What is the problem you guys have with "animal libbers" They actually have incredible compassion for all creatures great and small and just want suffering (mental and physical) to end They see animals as individuals, not bank cheques. They don't want to hurt you, they want the animals to have fulfilling lives...not just lives that are governed by humans.
well nomaeintein - i guess the reason is that many people round here are frustrated with animal liberationists is because their opinions are almost always polarised on one end of a spectrum. the other end obviously is reserved for those that have no compassion for animals.
but we sit somewhere in the middle. we have HUGE amounts of respect for animals as individuals, not just their various species - but we tend to think animal liberationists anthropomorphise animals, that is, they project human emotions onto their personalities. this usually demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic behaviours and needs of a given species, which is hard to respect. see, i don't work in any industry that involves animals, i just read about them. i have an enormous collection of natural history books that i am very proud of. but most importantly i remember what it is i read. and when i hear things that come from animal libbers, more often than not i think "ha! i know more about animals than you do - and you spend all your time fighting for their rights!"
i'll give you an extreme example of the ignorance of anthropomorphising:
sheep get slaughtered in front of eachother. on face value one might think this is cruel. the sheep see one and another, and another of their own slaughtered before them and surely know they are next.
not necessarily. sheep are prey animals and they are also herd animals. the sheep ancestor lived not unlike any goat antelope. occasionally they would be attacked by a predator, say a snow leopard - they flee and about a third of the time, one of them gets eaten. so what does one of their own kind being eaten really mean to a sheep?
relax.
it means stop running. relax. your safe. they got someone else. go back to eating grass. and if you listen to the research done by animal behaviouralists, and some of these people fight passionately against other animal cruelties in the food industry, such as live export - they will tell you that sheep in a slaughterhouse stand around, rather relaxed, completely oblivious to the fact that they too might meet the fate of their herdmates.
thinking sheep think like people doesn't do sheep any favours. you want to know whats best for a sheep, then you have to think like a sheep. and we are not saying sheep don't think. us around here don't think animals are numb thoughtless processors. we think they think. we just don't think they all think like us.