Morality and animals labeled as "pests"

[Civil War Man]

I would like to add that condoning pointless and arbitrary cruelty towards certain animals requires the kinds of attitudes that echo some of the darkest chapters in human history.

After all, slavers considered blacks to be dumb animals, and Nazis viewed Jews as nothing more than pests. (Godwin's Law invoked)

We are never going to live in some fantasy world where all living creatures coexist in perfect harmony and sign Disney songs together. But having a blase attitude towards torture, regardless of the species being tortured, serves no positive purpose.

[Serafina]

I think my question would have been better-framed had I asked why we extend our in-group morality to members of other species. But I think you covered that.

Our morality often surpasses superficial "what's best for the society"-considerations and considers individual, inherent rights.

As an example, slavery is not necessarily a bad thing for a society. We condemn slavery because it is a horrific thing to do to an individual, not because it's better or worse for society.
The same arguments can be made for many groups as well - starting with large ones (female rights) and going to smaller ones (homosexual rights).
The moral basis for these things are the rights of an individual (and other individuals of course), not the wellfare of the society. I think these things are ultimately good for society as well, but that is not the basis for the decisions made.

You can transfer the concept of inherent, natural rights to other species quite well - just like you can transfer it to other human societies.
The reason why many people don't do so is because they still consider humans as "unique" - that these rights are human things etc. That's propably also why Liberties based it on "relationship to humans" - it just comes natural to most people.
You can also see this in other things - many people object to inethical treatement of apes because they are so similar to us.

Now it's obviously impractical to argue that every living thing has the same rights just because it's alive.
My position is that rights are based on an individuals ability to suffer if these rights are violated.
Maslows pyramid of needs is one concept that can be considered here: Basically, you have various layers of needs, where the fundamental ones are basic things like food and shelter, then you have various social things (safety of your family, friendships etc.) and you end with complex things like self-actualization.

It's very clear that many animals lack the upper layers of that pyramid - they simply don't have these needs. You can also observe to an extent that while human children grow up.
You can obviously not violate a wish that doesn't exist. To make an concrete example, if an animal is not of a social species, you do it no harm if you keep it solitary.

Most animals do have needs for food and security however.
That's where the ability to suffer from the violation of ones rights kicks in - because one goal of morality is to reduce the amount of suffering.
Now i must admit that i am still looking for convincing arguments for stating that animals are generally less capable of suffering than humans.
I am reasonalby sure that you could order them - a dolphin or chimpanzee is nearly as capable of suffering as a human, a raven slightly less, a dog less than that, a cow even less and so on.

I am propably still basing some of this on familarity with those animals - it's easy to relate to pets, as an example.
However, my main point is that it must be possible to create a hierachy of rights just like it's possible to create a hierarchy of needs (because one stems from the other) and that it must also be possible to quantify these needs (one being more important than the other, based on the anount of suffering if it's violated).
That we don't have worked out such a hierarchy yet does not invalidate that point.

[Rye]

I think my question would have been better-framed had I asked why we extend our in-group morality to members of other species. But I think you covered that.

To be brutal, extending our in-group morality to all members of our species is a flawed and idealistic goal that rarely works out in reality. We all usually care about family members more than starving African infants, we care about pets more than child molesting murderers.

At any rate, I don't care about rights as such, I will admit that most morality people go by is aesthetic, customary and biological, not rational. That said, for my aesthetics, cruelty is the worst part of humanity. It's fun and it's awful. As a result, if we're deciding that we don't want mice in our houses and put down traps, we've got an ethical duty, for my money, to make sure that mouse doesn't suffer. It's not the mouse's fault it lives there, anyone who's cruel to it is neglecting their requirement to the world to not be a dick.

If anyone wants to know, yes, I also extend this principle to plants and insects. I don't want to rip up a bunch of flowers and leave them dead on the floor. Something about that doesn't sit right.

[Formless]

To be brutal, extending our in-group morality to all members of our species is a flawed and idealistic goal that rarely works out in reality. We all usually care about family members more than starving African infants, we care about pets more than child molesting murderers.

Yes, but that's because distance makes it hard to care. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't care, or that in principal it is doomed to remain an ideal. Furthermore, it frequently comes back to bite us on the ass when we don't extend our in-group morality-- whether its muslims pissed off at our country exploiting the middle east, or our nonchalance towards the AIDs epidemic in Africa allowing said disease to remain in our environment where it is dangerous to all humanity.

