andrew, if this were a public debate (yes its meets all these qualities so far) that would have any effect on the outcome of whaling or that I had any fear would ever be brought up in public record against us a hunters again (now I think we are in the clear), I would 100% dissagree with your statements. I too, sometimes find human like qualities in my pets (if you held a gun to my head and forced me to acknowledge intelligence amongst animals, the edge clearly goes to the felines rather than the canines, however, the dog is more endearing simply cause of his pack nature, ie he looks up to you as a companaion and member of his pack, and you in turn view him as man's best friend). However, as I stated above, they are still an animal, if someone from Subtropical Forest X, want to raise and eat dogs, who am I to stop them, I shoot coyotes, which to me is 100% the same as your lab, and no I don't feel an ounce of regret. I don't beleive your dog has gained any intelligence or other human qualities in the milisecond in evolutionary time, since man first welcomed some wild canine around the fire. In fact, if anything dogs in general have probably regressed and lost some of their desirable instinctual survivable traits based upon our selective breeding programs which have not been along the lines of natural selection, but rather focused on other traits we found desirable: asthetics, retrieval instinct, coat characteristics etc. What if our ancestors had gone a different route and bred the canines for food characteristics, much as is the case with the modern day hog, would I feel bad about knocking back a couple slabs of beagle bacon? I think not. And if I did, I think that would scientifically be viewed as some weakness in my survival instinct (ie we are a predator, no different than a lion, I wouldn't blame the lion for eating me, and he would feel no regret if he did). Should a farmer feel bad for slaughtering a cow, think of your answer, now think of your answer if it was his daughters milk hefer for 4H that was bottle fed, and slept in her bed for the first month after its mother orphaned it. Is there any difference in the animal or just in our perspective? Did your anwer change from one to the other? I made the first post simply as an arguementative statement, and authored it from the position of a hunter viewing this arguement from a scientific perspective. Now, I might view the arguement different from a religous perspective, assuming I am a religous man. Which brings into the question, whether you think intelligence is a human trait into which man evolved as part of his survival and furtherance of the line of the apes, or whether man was shaped seperately in the image of God and intelligence was bestowed to him straight from the makers hand. I personally, don't like revealing too much about my religious beleifs on the internet so I think i'll stop my arguements here, for fear of tipping my cards as to what I beleive. I will tell you I have been prone in the past to adopting completely opposing view points on certain subjects based on philosophical vs scientific perspectives, nothing wrong with that IMO, such is the dilema of the INTELLIGENT man.
