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I've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. If you continue to do that we will ban your main account as well, so please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Anything, living or not, can be exploited. Being a person or nonhuman animal does not exempt one.

Are we exploiting plants when we grow them for food?

Not sure if you're being facetious not, but that is an interesting question.

I'd wager that it isn't exploitative however, because plants are not sentient, and (AFAWK), do not have thought/feelings or emotions.

Not facetious. Parent said “anything live can be exploited”.

I guess my next question would be - if a lion eats a gazelle. Is it exploiting the gazelle?

That's a viewpoint that's up there with "babies can't feel pain", which was also common until the end of the last century[1], but has completely vanished since then.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies

Do they circumcise boys without anesthetic under similar pretense?

Yes

They have similar brains and experience basic feelings quite similarly to humans.

Some animals are people.