• NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    I’m always mildly concerned about how shocked people are about animals being conscious beings with feelings. Do people really think we are mentally that different from other animals with brains?

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
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      10 hours ago

      I’m more concerned that people believe it’s rare, in both humans and the animal kingdom

      Predators will share territory if there’s enough to go around, even forming close relationships across species, sometimes even raising their young together

      Empathy is the natural state, unless there’s enough scarcity. Humans are naturally generous, unless we’re raised in an environment of eternal artificial scarcity…

      • uis@lemm.ee
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        2 hours ago

        Predators will share territory if there’s enough to go around, even forming close relationships across species, sometimes even raising their young together

        Some predators(and scavengers) have special move “Recruit!”, which allows them to invite members of another guild(species) into their party.

        https://youtu.be/QaKwqsSIbIo

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        All those rich bastards that are not generous at all must have been raised in a lot of artificial scarcity then. Really artificial since most of them grew up well to do as well.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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          9 hours ago

          They spend all their damn lives not even fully comprehending they’re not living in scarcity, because the only resources they’ve ever been taught to focus on are those which are inherently scarce - competing for attention, fame, social status, etc.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 hours ago

      To be fair, with academic types running experiments like this, the question is usually more along the lines of “At what point does instinct become empathy as we would recognize it?”, and depending on how high the criteria is set for empathy there, the level of premeditation may be geniunely surprising in some animals.