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Agree. While crows are exceptionally smart, I bet if other species are studied, similar results will be found, with regards to understanding the concept of death.

The one that gets me now is when people say something like "well I don't eat beef, but I am ok with eating fish because they are lower on the food chain." As if fish don't feel pain when they are killed. You either accept that what you are eating had to suffer when it died, and feel appropriate guilt (or not), or you don't eat any meat at all.




"well I don't eat beef, but I am ok with eating fish because they are lower on the food chain."

This is interesting, because many or most of the fish we eat are predators, while cows are herbivores. Fish are higher on the food chain than cows.


> You either accept that what you are eating had to suffer when it died, and feel appropriate guilt (or not), or you don't eat any meat at all.

Even if you only eat grains, you are responsible/guilty for mice being run over in the farming process, and then poisoned to defend storage of your grains. I don't see it as a binary decision, but as a spectrum. You can try to optimise for the least damage to sentient beings, but there's no way to get it 100% right.

(I agree about fish though, nothing special about them that separates them from land animals.)


Are suffering and death intrinsically linked?




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