reply to post by CaticusMaximus
How we might perceive such a occurrence does not bear upon whether or not such an occurrence happens. When was the last time you watched a
predator/prey battle play out?
I watched one yesterday. My cat caught a mouse. She heard the mouse moving around and went to investigate the noise. As soon as she located the mouse,
she set up for ambush. She waited, until the mouse was within striking range, then pounced.
She did not quickly kill it. It struggled; she slapped at it again and again with sharp claws. She bit it with sharp teeth. She slapped it against a
wall. All this time, the little mouse was no doubt as terrified as a mouse could be; judging from the constant desperate attempts to flee, that would
be my guess anyway. Eventually, the mouse died of a combination of cuts, bites, and blunt trauma. The cat picked it up and brought it to us. We
didn't want it, so she ate it.
At no time did our cat concern itself for the well-being of the mouse. She was in no danger of starving; we feed her pretty well. She simply did what
she does. A cat is a predator and a carnivore. It kills to eat. It will kill even when there are other sources of food, as long as it can eat.
That's called nature.
A pack of feral dogs will track a deer, give chase, run it down, rip it's throat out, and typically start eating it before it is dead. That's called
nature.
You ask how I would feel if I were the prey? I would probably feel terrified, like the mouse did. But I am not the prey. Pretending to be so is not
only a worthless exercise, but quite probably counterproductive to survival. Nature doesn't care about some self-imposed morality about re-creating
the way it works; nature is above us. Swim among a feeding frenzy of great white sharks and see how much compassion toward life you receive. Explain
to a salt-water croc how much you care about the "sanctity of life" and see what it thinks about your ideas.
It sounds great on an Internet forum, talking about how much you believe in protecting wildlife and how compassionate you are toward those poor
defenseless creatures. But it's all smoke and mirrors, with no basis in reality. Reality is that humans are omnivores; humans will seek out meat as a
natural part of their diet; humans are therefore predators, and will kill for food. At least we (try to) kill without inflicting more pain than
necessary. That's more than most predators will do.
The predator does not mourn for its prey. Even if you think it should.
TheRedneck