Animals you consider too smart to eat

[saskganesh]

anyhow, monkeys and apes would be risky I think.

because of my acculturation, I would not enjoy eating cats or dogs. possibly also horses.

I would not eat a wild pigeon, seagull, coyote, raccoon or squirrel found in any city, usually seen eating garbage.

[Viking]

FWIW I don't think cows are particularly stupid

Are you kidding me?   I worked with cattle for many years and they are dumbest fucking things ever, which is a rather common trait for big herd herbivores.  Brains are not really required to group up together and eat everything.

Cattle and sheep have outsourced thinking to humans for a few thousand years now.

[jimmy olsen]

FWIW I don't think cows are particularly stupid

Are you kidding me?   I worked with cattle for many years and they are dumbest fucking things ever, which is a rather common trait for big herd herbivores.  Brains are not really required to group up together and eat everything.

Valmy's a cowboy!?

[Caliga]

FWIW I don't think cows are particularly stupid

Are you kidding me?   I worked with cattle for many years and they are dumbest fucking things ever, which is a rather common trait for big herd herbivores.  Brains are not really required to group up together and eat everything.

not particularly stupid != very intelligent.

I mean, what are you comparing cows to here?

[Barrister]

We shouldn't eat beef.

Bison is much tastier and healthier. 

I agree, but grass fed beef is also really lean. people need powerful protein.

As opposed to hay fed beef?

[ulmont]

We shouldn't eat beef.

Bison is much tastier and healthier. 

I agree, but grass fed beef is also really lean. people need powerful protein.

As opposed to hay fed beef?

As opposed to corn (or chickpeas, or wheat, etc.) fed beef.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot

[Josquius]

Dog eating to me is virtually on a par with human eating. Its their just reward- they figured out from thousands upon thousands of years ago how awesome humans were and they chose the winning team.

Also off the menu for ethical reasons- cats, rodents, horses, dolphins, whales, primates, maybe a few other not generally eaten ones that don't spring right to mind.

Pigs...Yeah they're smart but;
1: They're delicious
2: They're bastards who would eat you given half a chance.

Octopii, squid, etc.... I don't really have anything against eating them ethically but they're icky anyway.

Also bad for me is eating young animals.
Veal is something I have never touched and never will.
Lamb is...iffy. I try and avoid it when I can. It doesn't taste so grand to begin with which helps too.

Oh. And ducks. They're delicious but...I like ducks. So I try to avoid it unless its too good an offer to pass up (i.e. in a expensive Chinese restaurant and someone else is paying)

Oh. And to remember more- rabbit and guinea pig.
I would be interested in trying guinea pig sometime but...I couldn't make a habit of it. Poor little critters. They live their life in perpetual fear, just imagine if their fears were justified.
I used to have rabbit when I was a kid and didn't like it too much then anyway. But after encountering pet rabbits and seeing them in the wild I'm somewhat against it.

[Malthus]

FWIW I don't think cows are particularly stupid

Are you kidding me?   I worked with cattle for many years and they are dumbest fucking things ever, which is a rather common trait for big herd herbivores.  Brains are not really required to group up together and eat everything.

Valmy's a cowboy!?

I knew it!

And he was busting my ass for thinking he wears a ten-gallon hat. 

[Malthus]

FWIW I don't think cows are particularly stupid

Are you kidding me?   I worked with cattle for many years and they are dumbest fucking things ever, which is a rather common trait for big herd herbivores.  Brains are not really required to group up together and eat everything.

not particularly stupid != very intelligent.

I mean, what are you comparing cows to here?

Hey, just because you like women who have udders like a cows' doesn't mean you have to defend them. 

[Eddie Teach]

As opposed to corn (or chickpeas, or wheat, etc.) fed beef.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot

corn fed beef

@ Jos- why rodents?

[lustindarkness]

I think I would draw the line with humans because they are the same species as me, not because of intelligence, hell fellow humans elected Obama, not very intelligent.

[dps]

Yeah, but necessity permits behaviors that would ordinarily be considered immoral.  Of course I'd eat some dude if it meant I wouldn't die.  But outside of necessity, I would consider it immoral, outside of the social taboos and the general predisposition many species have against eating their own.

But in fact there are species which do engage in cannibalism, which tells me that it's as natural a behavior as avoiding it.  If a carnivorous species doesn't engage in cannibalism, there's probably an evolutionary advantage to not doing so for that particular species.

If I'm correct in my assumption that throughout most of its existence, the human species has been a habitual cannibal, then I think this demonstrates that cannibalism is a natural behavior for us.

I think the notion that it is immoral 'outside of social taboos' is irrelevant because we have no way of ever getting outside of those social taboos unless society goes away, in which case I don't think you can predict what becomes normal vs. abnormal, since we have no reference points for humans lacking society.

If we're talking about cannibalism, let's be precise: predatory cannibalism, or carrion cannibalism?  There's a significant difference, I think, both in evolutionary and moral terms, at least as significant as the difference between "necessary" and "casual" cannibalism.

