Yes, actually all animals know to hide their pain. Why ? Because they have to.

When a predator sees a group of possible preys, the first thing he does is to observe the them to detect the weakest one. Hence the weakest animal has to hide his pain/sickness and pretend to be ok.

In this context, when female mammals give birth, they automatically eat their placenta and lick the blood on the floor: to leave almost no traces that would give clues to predators that birth has taken place (to protect their offspring, in other words)

Placenta is also very nutritive.

Reminds me of the The Katering Show. They did an episode on making placenta lasagna, called plasagna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LhgJjicMz8

Likewise when many animals vomit they eat the vomit again, especially predators where the food is hard won and highly dense in nutrition. Finding food is really difficult in nature and something as high quality as a placenta is not reasonable to waste.

I don’t know how you’re going to change your buying habits to avoid this. The story described actually sounds humane. There is no awesome way to kill an animal for slaughter. The entire point also was the animals knew when you’re taken to this place you don’t come back and die. This involves an intelligence and knowledge of mortality and the past, which in an animal farm that slaughters their own cattle, is unavoidable. My experience is even at farms that transport for slaughter the animals know this is where past animals have disappeared to and the anxiety can be very high among animals.

I always find it surprising people think animals aren’t aware of mortality, their impending death, etc. Spending time with animals it becomes clear, at least in my experiences, that the primary difference between their experience and ours is the ability to communicate it and that life writ large has a very similar existential experience.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. And I too find it surprising how people often downplay animal sentience and awareness, and capacity for suffering. There is ample evidence of these in primates, cetaceans, birds such as corvids, and domestic animals like dogs and cats.

But killing a large animal, like a cow, by hand using a knife is hardly "humane" or "unavoidable". The slaughtered animal would experience severe pain and awareness of its situation before it eventually loses consciousness.

I wonder how animals understand death, because to understand death they'd need to understand consciousness and the lack of it, and I feel like that's human level complex thinking. Animals have logic, of course, IF predator is coming at me THEN I have to run for my life BECAUSE ... because they run on instinct? Because their herd does the same? Because they've learnt about what death is?

Mountain goats have probably slipped and fallen off cliffs, but I doubt they have fear of heights. Interestingly they probably are able to calculate whether a jump is doable or not, but do they doubt themselves? I guess cats and dogs show doubt..

I think it’s strange to believe as evolved animals like them we somehow evolved awareness of ourselves when nothing else did and every other animals is basically a reactionary meat machine operating on preprogrammed instinct. This feels like something more likely intensely fundamental to most animals but our lack of experience with them in our life makes us doubt. But pet owners know for a fact their pets are aware and think and feel in some approximate way to how we do. I think life, death, and consciousness are all hallmarks of most animals experience. In fact I think it’s fundamental to adaptability to complex and new experiences in the wild and survival and is why complex animals are more complex on their behavior than say single celled animals.

If done right the time of awareness is brief when slaughtering with a knife. A bolt gun is better for sure but not guaranteed by any measure. The truth is it is more about the person than the tool - their experience, thoughtfulness, and compassion.

But the suffering doesn’t start with the fatal injury and suffering is often less about pain and more about the torment of what’s about to happen. That’s true for people and for animals. IMO that’s the point

Their ability to communicate with us. I’m sure they communicate among themselves just fine. Us humans just unilaterally decided that inter species communication is a requirement for sentience, even though we’re also incapable of it.

> Or at least who I purchase from.

There is no ethical slaughter.