Crosspost from https://lemmy.world/post/13527741
This is fucked up, but is this functionally worse than freezing mice and rats for snake food? Would we be more comfortable if he had been freezing lambs or piglets for his snake to eat? Should he have euthanized the snake once it grew too large to live on rats? Snakes are carnivores and eat meat. Puppies are just a really cute and loveable configuration of meat. Puppy mills, COVID lockdowns, and the increase in living expenses have resulted in a crisis of too many pets that need homes. Too many dogs are being bred, and too many dogs are being euthanized.
I’m not in any way condoning snake owners freezing puppies to death. It’s just weird the way we compartmentalize animal abuse so we can ignore the suffering of animals we arbitrarily choose not to care about.
Mice are cute, but dogs communicate trust and love for us so very clearly. Betraying such trust is for monsters.
dogs communicate trust and love for us so very clearly
So do cows. And pigs are smarter than dogs.
The line between food and friend is arbitrary.
Pigs are better problem solvers than dogs, that doesn’t mean they’re carte blanche smarter. Dogs have a level of social intelligence and selected-for ability to interact with humans that no other species does.