't even eat the animals it brings back inside the house. Birds, baby rabbits (these ones survives for it can catch them but not kill them), lizards by the metric ton, spiders, mice...
It brings them back to me and let them in the living room.
Sometimes I get two animals a day.
I don't know: maybe the cat understood we do the cooking and somehow thinks we're going to cook all it brings back.
I remember an old blog where some coder who also had a relentless cat (I'd say at least 10 years ago) set up face a webcam and face recognition for its cat inside the pet door and wouldn't let the door open if the cat had something in its mouse.
I've got to find that blog post! Luckily my cats don't bring back half a dozen animals a day anymore but I'm still tired of chasing squirrels and mice around my house once a week.
Not every animal is like this. Most spider never kill animals they can't eat if they're not a threat to them. If one such creature falls into their web, they just release it.
>Spiders liquefy their preys, melting them from the inside out
How else are they gonna eat? They don't have teeth with which to chew their food like we do.
>Cats play with their food.
Many cats can be sadistic selfish assholes, but somehow many humans love them to death because they're cute and fluffy.
Add to that the kosher/halal slaughter.
This idea that all humanity is 'above' base animal behavior is as ridiculous as stating that all animals lack behaviors that we may label as empathy.
Experiencing this horror, I decided there and then that I will not eat meat and fish again to satisfy my tastebuds. It has been years since I left eating meat and fish. But even now when I see non-vegetarian dishes(at home or other places) I have urge to eat non-veg. It is very difficult to leave eating non-veg; it is like addiction. But everytime I have that urge to eat non-veg, that scene from the meat shop plays in front of my eyes. It is very painful.
Another scene that I regularly see in my local area every morning is when cattles are transported in a truck to a near-by mass slaughter house. The trucks are enclosed from all sides with just a slit open for the cattles to look outside so that they do not panic in the metal enclosure. Looking at their eyes one can easily see that they are trying to understand where they are and what is happening. And everytime I see that I say to myself, these unsuspecting defenceless animals are going to face a gruesome death within an hour just to satisfy the appetite of some humans!
There is absolutely push/incentive to monitor and correct for failures in stunning. The stress response it entails in the animal makes for poor quality meat, or even inedible meat that would have to thrown out.
Also, stunning is followed by slaughtering and draining. There is no situation in industrial production in which an animal would be dismembered and skinned alive.
I would completely support requiring direct expert supervision of every single animal slaughtered. This is the norm at the smaller operations, but something like 80% of US cattle are slaughtered at giant Chinese owned factory stockyards.
We are clearly demons.
And all those grand pianos falling over the poor cat again and again...
Oh sorry, we were talking about the real life, or in terms of a cartoon possibility?