[Liberty]

Is it in our best interests to be cruel to animals? Even when we held our tribes to be our in groups, way back when, was it in our best interest to be wantonly cruel or to try to cooperate or trade when possible? Yes, sometimes it is in our best interest to kill each other (war) just as sometimes it is in our best interest to kill animals (food). But is it ever in our best interest to intentionally be cruel to others of any group, or even to unnecessarily be cruel?

[Hamstray]

Furthermore, empathy towards animals (and the above moral considerations) also increase similar empathic considerations towards humans. Therefore, even if you ethic system is antroprocentric, you can profit from such considerations.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. It's not uncommon to encounter people, who in response to any subject matter that slightly grazes the topic of animal cruelty (be it even just about insects), respond with misanthropic hatred such as: "that is so cruel, you should be shot!" up to proposing the genocide of the entire human species.

In most discussions about the clubbing of baby seals you'd usually have people suggesting the clubbing of Canadians, or on whaling issues you'd have people suggesting the extinction of Japanese.

Also what we perceive as exceptionally cruel most often isn't any more painful than the average type of death even as occurring in nature. I'd say getting rid of pests by poison isn't any less painful than the methods stated by the original poster, and yet it is pretty much the standard with few people objecting. Kidney failure as what cats die of when not having the fortune of getting hit by a car isn't any less painful than the method described here of disposing of cats, but I suppose you could argue the obligation for painless euthanasia part.

That said, ridding pests with any sort of euphoria or empathy is fairly irrational as pests usually have the habit of being plentiful and therefore any method that is not a quick and thus painless solution is wasteful.

[Flight Recorder]

Rather, intelligence and complexity of emotions should be the criteria. The results would often be pretty close to your criteria, but they would also include higher developed animals that are more distantly related to humans (dolphins, various birds etc.).

Shouldn't the ability to suffer be taken into consideration before intelligence?

[Starglider]

To be brutal, extending our in-group morality to all members of our species is a flawed and idealistic goal that rarely works out in reality.

Completely true, but that's only because we can't rewrite people's neurology yet.

Human instinctive morality is of course a pile of inconsistent crap, just like most of the output of natural selection. When designing an intelligent being de novo, you wouldn't want to put such arbitrary and inconsistent complications into what is valued and what isn't.

we've got an ethical duty, for my money, to make sure that mouse doesn't suffer.

I would just say that people who torture other living things suck, and that if bad things have to happen at all, then I would want the bad things to happen to those people.

[Sela]

A tad tangential, but one consistent part of my education has been advising the parents of asthmatic children to handle any potential mice/rat problems using either the cage or glue style traps. The big reason being that "snap-traps" and baited traps are a *REALLY* bad idea with little kids crawling around the house and putting things in their mouths.

I guess I now have something new to think about.

[Singular Intellect]

While I personally have no qualms about killing any lifeforms for practical purposes, I do have a strong sense of obligation to ensure that if they must be killed, do so as quickly and humanely as possible. This extends to all living things capable of sensing pain to any significant degree. Furthermore, my reaction is proportionate to the complexity of the lifeform being killed. My negative reaction to a person being cruel to a cat would be significantly stronger than cruelty to a insect, even though I classify them both as organisms capable of experiencing pain and distress.

[adam_grif]

I have trouble killing spiders and the like with sprays, I much prefer to come down on them with something heavy, because I hate watching them die from it. If we did that to an enemy combatant it would be a war crime.

[Starglider]

Why do you have to kill them at all? I just toss them out onto the lawn.

[adam_grif]

It's usually my mother screaming at me to kill it. If it's a smallish one I'll just relocate with some tissue paper or something, but the larger ones get the full force of my zoology textbook titled "The Invertebrates".

[Alyrium Denryle]

It's usually my mother screaming at me to kill it. If it's a smallish one I'll just relocate with some tissue paper or something, but the larger ones get the full force of my zoology textbook titled "The Invertebrates".

Tell your mom to get the fuck over it. She is NEVER more than a couple meters away from a spider. They eat more insect biomass than just about anything else on earth and themselves are very very very numerous. Does she ever go out at night and see little sparkly lights on the ground? Those are wolf spiders.

[Shroom Man 777]

We have a cage trap. When the rat is caged, we either let it die in the heat of the sun or pour boiling water on it. Once there was a rat on a glue trap, I doused it in alcohol and set it on fire. My dad, as I've mentioned elsewhere, likes shooting them with his .22 Walther PPK.

You're either trolling, or you're a miserable excuse for human excrement who deserves to have a karmic accident befall you. Which one is it?

