Are bees capable of feeling exploited?

[SMM]

Or... ARE they? Maybe they just got the scale wrong.

Thanks to you both, my great belly laugh of the week!

I have long been a person who believes the earth should come first. However, I have not totally accepted every ARN doctrine, especially the vegan diet. In the wild, bees are predated by any animal able to do so. We are just another one of them. If we did them harm, raising honey, that would be a different issue.

 

[dsnort]

Someone's harvested all those vegetables in the supermarket and carried them to the shop:

I remember reading somewhere that scientist were able to measure a physiological response in a plant to the presence of someone that had mistreated it in the past. Why are vegans so cruel to plants, to end their lives just for a meal?

 

[jsw]

I remember reading somewhere that scientist were able to measure a physiological response in a plant to the presence of someone that had mistreated it in the past. Why are vegans so cruel to plants, to end their lives just for a meal?

This is why I'm getting genetically altered to produce chlorophyll. I'll just sit in the sun an hour or ten a day, and I'll be fine.

 

[Elixer]

This is one of the more interesting threads I have seen in a while, debate wise. I really don't have anything to add though. So I'll just keep watching.

 

[deputy_doofy]

Vegetarinsim/veganism isn't about life or bleeding. It's about (among other things) minimising unnecessary pain, suffering, and exploitation of animals. If you'd read the thread you'd understand the philosophy behind veganism/vegetarianism.

And I'm saying, plant-life could just as easily be suffering, too, only you can't hear it screaming...

 

[spicyapple]

And I'm saying, plant-life could just as easily be suffering, too, only you can't hear it screaming...

Nor can they run away if scared.

Some plants, if you touch their leaves will curl up into a ball as if to tell you they are shy or frightened.

 

[Abstract]

Do you need a brain to feel pain? I think that's why vegans say they don't.
However, Jessica Simpson feels pain, which contradicts that somewhat. I'm sure she has sang some ballads from personal pain.


The mind boggles.

 

[ModestPenguin]

People who think that "possible" and "likely" are synonyms need to learn more math.

Can I steal that. I always mention things as improbable and get commented on when in fact most things are possible.

Oh JSW I think you just became my new best friend

totally sucks to be you...

 

[MACDRIVE]

After every Winter, I'll go out into the yard and obliterate all the clovers out from under the bees with the string trimmer. Afterwards, I feel guilty as hell for taking their flowers away.

 

[mad jew]

I was told my goldfish (his name is Jaws) and his girlfriend (Jawsette - more of a de-facto than a girlfriend, really) have no touch sense. When I found this out, I stopped patting them because I thought there was no point. Then, I decided they might just like the gesture of my patting, so I now pat them again.

 

[bartelby]

I was told my goldfish (his name is Jaws) and his girlfriend (Jawsette - more of a de-facto than a girlfriend, really) have no touch sense. When I found this out, I stopped patting them because I thought there was no point. Then, I decided they might just like the gesture of my patting, so I now pat them again.

I'd have thought you'd have come up with a more imaginative name than Jaws!

 

[MACDRIVE]

I was told my goldfish (his name is Jaws) and his girlfriend (Jawsette - more of a de-facto than a girlfriend, really) have no touch sense. When I found this out, I stopped patting them because I thought there was no point. Then, I decided they might just like the gesture of my patting, so I now pat them again.

A peek through the window of mad jew's everyday life - priceless.

 

[bartelby]

A peek through the window of mad jew's everyday life - priceless.

With each peek it gets stranger and stranger

 

[mad jew]

I'd have thought you'd have come up with a more imaginative name than Jaws!

Clearly you've never been bitten by a goldfish.

 

[bartelby]

Clearly you haven't seen my goldfish.

How big is the bowl?

 

[Fearless Leader]

Im a vegetarian, but for personal health reasons and overall feel betterness. This crossed my mind this morning as I put some honig on my bagel. Then I found myself not caring and having a delicious honig bagel. Being vegan is crazy and that point of view was snobish and uncalled for.

 

[Henri Gaudier]

I was told my goldfish (his name is Jaws) and his girlfriend (Jawsette - more of a de-facto than a girlfriend, really) have no touch sense. When I found this out, I stopped patting them because I thought there was no point. Then, I decided they might just like the gesture of my patting, so I now pat them again.

Absolutely charming anecdote. Thanks for that. Fish are much maligned creatures. For years I've heard people say "memory of a goldfish" (meaning none) and now it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that they do have long term memory.

