Do you think animals or some animals know right from wrong? I do in the way. For example a dog can attack us and kill us if they wanted especially the large breeds but they normally don't
No, I don't believe they have morals. But humans have domesticated them. Mostly the need isn't there to kill us. They aren't in survival mode like they may be in the wild before domestication.
I think most times humans project human traits onto them.
Most of (at least social) animals have a certain kind of implicit "code". Of course it´s "morality" is relative [b] to[/b] (valid within) that "code". And such "code" ussually gives some survival advantage. Not sooooooooo different than humans........
@Spoiledbrat IDK....I think what you said has a lot of merit. One example is how humans have the fight or flight instinct under stressful situation. The trouble is that our instincts for that are there to help us get away from sabre toothed tigers, not to deal with bumper to bumper traffic....
Dogs are weird how they actually changed their entire survival tactics and became a humans friend that allowed them to be brought in from the cold and fed and petted. If they knew somehow to endear themselve to humans to survive I can see them able to reason not to bite the hand that feeds them. I'm sure somewhere a study has been done on their reasoning abilities
@Suggestmeone I just used dogs as an example. There are wild animals that show this behaviour. Dolphins. I'm sure gorillas and chimps just to name a few
@Axeroberts Dolphins are an interesting example; because among their social groups they do some of the same bad things that humans do. It’s kind of shocking. They’re not quite as innocent as them may seem.
I think it is ridiculous to hold animals, especially wild animals to the same code that humans have.
Over the number of years i have been here there are SWers that will post a comment to me about otters attacking other animals sometimes for sexual reasons. They do it to try and upset me because i love otters.... what they are actually doing though is displaying a huge ignorance of the animal kingdom, a privileged sense of ego that humans are the most intelligent creatures and lastly the petty extents they would go to to bully someone.
Wild animals live off instinct, the need for food, shelter and reproduction....anything further is recreational. A wild dog would attack if theybwere hungry or ifvthey felt threatened.
Tame animals however are trained, so whether they think it is right or wrong they are trained to behave and react in a way that we have taught them
@InOtterWords ok. I see it as the animal understanding enough to know what hurting another life is and choosing not to. It might not exactly be right from wrong in our sense of the term but I think it shows something like that
SW-User
As they say, there are no bad dogs, only bad owners.
They definitely know. If they’re domestic, they know if they harm their owner good things (food, shelter, positive interaction) will stop happening. My friend’s puppy, while playing, nipped my hand. He didn’t injure me, but it did hurt, and I said, "ouch, stop !". The puppy stopped immediately, looked worried, then licked my hand gently. When I petted him, he wagged his tail again, like he knew he was forgiven. And he seemed careful not to nip me again.