Does poverty play into this? I'd love to see the same type of graph but with poverty instead of percent Baptist. higher or lower correlation?

I was in Dublin in 2023 and they had a similar banner then. 🥰🏳️‍🌈

Hi Christine! I've got an idea for this. What's the best way for me to contact you to discuss it? Thanks!

47 seconds is 10 years in dog time.

1917 Alexander Graham Bell: “[The unchecked burning of
fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect.” “The
net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house."

So irritating that climate change is veeeery old news and we still aren't fixing it.

1824 Joseph Fourier proposes greenhouse effect
1856 Eunice Newton Foote experimentally confirms greenhouse effect
1859 John Tyndall measures gases’
absorption
1896 Svante Arrhenius derives CO2 greenhouse formula

Hmm. Fair enough. I guess that's not how I've thought of it, I've always thought that the perp at least has to know that they are causing suffering for it to be cruel. But I'll accept your definition and update my thinking accordingly!

My point being, I don't think predators are cruel, even if they enjoy hunting, & they also make prey suffer. Theyre only cruel if they enjoy the suffering of the prey for the sake of the suffering itself. There may be some species that can & do, but I think it's rare, bc it's cognitively advanced.

So the dog is only cruel if the dog likes the squeak because it wants to make the prey suffer. It's more likely that dogs like the squeak because its associated with hunting & eating (evolutionarily pleasurable because it allows them to survive), not specifically with the suffering of the prey.

Agree. But I think of cruelty as enjoying the suffering of others (for the sake of the suffering itself)...

Agree 100%. Various types of evidence would be needed to decide that the emotions are the same for a given behavior. We also have no way to really understand what cat "happiness" truly feels like to a cat, even if we have a whole bunch of evidence that cat happiness exists!

Correct, and also there's no reason that the same emotion-behavior link can't exist in both cats and humans (similar neuroanatomy). Scientists look for more evidence than just "humans have emotion x thus cats do too." There are multiple ways to figure out an animal's emotional states.

However, I think few animals enjoy causing suffering in others, b/c that is not fitness enhancing. So I agree that few other animals are likely to be as cruel as humans (& they also might not have the cognitive ability to understand the suffering they are causing).

The leading hypothesis for the evolution of emotions is to drive animals toward fitness-enhancing situations & away from harmful ones. So our best understanding of emotions is that they drive behavior (e.g. The suffering of hunger and the pleasure of eating driving foraging behavior).

I appreciate that you didn't assert this very confidently. So you will probably be interested to learn that scientists (comparative psychologists, animal cognition scientists, animal welfare scientists) are quite confident that at least mammals most likely have a similar emotional landscape as us.

I was honored to attend one of those lessons when I was in his area. He taught about being a humble servant, like the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Afterwards he graciously received each group who came to speak with him and let them take photos with him.

Oxytocin and prolactin are the hormones that cause milk production and letdown.

I had a praying mantis for a class pet once, it was awesome to watch, but I didn't let the students hold it.