I really did that when I was younger. Well, the leaving the rat out to die in the sun and drowning them in water was what the maids and other house people did. I did the burning and boiling, the water was very hot and I think clumps of its hair fell off. How else would I have killed a rat in a cage or stuck on a gluetrap?

There were a couple other times where we had to chase around a whole family of rats, three to four big ones, and beat them with sticks (well, my dad and the others beat the sticks, I just looked). Then we found tiny little red baby rats in a nest, and I think we threw them into the garbage. Another time, when my dad shot the rat, he let our dog get the rat as it was scampering off wounded and dyings.

I think you lose most if not all rights to complain about anything ethically/morally, at least in my book.

Yes. he did.

Hm, why so? It's not like I killed a person. And I didn't torture it for minutes. The rat was in a cage/gluetrap and I had to dispose of it quickly, and the only ways I could think of then was to either fire or hot water. But, yeah, I just chose unpleasant ways of disposal. The thermos of hot water, and the alcohol and matches, were convenien

I also think that it's a bit excessive for anyone to say that I've somehow lost all my "rights to complain about anything ethically/morally". Well, it's in your books, but I think that's a bit of an overreaction.

Meh, over here we're not really brought up on animal rights or anything. Our house is practically overrun with rats anyway, from small ones to ones more than a feet long.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Hm, why so? It's not like I killed a person. And I didn't torture it for minutes. The rat was in a cage/gluetrap and I had to dispose of it quickly, and the only ways I could think of then was to either fire or hot water. But, yeah, I just chose unpleasant ways of disposal. The thermos of hot water, and the alcohol and matches, were convenien

And hideously hideously cruel. Beating it to death with a large stick would have been preferable to that.

I also think that it's a bit excessive for anyone to say that I've somehow lost all my "rights to complain about anything ethically/morally". Well, it's in your books, but I think that's a bit of an overreaction.

Hardly. If you are willing to set an animal on fire for the crime of existing, you no longer ever get to complain about anyone or anything being cruel to another ever again.

Meh, over here we're not really brought up on animal rights or anything. Our house is practically overrun with rats anyway, from small ones to ones more than a feet long.

There are good cheap ways of dealing with that which are not nearly as cruel. Rat poison tends to work pretty damn fast.

[adam_grif]

Tell your mom to get the fuck over it. She is NEVER more than a couple meters away from a spider. They eat more insect biomass than just about anything else on earth and themselves are very very very numerous. Does she ever go out at night and see little sparkly lights on the ground? Those are wolf spiders.

My parents and sister are so rampantly irrational that paranoia relating to spiders wouldn't even make it into a top 25 list of stupid shit that they do or believe. I don't really care for spiders enough to bother getting into family disputes over whether they should be killed or not. I just don't like making them suffer if they're going to die.

[Formless]

Hardly. If you are willing to set an animal on fire for the crime of existing,

Don't be an strawmanning idiot, that's not why he trapped it and killed it and you know it. Do you understand what a "pest" even is? Or are you so wrapped up with treating all animals the same that you can't see the perspectives of other people on this issue?

[Shroom Man 777]

And hideously hideously cruel. Beating it to death with a large stick would have been preferable to that.

Well, I agree, I should've pulped that rat in the glue trap with a stick or a rock. But for the rat in the cage? I don't know, if I opened the cage so I could beat it to death, it would've ended up scampering and running around. Back then, the boiling water and the matches and rubbing alcohol were the only things I could think of.

Hardly. If you are willing to set an animal on fire for the crime of existing, you no longer ever get to complain about anyone or anything being cruel to another ever again.

Why? How does my treatment of an animal, particularly one as lowly as a rat, affect my stances regarding human beings? I'm sorry if those of us living in the third world aren't brought up to respect animal rights, but what does that have to do with how we treat actual-factual people? We're taught to value human life, but we weren't taught to extend that value to animals. Okay, if you think that means we can no longer ever get to complain about anyone or anything being cruel to another ever again, fine. You obviously put more importance on animal life than we do, so I can see how these actions offend and upset your sensibilities. I'm sorry for differing with you in that respect. *shrug*

I guess next time I'll probably use quicker and more pleasant methods of disposal, like simply smashing them with rocks or letting the dogs get them. But the house is full of rats, at night I can hear them crawling in the attic, sometimes they're skittering on the curtains, behind the boxes. They're outside in the backyard, you can even see them crawling to the dog cages to eat the dogs' shits. (This is how my dad shoots them, he shot them from the window)

There are good cheap ways of dealing with that which are not nearly as cruel. Rat poison tends to work pretty damn fast.