Speaking as a Vegan (Obnoxious?) it seems odd to me how daft people get in response to it and Vegetarianism. When I first went Vegetarian, about 30 years ago, people would get very aggressive in their condemnation of me. Perhaps this would have been understandable if I was proselytising but I wasn't. Now, I would like to say each to his own but I can't. I think everyone should become Vegan. Meat eating is the single biggest contributor to global warming (Around 20% of all carbon emissions.) More than every 4x4 , American car and Jumbo jet in the world or more precisely all travel! If you cannot empathise with animals, the horror of the industrial slaughter of billions of creatures you may be at least capable of preserving the world for yourself and yours. To the person who said that empathising with everything means that your mentally tormented is correct but what else is there to be? To have no regard? When I hear of the vast amounts of rain forest that are destroyed to make way for beef farmers and all the devastation of the localised environment and how this animal is now extinct or there only 50 of these tigers left in the world and people are still hunting them I want to collapse in despair! Being a Vegan is my only way of articulating my horror. I do my damnedest to not be like the people who do those things. I'm kind to animals and plant trees. All in all I'm a right obnoxious bastard.

 

[alFR]

Again I'm not vegan (and enjoy honey) but you can't justify it like that. If I were to deprive you of X item from you home which you've invested time and effort into acquiring (but isn't of detriment to your longevity) does that make it justifiable?

I don't think you can put it like that - humans and bees are so different that my response to you taking, say, my Mac would be entirely different to a bee's response to us taking some honey. Perhaps a better analogy would be you mowing my lawn and taking away the grass clippings - like a bee making honey, I'm going to grow the grass no matter what you do, so it's irrelevant to me whether you take it or not.

Anyway, the fact is (well, according to google) that bees make a surplus of honey and part of managing a hive is to leave them enough for the colony to use and just remove the surplus for our consumption. Given that, I can't see that we're doing any harm.

What we need is an apiarist to give us some firsthand experience. Surely there must be one on MR somewhere.

 

[.Andy]

I don't think you can put it like that - humans and bees are so different that my response to you taking, say, my Mac would be entirely different to a bee's response to us taking some honey. Perhaps a better analogy would be you mowing my lawn and taking away the grass clippings - like a bee making honey, I'm going to grow the grass no matter what you do, so it's irrelevant to me whether you take it or not.

Again I'd like to reiterate that I'm not vegan so I eat honey.

However it's completely irrelevant whether bees make an excess of honey or not when you are trying to avoid the explotiation of them. They aren't making it for us, they are making it for their own consumption and for the benefit and expansion of the hive. They invest time and energy into gathering the pollen for the honey. Your grass analogy doesn't work because it takes next to zero effort on your part to grow the grass, nor is cut grass of any benefit to you.

Let's make X item in my analogy food in your home to parallel the bees. According to your post it is ethical for me to take your food for my own luxury because a) you possess food in excess of your dietary requirements, and b) you can just buy more.

 

[.Andy]

And I'm saying, plant-life could just as easily be suffering, too, only you can't hear it screaming...

True plants could be feeling pain and suffering in ways which are different to animal pain. They most definitely do show signs of stress and carry out complex intracellular communication. But animals most definitely do feel pain and suffer physically and psychologically in a manner similar to the human experience (albeit to different degrees). Clinically I can readily pharmacologically dull your (or an animals) nociceptors to stop a pain stimulus and relieve your suffering; nociceptors that patently haven't evolved in in plants to elicit a similar response. If you wish to charge that plants feel pain and suffer in a way analagous to animals, the onus is on you to explain how and by what means plants generate these responses even though they are lacking the appropriate anatomy.

We all have to eat, so if one is to choose an ethical line in an attempt to reduce suffering, it's not a difficult equation to resolve. Reality takes precedence over a possibility.

 

[apb3]

...Taking the honey is no worse than forcing the slave labor.

Oh great! I see a bill mandaating reparations for the bees coming out of this Congress...

Or at least a Civil War II.

 

[alFR]

Your grass analogy doesn't work because it takes next to zero effort on your part to grow the grass

You've clearly not seen the soil under our lawn.

 

[apb3]

...Because I know I'll never stop the slaughter in Darfur, I club seals. Totally makes sense, ya know?

...and those damned dolphins! They think they're sooo smart! You knw they eat babies and puppies, right?

I've considered starting a Tuna-Safe brand of dolphin meat - just so no tuna is harmed in the harvesting of those bastards.


But I just can't get motivated. I mean, I do truly hate dophins but Tuna aren't cute enough to get anyone else on board.

 

[Queso]

I was told my goldfish (his name is Jaws) and his girlfriend (Jawsette - more of a de-facto than a girlfriend, really) have no touch sense. When I found this out, I stopped patting them because I thought there was no point. Then, I decided they might just like the gesture of my patting, so I now pat them again.

Fish can most definitely feel. There's a big Greasy Grouper on the Barrier Reef off Cairns that follows divers around waiting to be stroked. He loves it and tries to push himself onto your hands to that you touch him.

And if big fish can feel, little ones can too.

<reasoning and despair stuff>

Yeah, people suck. Don't worry though. Humans will wipe ourselves out sooner or later. Then the insects get a go at running the world

 

[apb3]

Fish can most definitely feel. There's a big Greasy Grouper on the Barrier Reef off Cairns that follows divers around waiting to be stroked. He loves it and tries to push himself onto your hands to that you touch him.

And if big fish can feel, little ones can too.

I'd never stroke the big greasy grouper in public.... I mean, there are laws, man!