" Farm animals 'need emotional TLC' "

[DELUSIONAL]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4360947.stm

"The study of animal sentience is one of the most exciting and important in the whole of biology," said Professor Marian Dawkins, of Oxford University.

"My plea is that, when we make decisions and regulations about animals and campaign for them, the animals' voices should be heard and heard strongly."

For whatever reasons, we humans tend to draw a charmed ring around ourselves - we suppose we are the only ones that think thoughts and feel feelings.

We are happy to ascribe emotions to a tiny flailing inarticulate baby, while denying them in a sheep or even a chimpanzee.

Talk of animal sentience is often brushed off as fluffy and sentimental - not the stuff of science or the real world.

[TroubleMan]

1. Ironic, when you combine this post with two others currently in the Lounge

These guys agree with the study:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2872243

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2873251

[Branjor]

2. Those guys

haven't the slightest idea of what emotional TLC is. They're just sexual predators on animals.

[TroubleMan]

3. I know, I was just kidding

but it is ironic that we have two bestiality threads, and then this thread.

[DenverDem]

4. In the future the understanding of animal sentience

will rank with the acceptance that black people were actually human and should not be slaves as one of the great spiritual evolutionary leaps forward.

Our brutality to animals for our hubristic greed and sloth is humanity's greatest sin.