On bovine intelligence

[bivol]

Hi!

i stumbled upon an article about bovine intelligence and think it’d be a good read.

link is here

quotes are:

“Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety — they worry about the future. But if farmers provide the right conditions, they can also feel great happiness”

John Webster, professor of animal husbandry at Bristol, has just published a book on the topic, Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden. “People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic,” he said.

i agree totally!

The assumption that farm animals cannot suffer from conditions that would be considered intolerable for humans is partly based on the idea that they are less intelligent than people and have no “sense of self”

Increasingly, however, research reveals this to be untrue. Keith Kendrick, professor of neurobiology at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, has found that even sheep are far more complex than realised and can remember 50 ovine faces — even in profile. They can recognise another sheep after a year apart.

i think this is a good article to read. now, i’m not here to advocate vegetarism or something, you all know that, but since we’re all involved with animals one way or another, i think these research is good to know so we can appreciate our animals even more. and they do deserve respect!

now, i can’t live without meat. i both eat and like animals, but i won’t deny they have feelings just to feel better. but i will treat every animal with respect and avoid more force than necessary, and kill it humanely. that’s how it’ll, i think, have the most similar thing to a good life.
my 0.02 $

[dlskidmore]

I am what I eat, so I’d like my meat raised in as healthy a condition as possible, and good health doesn’t just come from vaccines and vitamin shots, it comes from living the natural life that your species was meant to live. Paw at the grass, smell the wind, have room to socialize with your kind or have space away from the aggressive members of the group. Encounter only the types of stress you were designed to take.

They’ve scientifically found that cows that die afraid are more tough, and pigs allowed to root in an oak forest have less saturated fat. I will not be surprised when we find more proof that raising animals the way God made them to live produces better food.

[jac]

Dl i think most folks on this forum already think that way.. i most certainly do. The dairy cow kept inside 24/7 is wrong.. as is all intensive rearing. Having been round anilmals all my life I can tell anyone that asks me, that they are all individuals and have characters of there own.. even down to a look in their eye… Unfortunatly the publics demand for cheap food drives the intensive rearing and its cruel practices. It saddens me to see chicken on the shelf for £1.50..$2.00 a bird!!! the creature spent its short life in a crap hole and ends up worth less than a bottle of mineral water..
John..

[CharlyBonifaz]

they are all individuals and have characters of there own.. even down to a look in their eye..

true!
I think when we talk about their “intelligence” we use our own criteria, which need not fit; we should rather try to understand how good they are in their world
from day one my ox had a (for me) surprisingly keen knowledge of every single track we had walked (even if it was once only he knew) and what we had done there….

[Nat(wasIxy)]

I’m constantly astounded by how intelligent our cattle are, to the point where I think pigs have an unfair reputation as the most intelligent farm animals!

I also like and eat animals, and try to treat them fairly, and agree wholeheartedly with skidmore’s comments!

[Nat(wasIxy)]

I was teaching my herefordX to bow and pick up a bucket today. In under ten minutes she was lifting her leg before I went to pick up the hoof and going down on one knee without complaint, and had figured out that mouthing the bucket handle was getting her a treat. I thought I’d better leave it there or we’d be doing a full circus act at the end of an hour! 😉 I’ve taught pigs to do tricks, and it would take at least two longer sessions to get the same result IME.

[clayfoot-sandyman]

@bivol 21118 wrote:

“Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety”

…..I have even heard it said that an animals suffering is more intense than a humans because they don’t have the capacity to find strategies to escape their suffering….people who’ve been held captive for a long period of time often describe praying or imagining their loved ones or a favourite place or how it will be when they escape.
Animals (who lack reflective consciousness which you need to do all of the above) are simply trapped in the consciousness of their condition and suffering.
Hence animals wither and eventually die whereas history has shown it is possible for humans to overcome their conditions however cruel.
This only illustrates further our duty to care for animals.

[bivol]

clayfoot
what you said is very likely true, but i’d like to be e open and ask: why? why is it neccessars that animals DON’T have the possibility to retro-think?

i mean, we know humans can do it because: a) we’re humans and can think of those stuff b) other humans told us what they thought. to date no animal has told us its story from its mouth, so i don’t know if they are not cappable of retro-thinking or imagining stuff…. ok, it might be connected to the size of brains, but if one remembers that animals can remember stuff from years ago, and call those memories up when needed for finding food and water, then why not for mental stimulation when in pinch?
proof? well, no direct one. except maybe this: animals in confinement don’t get bored right away. they also need time to “go nuts”. so until that time they must drain the memories until they can’t cope with boring reality no more. if they lived only within the moment, they would snap much sooner, i think.

and there’s another thing, esp. with intensive-farming animals: they know of nothing better. it’s like a human being abused without ever being aware there is even a different possibility of existing.

it’s true that people assume that prey animals “live in the moment”, because it’s simply better to not look too much in the past and see all killed herd members. it’s easier that way, and as a defense mechanism it is better. noone says they dont, and that’s better for the purpose of persuing normal normal daily activities under stress of being hunted, and with lots of stimuli from outside.
when an animal is in captivity, i think it can, at leastto a degree, call upon pleasant memories if it had them (and that’s the saddest part).
but for entire life without seeing sunlight that don’t help much, too.

especially smarter animals, like primates and elephants can be scared for life and their recovery is similar to a human’s. noone says domestic mammals (or birds) are not on the level of prim and elephants, but we don’t know that for sure, because people simply don’t give a damn about them, & because there are more cows than elephants. that doesn’t say domestic animals suffer less than humans! no sir, i was more touched right deep down by bellowing of trucked steers on a parking lot than to sights of random humans getting hurt or killed (maybe because we see that all the time)! some stinging pain just passes deep down, i can’t explain it. maybe it’s the helplessness.

from experience i can say that a one’s own brain can be his/hers best friend or worst enemy.

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