Generally speaking, in human history cannibalism has taken three forms, aside from the occasional psychopath:

- cannibalism as a funeral ritual (Herototous mentions this as his example of why "custom is king of all") - still common in places like New Gunea (the disease Kuru is spread in this manner - don't eat people's brains, please!).

- cannibalism as a ritual in warfare: 'I eat the enemy and steal his courage'.

- cannibalism as a last resort before starvation: the "custom of the sea".

In no cases as far as I know was cannibalism ever practiced as an ordinary dietary supplement. I know someone (Harris?) proposed that the Aztecs did just that, but the notion is foolish (what the Aztecs did was practice cannibalism as a war ritual on a large scale).

The reason is obvious: a diet of human meat is, of necessity, going to be extremely uncommon, because people are very dangerous and dislike being eaten. The Aztecs were probably the world's most successful cannibals, and the average Aztec warrior may, if they were lucky, take a couple of prisoners in their working life: hardly enough to supply themselves and their entire families with a lifetime supply of protein.  

Yeah, AFAIK there has never been a society in which the human flesh was consumed as a regular part of one's diet--it was alway either consumed ritually, or in an extreme emergency.

As to the thread question, there are no animals that I wouldn't consume because of their intelligence. 

[Ideologue]

1. Why wouldn't you eat an intelligent animal? I'm not interested in eating great apes but that has more to do with their hairy humanesque looks and HIV rumors. Whale or elephant isn't served a lot in Sweden but if I got some I would eat it without giving the possibly high intelligence of the animal a thought.

The most ethically sound method of assigning rights to anyone is by determing what degree of sentience and sapience they possess.  It is axiomatic that to cause pain is bad; it is axiomatic that destroying a mind is bad.  These are, of course, unproveable, but if they are assumed, you can derive rules of behavior from them which insist that animals, other than humans, deserve protection from pain and destruction.

Categorizing animals is a difficult process, but certain points of reference can be well established:

Eating a shrimp is completely acceptable, because a shrimp is just a machine without conscious awareness or with so little that it doesn't matter even to itself whether or not it actually lives, only that it's genes are perpetuated.

A chicken can feel pain and might have some dim inner existence, putting it in a gray area, but a chicken's insignificant feelings do not adequately balance my desire to eat it, although I would prefer that its pain be minimized.

Cats, dogs, pigs and possibly squid have thoughts and feelings, dreams and emotions.  They must be, I suppose, off-limits.

Elephants, primates, and cetaceans, octopi and cuttlefish are thinking, feeling, even reasoning creatures with rich inner lifes, and it would be a moral wrong to take its life without justification or excuse.

A human is worth more than any elephant, or a number of elephants, of course.  The exact ratio would be hard to pin down.

I suppose it must follow that some transhuman intelligence would be worth more than a number of humans, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.   A weakness of this moral calculus can also be demonstrated by showing that it would create categories of varying worth within humanity itself.  However, these ethics impose only the same negative rights--rights to not be hurt, rights not to be killed, rights to not be imprisoned.  Thus, even if the ethical logic assigns different values to different humans, this variance imposes no practical difficulty of application.

The only other method of assigning or accepting the rights of others that immediately occurs to me would be to do so based on selfishness principle, and categorizing beings as worthy of protection or not depending upon genetic relatedness.

In our case, this would create a hierarchy beginning with oneself (or one's twin, I suppose :p ), with the next level including children, siblings, and parents, and a few levels down the human species itself, with apes existing a few steps below that, and octopi occupying a rather unprotected position as our billionth or so cousins.

Fully alien life forms or artificial intelligences of entirely equal intelligence to humans would be entirely outside morality.  This fact may demonstrate a weakness in the premises here, as it seems self-evidently wrong to kill, say, Skynet prior to Judgment Day--as well as being stupid, since human panic is what caused Skynet to launch nukes at Russia in the first place, pointing out a potential practical difficulty with failing to take into account the moral existence of intelligent, non-human life.

2. Pigs are bright, that is well known. Our Western tradition of not eating cats and dogs has nothing to do with the perceived intelligence level of the animals.

Looks like I'll be shopping at kosher delis, then--although I'd actually probably have better luck with halal stores around here.  I don't really eat much pork, anyway, although it takes pizzas down a peg in tastiness.

[Razgovory]

I was recently told that though the Chinese eat dogs and cats they find the eating of Lobsters barbaric.  Most Chinese households have a pet lobster and it's not uncommon to see people outside walking them on the sidewalk.  Different cultures I suppose.

[Eddie Teach]

I was recently told that though the Chinese eat dogs and cats they find the eating of Lobsters barbaric.  Most Chinese households have a pet lobster and it's not uncommon to see people outside walking them on the sidewalk.  Different cultures I suppose.

Why not just keep pet rocks and eat whatever you want?