reply to post by rick004
The same could be said of most domesticated species, even plants. But that was not the problem that I was pointing out, my lines was more in regards
to thinking (hoping and expecting) that an animal will have human traits, the best suitable for that would be other primates (even so there is a large
divide in what we can expect).
I was referring to dressing dogs and pigs up, using pets as substitute for kids in an almost pathological way. I'm not against people using a pet to
train the responsibility of having kids but an animal has a very distinct mentality that should not be evaluated by human standards their motivations,
adaptations and capabilities are completely distinct.
A dog's love is not the same as the love of a person there is no functional rationalization, it is due mostly to the fact that trait the submission
to a pack mentality and to the alpha, this is an evolutionary trait that doomed dogs to be abused by humans. I say abused because any symbiotic
relation that we may had was lost eons ago, even in a tribal setup like the Native Americans dogs were already in an exploitative situation. Any
species that we have domesticated have ultimately only benefited from a genetic dissemination standpoint and even then some have suffered hugely due
to our hubris, especially dogs, there are breeds that due to consanguinity live constantly in pain and have huge genetically defects from an
heightened probability of cancer to other malices...
