This is something that came to me after Christina pointed out our lack of equal treatment to domesticated animals: If a domesticated animal (dog) does something harmful (i.e. pitbull biting a human), is there some lawful punishment the dog can be given so it will not commit the act again other than putting it to death? If it were a human, other things could be done, such as send the human to a correctional facility, because the human has the potential to reason out his/her wrongdoings and change his/her behavior. If a human commits assault, there is a lawful punishment. I don't think we can create laws to punish animals other than having them be put to death. Perhaps there are training schools out there, that I am unaware of, that can train the dogs to become less aggressive, but we have no guarentee that the dog willl not perform the harmful act again. Perhaps the owner or trainer of the animal should be punished for not being in control of the animal it is responsible for. I love dogs as much as anyone, I just see the gap between animals and humans widening here in the fact that we can create laws for ourselves and hold ourselves accountable for our actions, and learn about our behaviour and change it through laws, which animals cannot do, nor can we do it for them.
On another note, something that animals can do, which humans cannot, was pointed out by Noah, which also widens this gap. It is impossible for humans to find an ecological niche, as we are always rapidly evolving and adapting to our surroundings. While every other species finds a niche in their habitat in which their obligations are already set and they are expected to behave in a specific manner. Humans can not find their place and get comfortable with it and have a routine of actions, as every other species can and does. Last week it was mud huts and hunting for food and this week it is a condo suite on the 40th floor of a downtown skyscraper and Chinese take out; who knows what will be next week. This appears to me to be a drastic difference between humans and every other species. How come every other species has their niche, while humans do not? Why can other species not evolve to develop the ability of reason in which they would use to forever progress themselves? Instead, they just waltz along in the backround, and sometimes we observe to take in their beauty.
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Humans cannot find their niche because they ostracize themselves from the rest of the world. Humans have given their social lives more attention than their objective life as a homo sapien. Humans should be making advancements in minimizing our impact on the Earth and retaining as many life forms as possible because we need to continue studying all life forms to better understand ourselves. Unfortunately people become sidetracked by their status in society, the media, unimportant technology, consumerism, capitalism. We have become so infatuated with all of these stupid material objects that we loose sight of the real picture. Humans have a gift to think abstractly to solve problems. We do not have to wait generations for minute changes to occur in order to benefit ourselves. We can analyze things and make changes in ourselves and in our society. We cannot wait for natural selection to do this for us because we will most likely die out in the waiting line.
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