Then they die in inconvenient hard to find places and they decompose and stink while you can never find their bodies ever.


EDIT:

I think one of the reasons I used burning alcohol and hot water was that I thought if the rats could smell the blood of one of their own from the trap, then they would never ever go near the trap again (they'd naturally avoid a thing that killed one of their own, I think I heard this from a documentary), which is why I used fire and hot water since it would not get the smell of their blood and entrails on the trap.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Why? How does my treatment of an animal, particularly one as lowly as a rat, affect my stances regarding human beings? I'm sorry if those of us living in the third world aren't brought up to respect animal rights, but what does that have to do with how we treat actual-factual people?

Ever wonder why wanton cruelty to animals is one of those traits that allows us to accurately predict whether someone will start putting corpses in the basement? Because it holds true even in areas where respect for other organisms is not actually taught.

The empathy one feels for an organism dying a horrible death in front of them is pretty universal. Screaming, writhing around etc. You know, unless the person is broken inside.

We're taught to value human life, but we weren't taught to extend that value to animals.

And you are also smarter and have a more... cosmopolitan background than most. While I would accept that for someone else (say, a farmer in the middle of nowhere Philippines) my expectations are higher for you.

Then they die in inconvenient hard to find places and they decompose and stink while you can never find their bodies ever.

Fair point.

I assume you live in a decently populated area with something resembling infrastructure, or you would not be able to post here correct?

[Shroom Man 777]

Ever wonder why wanton cruelty to animals is one of those traits that allows us to accurately predict whether someone will start putting corpses in the basement? Because it holds true even in areas where respect for other organisms is not actually taught.

The empathy one feels for an organism dying a horrible death in front of them is pretty universal. Screaming, writhing around etc. You know, unless the person is broken inside.

I was not torturing it for torture's sake, but was just looking for a way to kill it. I also did not want to go too close because it was dirty. I think another time, I tried to kill the thing by stabbing it with a wooden barbecue stick, but the wooden stick was really flimsy and it was more like poking the rat than actually harming it. So after that I just did what I was told, leave it in the cage under the sun.

I think back then, at the same time I was also experimenting with fire. There were worms growing in the side of the bathtub, in a part where it was wet and leaking, and I also dealt with them by setting them on fire. There was also this spider, with an egg full of spiderlings.

We're taught to value human life, but we weren't taught to extend that value to animals.

And you are also smarter and have a more... cosmopolitan background than most. While I would accept that for someone else (say, a farmer in the middle of nowhere Philippines) my expectations are higher for you.

Yeah, well, it was a rat and to me that was all it was. I really did not factor in torturing it. A rat is an undesirable vermin animal, you kill vermin. That's pretty much all there was to it. I think I just chose an inappropriate disposal method, since apparently using rocks/sticks to smash them or rat poison would be more acceptable. I think letting the rat die under the heat of the sun, which was what everyone else used, would be even more objectionable anyway.

Fair point.

I assume you live in a decently populated area with something resembling infrastructure, or you would not be able to post here correct?

Well, yeah. But even here, we don't really have high regard for animals. Sure, pet animals, okay, I think we treat them fairly enough (though I've heard about, but never seen or encounter in any form, people who eat dogs). But rats? Why would we bother with humane or whatever with rats? They're just rats. Our decently populated areas with something resembling infrastructure is just a bus-ride away from the rural areas, anyway. And the attitude towards animals is no different. I mean, in some places (not my house, but in my school) you can hear squealing pigs because a slaughter house is apparently somewhere nearby. The cafeteria was open air, and sometimes you could smell the pigshit.

If it's a consolation, I was actually sadder that they killed the reticulated python they found clogged in our drainage pipes. I think they ate it. When I was also little, I cried when I accidentally killed a TINY lizard (it was in our soap dish, and I was trying to move it away but a piece of soap landed on it and it made a squealing noise with its mouth opened as the soap crushed it to death).

[Flight Recorder]

The big reason being that "snap-traps" and baited traps are a *REALLY* bad idea with little kids crawling around the house and putting things in their mouths.

There are such things as enclosed snap traps, where kids and pets can't get to them. Besides, how is a glue trap any better especially if there's a live animal on it? They may try and touch the animal or whatever comes out from it.

I did the burning and boiling, the water was very hot and I think clumps of its hair fell off. How else would I have killed a rat in a cage or stuck on a gluetrap?

Err, hitting the head heavily with a heavy object? Drowning it? Might seem gruesome but it's far more painless. What you did was unnecessary torture.

