Speciation

[ghoulslime]

Well, I am off to sleepy land to dream of Ellie's sweet ass and to keep back the horror of Kate's pussy.

[Irreligious]

ubs wrote

I think we are more heavily motivated to beleive that animals are NOT capable of intelligence than to think that they are. We eat them. We use them for slave labor. We kill them for convenience and sport. We put them in little jails so that we can go look at them. We cut part of their heads open while they are alive to observe the effects of drugs.

Consider the implications if the pig you eat for breakfast turns out to have as much depth of feeling and the same capacity to reflect on it's life as your child.

We pretty much know animals are sentient beings and that mammals have "feelings" and experience pain. Lobster and fish might, too, for all I know. It's certainly not a stretch to me that they do.

But you are right. It is horribly inconvenient to think of animals that way when we are sitting down to lunch, or at the dinner table. However, we anthropomorphize animals all the time, as cartoon characters who stand in for us in fairytales and other entertainment, and we treat our household pets-- whether they're dogs, cats or potbellied pigs or, ahem, chimps-- as if they were human and ascribe behaviors and thoughts to them that may or may not be appropriate.

As far as "de-humanizing" animals when it's convenient, well, we've been known to do that to each other, too.

[Kate]

ghoulslime wrote

Well, I am off to sleepy land to dream of Ellie's sweet ass and to keep back the horror of Kate's pussy.

[Irreligious]

Kate wrote

I feed my kitty cow for breakfast.

No pigs.

She pouts if she doesn't have a cow.

I like the idea that your cat has a cow when she can't have a cow, but refuses to pig out on pig.

So discriminating. But, for a cat, I guess they would call that finicky.

[Irreligious]

ghoulslime wrote

I will remember not to try and pork her.

ghoulslime wrote

Well, I am off to sleepy land to dream of Ellie's sweet ass and to keep back the horror of Kate's pussy.

Man, you don't censor any of your thoughts, do you?

I ain't pickin' on you; I'm just fascinated. Honestly.

[Eva]

i think he does. the fact that he does not leave a trail of bloodied christians attests to that fact.....

[Tenspace]

Back to evolution.

Ellie, it's important that you don't think of evolution as being goal-directed. It's just a process, like gravitational attraction or thermal equilibrium.

With regard to the lungs, let's look first at what lungs are for (this is a super-condensed explanation, btw, so no one harp on me for oversimplification). They put oxygen molecules close enough to the surfaces of capillaries where blood cells can bond and transport them to various cell membranes where they are needed.

Jump back a few hundred million years to the Devonian period, the age of the fishes. Fishes had developed gills which accomplished what our lungs do today: put waterborne molecular oxygen near cells that captured it and distributed it throughout the body. Over a period of time, some fish developed gaseous, slimy sacs attached to their gills. The actual origin of these sacs is debated; could it have been a miniscule elastic tissue that mutated in a normally cartilaginous structure? The point is that over time - millions of years - these sacs allowed lungfish to store oxygen within the sac.

Locomotion and oxygen acquisition go hand-in-hand. As we know, many sharks must keep moving to breathe, and the contraction/relaxation of locomotion muscles is believed to have contributed to the development of diaphragms and other lung-squeezing systems.

So you have the raw ingredients for lungs: sacs and periodic compression. All it took was a bit of selection pressure from Nature over the course of a few million years (and a few billion offspring) for the development of an easily recognizable lung.

What kind of selection pressure could do this? Consider that the Devonian was a time when fish were very plentiful, especially in fresh water lakes, rivers and streams. Also, the Earth's crust was under some pressures of its own - continents were drifting and crashing and changing the landscape. Severe weather swings, caused by volcanic ash choking the sky among other phenomena, created times of drought. So, fishies that were more efficient at processing oxygen in a dry environment were selected - their offspring had an advantage over the gill-users.

Many neutral alleles are accumulated in the genetic code of animals. The formation of primitive lung sacs didn't have any discernable advantage to fish in water, but when the water dried up, those that could bury themselves in the mud and continue to absorb oxygen were the survivors.

Hope that helps.

[Sternwallow]

Kate wrote

My kitty needs to cuddle with me on the couch while we watch Kill Bill.

She loves that story.

That cat is doing a perfect 180! Magnificent! The best I can do is between a 5 and a 7.

[Sternwallow]

Kate wrote

"Grandma, what a fearsome yawn you have!"

[Sternwallow]

ubs wrote

I think we are more heavily motivated to beleive that animals are NOT capable of intelligence than to think that they are. We eat them. We use them for slave labor. We kill them for convenience and sport. We put them in little jails so that we can go look at them. We cut part of their heads open while they are alive to observe the effects of drugs.

Consider the implications if the pig you eat for breakfast turns out to have as much depth of feeling and the same capacity to reflect on it's life as your child.

The scenario is flawed; such a pig would not be eaten, he would be CEO of a major corporation (child-level cognition at best).

[Sternwallow]

ghoulslime wrote

Sweet Jesus penis! It is only 4 in the afternoon and I am about ready to fall into the arms of Morpheus. Jet lagging to the point of pleasure here...

Off to beddy bye!

A friend of mine, an international trouble-shooter for a large corporation,said that the trick to curing jet lag was to travel enough to accumulate a full 24 hours of lag, then you are right back on your proper schedule. Breakfast is at breakfast time and you sleep at night.

[Tenspace]

Sternwallow wrote

The scenario is flawed; such a pig would not be eaten, he would be CEO of a major corporation (child-level cognition at best).

If we carry this too far, then there will be a group opposed to the eating of plants.

Oh wait, there is. I haven't read it. I hope it's satire.

Unless they're basing their position on this.

[ubs]

Tenspace wrote

If we carry this too far, then there will be a group opposed to the eating of plants.

Don't the Jains practically starve themselves in an attempt to avoid hurting as little life as possible?


Anyway, we can 'carry this too far' in the other direction. Is our speicism - mostly no cannibalism - our only moral criteria for consumption?

Is it ok to eat Koko?

[ubs]

Sternwallow wrote

The scenario is flawed; such a pig would not be eaten, he would be CEO of a major corporation (child-level cognition at best).

Well he's mute and can't type. You judge too much of physical ability.

[Tenspace]

ubs wrote

Don't the Jains practically starve themselves in an attempt to avoid hurting as little life as possible?


Anyway, we can 'carry this too far' in the other direction. Is our speicism - mostly no cannibalism - our only moral criteria for consumption?

Is it ok to eat Koko?

Irrelevant without a definition of "ok". Is it acceptable for humans with access a variety of sustaining foods to go out of their way to kill and eat an endangered animal? No.

Is it acceptable for a small tribe of bushmen to hunt and eat other primates? I guess you'd have to ask ǃKung-mButu.