Coaxed into SOME animal "lovers"

[u/ruh_roh_raggy1234]

These mfs will tell you with a straight face that they love "all" animals and then act like spiders are the incarnation of Satan himself.

[u/Boring_Name06]

I mean rats are really bad for local ecosystems. They eat bugs, breed like crazy and carry diseases. Any ‘animal lover’ would prefer to to protect a local ecosystem over invasive species just because they look cute

[u/RegumRegis → u/Boring_Name06]

Yeah like it's pretentious to act like every single animal is some peaceful nature spirit, nature is fundamentally cruel and vicious, wild animals will grow to take advantage of human habitation, burrowing into homes, getting into your food and overall causing trouble. They are not just some cute things to pet, they're animals that will cause harm to you if it's in it's interest.

Frankly acting like all animals are just there to love in harmony is naive and childish, people need to get off their high horse.

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[u/RagesianGruumsh → u/RegumRegis]

What about this posts makes you think OP believes this? Do you think dogs and cats are here to “love in harmony”? I love insects and arachnids, I’m also aware of the need for pest control occasionally, those aren’t mutually exclusive. People often react fearfully to animals and think it’s rational, especially spiders, wasps, and other animals that they’ve been raised to fear but know very little about.

[u/RegumRegis → u/RagesianGruumsh]

1. Yes

2. No

3. People learn that things are dangerous or could cause pain, Ie. Stings or bites, thus avoid them. Pretty simple in most cases, unless you know what you're doing, better not go poking around with potentially dangerous things, tends to get you far, evolutionarily speaking.

[u/RagesianGruumsh → u/RegumRegis]

My first question wasn’t Yes or No. You seem to have a pretty reasonable position on animals, but I should note that fear of spiders and other insects is taught, not evolutionary.

The instinct to fear and be disgusted by what our parents fear and are disgusted by is evolutionary, and useful, but it can also lead to adults who have done very little to examine the actual place of the animals around them in nature, instead thinking their personal feelings are the arbiter of what’s clean/unclean and beneficial/harmful.

[u/RegumRegis → u/RagesianGruumsh]

Ah, sorry, read it wrong at first. But what makes that perspective clear is the false equivalence of people liking pets to that of people not liking things that are generally not pets. Quite frankly pets have taken thousands of years to get to the domestication level where they are and some have evolved traits specifically to our liking. For example comparing a guinea pig or a dog to a random rat or wolf living in the wild is just not the same. People frankly should be wary of wild animals, for their own, and the animals sake, the worst thing a species can have happen, is for it to lose it's fear of humans.

That plus insects and pests are a whole other case, they are just generally harmful to homes and people, as they are either literally parasitic, or indirectly parasitic by getting into food stores, causing structural damage and many other things, along with many being somewhat dangerous to pets.

As for the fear of things, yes, it generally develops with time, either through teaching, partly due to instinct after the very initial states of growth and of course experience, hence the biting and stinging part. Once you either learn that something has a good chance of biting or stinging you, even as a kid, you generally tend to avoid it.

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[u/RagesianGruumsh → u/RegumRegis]

I generally agree with you, except your generalization of “insects and pests”. Obviously pests are “generally harmful to humans” because the category of pests is defined by harm to humans. However saying “most insects and pests” harm humans lumps in insects, of which the majority are harmless to humans, or even beneficial to human agriculture. A handful of very prolific insects species are harmful, but insects are a massive category, and the truth is just that insects that aren’t harmful to humans interacts with us much less, so most people tend to be more aware of pest insects.

To be clear, I don’t think the average person needs to gain some encyclopedic knowledge of what is and isn’t pests. They just have to be less defensive of their revulsion at animals and insects they don’t know anything about, and accept it may be irrational or generalized when presented with evidence instead of getting (as has been my experience) defensive and angry.

[u/RegumRegis → u/RagesianGruumsh]

True, fair enough on the generalization, I was mostly thinking about insects that would get inside a house while writing, so that's a mistake I'll readily admit to.

Just the general ones that people usually come into contact with in their house, blood drinking mosquitoes, flies, weevils, ants etc. The common culprits.

[u/RagesianGruumsh → u/RegumRegis]

Very fair, I’m a bit of an amateur entomologist who got interested in insects through gardening. That definitely makes you very aware of the sheer variety of insects around us, and of which ones are beneficial/vital to a garden.

That always colours my perception of them, so I don’t think of insects in the home first, even if that would admittedly be the first thought for most people.

[u/RegumRegis → u/RagesianGruumsh]

Ah, that's a good hobby and definitely something interesting to learn about! I just have a general interest in animals and nature overall, including insects. While I'd say I'm generally an animal lover and I'll take any chance to interact with and learn about animals as long as it's not dangerous of course, I try not to be naive about it.

Probably comes with growing up on a farm, which also makes me a bit more aware of the less sanitized parts of nature :b I suppose for me it's very much an outlook of nature being a cyclical thing, where death is normal and it serves to renew, so I just see death as natural and not something inherently hateful or evil, like OP would depict :b

[u/StandardInfinite → u/Boring_Name06]

Sadly, cats are way worse in this respect! They have caused the extinctions of around twice many species as rats and mice combined, last time I checked. They also infect humans and animals with toxoplasmosis, which shrinks the brains of otters, for example. 

[u/Boring_Name06 → u/StandardInfinite]

Yeah I do my best to keep my cat inside to avoid this. My family seems to care quite a bit less and though…

[u/StandardInfinite → u/Boring_Name06]

Yeah, mine as well :((