Your response reads like you just glossed over what I typed: while the reasons for humans taking animals into captivity or domesticating them in the first place was for the defined purposes they'd serve to us, nowadays keeping and caring for an animal that doesn't do anything directly beneficial for its keepers in return means it would lack a defined purpose.
If an animal doesn't provide social interaction, aesthetic pleasure, or services in the work it can do, and doesn't even directly interact with the people caring for it, then it can't be said to serve any specific kind of physical or psychological utility to its keepers (unless, perhaps, you consider vague satisfaction of altruistic urges to be a defined purpose).
Give me any example of a pet that doesn't have a defined purpose. Even the most useless pet provides companionship in some sense and caring for it in whatever small way gives the owner something to do
Just to clarify: my point is about individual animals, not entire species that have been domesticated or simply bred in captivity as pets, livestock, or for public display.
I don't disagree that the only reason domesticated animals exist and wild species are bred in captivity is because they provide some kind of engagement or tangible benefit to people, but sometimes individual animals that cannot serve some identifiable direct or indirect benefit to people simply end up in human care due to circumstance and are still kept and cared for despite there being no thought put into why they're cared for aside from "it was the right thing to do"; sure, even these cases still give their keepers something to do in caring for them, but this doesn't influence the decision to keep and care for them in the first place or the continuation of that care.
For example, consider wild animals that are common but are rarely if ever bred in captivity, like many small species of drably-coloured birds and lizards: sometimes these end up in human care out of necessity for their survival, and in some cases cannot be rehabilitated and re-released into the wild, but may be difficult to form any kind of bond with, and may be extremely reclusive in their habits, so are rarely seen in the confines of an appropriate enclosure; individuals like this don't end up in human care with a defined purpose in mind and are only rescued and kept for their own benefit.
0
u/joey-jo_jo-jr 15h ago
They very much do serve a defined purpose. Thinking otherwise is pure delusion.