It's also a better life than what most animals have in the wild. The wild isn't some fairytale happy place; it's a place of hunger, fear, brutality, pain and disease.

It reminds me of the old saying: "they overexaggerated the aggressiveness of European wolves, they're only dangerous when hungry". Ok, so did European wolves just go to the shop to buy food when hungry?

so by your logic as per statement #1: do you think an iron age peasant, who undoubtably would have had a more brutal life than us, would have swapped their freedom and way of life for being kept in a cage, being experimented on by technology they would find to be terrifying dark magic that could kill them at any moment (see above commenter's mention of the pigs having heart attacks), all for some basic but guaranteed food each day?

Well, yes. You even have people like that right now (for even far smaller of a compensation).