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I don't think they are. I don't think they're mean either, I think they just do their thing. "Doing their thing" sometimes involves being your pet dog, sometimes it's a lion looking for a dinner.

Polar bears and their children have to run from their fathers because if they get caught by him he'll eat his own kids! Chimpanzees (one of the 'monkey' species I'm not sure though) form warring parties to go out and kill all the other males. Like I said though, this isn't necessarily mean, they're just doing what they've been programmed to do. It's definitely not nice though.

I believe humans have cute kittens, loyal dogs and all sorts of pets. We perceive this companionship as friendliness, niceness and so on. These pets are a small minority of the animal kingdom, so consider all animals when posting.

I'm with you. The moral spectrum is part of the human realm, so what animals do or not isn't nice or mean. It just is.

Humans invented the moral spectrum. What's nice and evil. Animals do what's in their instinct. They do whatever to survive.

I couldn't have put it in any way better. I am sick of people saying animals are so nice to humans! and that animals are these moral pure souls. And that's coming from a catholic!

Anyone who believes nature is "nice" is a fool/moron/whatever.

Animals do what they must to survive, they do whatever necessary that is within their level of intelligence.

Like this.

Nowadays we don't have to go and hunt down the chicken, but that can always change...

Hmm...Are animals nicer than humans? No, I don't think so. Animals don't think that way. They act on instinct, as many of you have said. We have been blessed with a choice to do what we want while animals only do things to survive.

It is proven that the more domesticated animals (dogs mainly) begin to absorb human behaviors. It probably doesn't change an animal's mindset, however.

I don't see a difference, really. I would say that humans and animals are both capable of being "nice" and "evil" and I think both do it for exactly the same reasons.

I dunno guys, chimps spiking babies on the ground so they can make another baby with the mother is, while a good idea to pass on your genes, a really mean thing to do.

SquareRobot wrote:I dunno guys, chimps spiking babies on the ground so they can make another baby with the mother is, while a good idea to pass on your genes, a really mean thing to do.

But doing this is pure instinct. They want to reproduce, and they want it to be their children, their genes.
They also have no perception of what their doing as being mean, as they've been taught to do it to survive.

Lions do a similar thing. A young male comes and defeats a pride's alpha-male, then proceeds to kill all the cubs, and take the remaining females as his own mates.

We can look at chimps killing other chimps to remove competition, or polar bears eating their own young and we can say "Oh, how revolting.".

But the fact of the matter is, animals don't farm other animals in awful conditions for the purpose of slaughtering them en masse, sticking their remains in a can and (eventually) eating them.

Plus, people kill people. People even eat people from time to time.

People are animals. The very worst kind, in fact.

We are not the worst animals, the extinct ones are.

JockoBeans wrote:We are not the worst animals, the extinct ones are.

That doesn't mean anything about good or bad. It just means that either a) they weren't fit to survive in their new environment, or b) we killed them off.

Animals aren't nicer than humans but humans are more nasty than animals.

Animals act on instinct humans have the capacity for knowledge of right and wrong and therefore as the only ones capable of making moral descisions we are, by default more nasty.

You are forgetting one fundamental truth. Humans are animals. We aren't worse than what we are and we aren't better either. We have our good moments and our bad moments. This is no different than a wolf taking care of its cubs or a killer whale sadistically torturing a baby seal.

Nope, they may have no perception of morality, but morality is just only a man-made concept.