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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

> There is, it appears, nothing particularly special about this animal that makes it a bad choice for food compared to other animals.

Octopuses are intelligent. They are playful and awesome. You've seen the video of octopuses using coconut shells to hide in?

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Humans have this interesting habit of anthropomorphising animals, especially if they do something that seems "human".

I haven't thought of that, but it makes sense. Though if we were being "overrun" by a species of hyper-intelligent nonhuman animals, I'm sure we'd get our hunting tools ready. So there's the "rareness" factor.

Then there's the "attractiveness" factor. If I killed a beautiful butterfly (heck, even if I extirpated a bed of tulips) I'd probably be labeled as a sociopath.

Just look at how many people think dolphins (or even dogs!) are happy because they're "smiling".

Do we know that dogs are not smiling? Anecdotally, my dogs seem to smile when they are happy (when I pet them, give them treats, play with them, etc.) I'm genuinely curious about this.

Some may, perhaps learned from humans, but in general a dog will signal happiness by e.g. wagging the tail, and "smiling" as in baring teeth signals something like aggression or fear.

Which, of course, is why you should never smile at an angry dog.

I see the smiling along with wagging their tail, and I know the difference between what I see as a dog smile (mouth open, ears back, tail wagging, eyes squinting) and baring their teeth.

That is a great example of anthropomorphizing. It assigns a human emotion or behavior to an immutable physical characteristic--the shape of a mouth.

But calling an animal's behavior intelligent or playful is only anthropomorphizing if we know that playing and intelligence are unique to humans. Which we don't.

I don't use words like happy, and not because of the shape of their beak, but DOLPHINS ARE ALSO AWESOME.

This "dolphins play with bubble rings" video is ancient but great. Play is perhaps a tricky word, but still.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMCf7SNUb-Q

There is a difference between saying "Oh, that animal acted like a human, it must be just like a human" and "Oh, that animal behaved in a way that I recognize, it probably has some intelligence and capacity for emotion."

There comes a point when something is acting as if it is intelligent, or as if it has emotions, that it's reasonable to assume they are intelligent or they do have emotions. Not necessarily the same as ours, but on a spectrum.

"tool use" isn't necessarily anthropomorphising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DoWdHOtlrk

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091214-octop...

> The coconut-carrying behavior makes the veined octopus the newest member of the elite club of tool-using animals—and the first member without a backbone, researchers say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8408233.stm

I wonder if anybody would be upset if I ate a crow.

Stick around here long enough, and you'll get to see it happen.

Other crows might - apparently they can remember faces and summon other crows to mob offenders on sight...

http://www.sefs.washington.edu/research.acl/Crows_and_Other_...

I WOULD CROWS ARE AWESOME.

My father used to work with "looked after children" (Children in children's homes). He visited a home, and there was a boy there who had a pet crow. The boy had taught this crow some tricks, including holding a cigarette in its beak. (This would have been about 40 years ago.) My pa took a photo of the boy, and his pet crow, and the crow is "smoking". I have that photo still.

I think what I'm trying to say is that individuals have their own reasons for eating (or not eating) various animals, and so long as those people are not too preachy we can all get along. It is odd that societies tend to have differing views on acceptability of eating various animals - dogs are fine in some countries but not others, horse is tasty in France but weird in UK, Cows are sacred to some but delicious to others.

I don't know what point I am making, maybe agreeing somewhat, but after I had finally trapped and killed a field mouse that was causing a lot of havoc in my home I discovered its nest. It had dragged back a number of things for comfort like fluffy small things from the dryer, but notably it had also dragged a golden necklace back there and left it just inside the entrance to its home. I felt a tinge then, like it had appreciated something shiny just because it was pretty and took it to its home. I struggled to think of any other purpose, but still that vermin had caused a lot of damage in my house.

Pigs are pretty smart too, I hear.

Also delicious, which is really not a point in favor of extended life span.

Being delicious is a great adaptation though, although it dooms individuals to a premature death, it has secured the future of the species. As long as humans are around, pigs and cows will be as well.

If we weren't so keen on describing things involving humans as "unnatural", I think the relationship between humans and livestock animals would generally be seen as symbiotic (much like ants who farm fungus).

I hear humans taste like pork. Cannabalism hasn't really taken off though.

Procuring humans is more difficult than pigs, irrespective of the obvious ethical and taboo issues.

If you listen to the vegans pigs are 4th after chimps, dolphins, and elephants. (http://www.veganpeace.com/animal_facts/Pigs.htm)

But maybe they're inflating the pig's intelligence because they don't want people to eat pigs?

Or maybe it's the belief that humans have abused, and lost, their license to harvest pigs for meat. Take a look at the conditions pigs are raised on in commercial farms. Locking any animal in a cage for its whole life, where it cannot move or tend to itself, is inexcusable. It doesn't matter how intelligent it is, it would be just as impermissible if it were a bee trapped in a cage the size of its own self.

Somewhere about as smart as dogs, if popular trivia is to be believed. Interestingly, there isn't a universal taboo against eating dogs either, taboos against eating dogs are heavily cultural (while taboos against eating humans are far more (although not entirely) universal.)

So are pigs, bears, and dogs...

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