The thermos of hot water, and the alcohol and matches, were convenien

So all this tells me is that you went out of your way to boil the water, then pour it on the helpless animal. Or took the time to find something flammable and deliberately set it alight knowing full well what the animal would feel.

That's wanton cruelty in my book, and you should be ashamed. I'm not surprised why people wish to have bad things happen to people like you.

But rats? Why would we bother with humane or whatever with rats? They're just rats.

Um, because they're living creatures with the capacity to feel pain, and this IMO should be respected? Because we have a conscience? Saying "they're just rats" doesn't really mean much... I mean, someone could arbitrarily make something so insignificant to them (eg. "it's just a dog", "it's just a cat", "it's only Shroom Man 777") to justify being assholes to them. Does that make it OK then? It's the principle of the thing!

Don't be an strawmanning idiot, that's not why he trapped it and killed it and you know it. Do you understand what a "pest" even is? Or are you so wrapped up with treating all animals the same that you can't see the perspectives of other people on this issue?

The issue isn't that he killed it, or the reason why he killed it. It's how he killed it, and the reason for this method. I'm sorry, but "convenience" is just a cop-out excuse IMO. Sad that people will try and rationalise cruelty like this any way they can.

[Formless]

The issue isn't that he killed it, or the reason why he killed it. It's how he killed it, and the reason for this method. I'm sorry, but "convenience" is just a cop-out excuse IMO. Sad that people will try and rationalise cruelty any way they can.

That's not what I was addressing. In that post Alyrium was clearly accusing him of killing rats for no other reason than because they exist. Sorry, PETA, but that's clearly not the case. Living in the first world tends to make one forget just how NASTY vermin are. Its not THAT long ago that they were a serious vector for disease around here.

Besides, when I read Shroom's post I got the impression that this was something that he did when he was young and stupid. That's much more forgivable, IMO, than you make it out to be. Really, no method of killing them is going to be pleasant, and he clearly wasn't doing it for cruelty's sake.

[Shroom Man 777]

I did the burning and boiling, the water was very hot and I think clumps of its hair fell off. How else would I have killed a rat in a cage or stuck on a gluetrap?

Err, hitting the head heavily with a heavy object? Drowning it? Might seem gruesome but it's far more painless. What you did was unnecessary torture.

Well, one of them was in a cage so to hit it with a heavy object I'd have to open the cage first. Drowning seems like the best way, though. I think they did do that a couple of times.

The thermos of hot water, and the alcohol and matches, were convenien

So all this tells me is that you went out of your way to boil the water, then pour it on the helpless animal. Or took the time to find something flammable and deliberately set it alight knowing full well what the animal would feel.

That's wanton cruelty in my book, and you should be ashamed. I'm not surprised why people wish to have bad things happen to people like you.

The thermos of hot water, and the alcohols and matches, are really close at hand. I really didn't go out of the way since I use the rubbing alcohol to wash my hands all the time, and the thermos is always hot for coffee and stuff.

But yeah, it was a totally shit method. Then again, I also set my bathroom on fire with alcohol back when I was that age. There was a crack under the bathtub, and stagnant water would accumulate under it, and nobody sealed it. I thought there were worms growing down there (and it was smelly), so I doused the bathtub with alcohol and set it on fire. In retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking when I burned my bathroom.

Now that we removed the bathtub, and I grew up, I no longer do things with fire.

(Yeah, I SHOULD have used a better way of doing it.)

Though, man. It's kinda sucky to have people wish bad things to happen to me just because I killed a rat in an inappropriate manner. Especially since I'm going to be a nurse and I've spent like years now doing on the job training helping people, from pregnant women and small childrens to old peoples, in the hospitals and stuff. I mean, I know rats are people too, but I'M a person too!

The issue isn't that he killed it, or the reason why he killed it. It's how he killed it, and the reason for this method. I'm sorry, but "convenience" is just a cop-out excuse IMO. Sad that people will try and rationalise cruelty like this any way they can.

It was killing a rat. It never occurred to me when I was little that it was an inappropriate way of killing it.

Though, yeah, seeing it squeak and stuff as it burned was sad. Which is why I never used that method again. Now I just let other people do the rat killing, since I don't want to handle rats anyway because it is troublesome.

[Flight Recorder]

So after that I just did what I was told, leave it in the cage under the sun.

Monkey see, monkey do?

Did you not even at least internally question such a method? Just because other people were doing it doesn't really make it justifiable now does it?

I still wish ill thoughts on you, though. I don't buy this "I didn't intend to torture it" BS. I hope you get what's coming to you.