I hear my own family members say it: "That’s cruel!", when some child is revealed to have ripped the legs off of a daddy long-legs for fun, or that squashes bugs just because all bugs look like little alien monsters.
I get the sentiment of the statement, but I disagree. Because I have thought too much about the topic.
I use two metrics for determining if something is animal cruelty:
-
Brain function
-
Reproductive strategy of the species (k versus r selection)
Brain function is the big one, but these are related topics. Species with higher brain complexity and function tend to be k-selected species, meaning, basically, that they have few offspring and live a long time (like an elephant) versus r-selected species, who usually have a lower brain function and live a shorter life (like a mouse).
I don’t think you can be cruel to species with low brain function and are r-selected, in general. Why?
Well, what is cruelty? My definition boils down to "the intentional causation of suffering in another being."
So when my kids call an act cruel, the being must be able to feel some level of pain, or get a sense of suffering, from the experience.
Now, the k- and r-selection criteria doesn’t hold water on its own; I require brain function too, which is related, but not perfectly. For example, I used mice as an example of r-selection. As an r-selected mammal mice can probably (I don’t know this, just guessing) sense pain and suffering in their little brains and nervous systems to a degree that I’d say you can be cruel to a mouse, as you can to other rodents (beavers are rodents; did you know?). To quibble a little bit, I’d also say you have to be trying hard to be cruel to a mouse. Mice live a terrible, short, life of scarcity, hunger, and terror at the creatures always trying to kill them, so their baseline for the level of discomfort that constitutes suffering is different than yours (for a human example, go watch the fight between John Jones and Thiago Santos; Santos fought the majority of the fight with completely torn ligaments in his knee; be assured, his standard for what constitutes suffering is probably different from yours and mine, and he’s of the same species). So yes, if I trap a mouse and then pull its legs off while it’s alive, I am being cruel, but it’s not the same as pulling the legs off of a trapped wolf, in terms of suffering level.
On the other hand, some fish are k-selected, and the jury is out about how well they feel pain, and whether there’s any registration of the concept of suffering in their brains. I tend to think that they probably have something close enough to concept of suffering that you can perhaps be cruel to fish, but this is sort of my 50-50 one. I can be convinced either way.
I draw the line at the spineless critters among us. Technically speaking, I don’t think you can be cruel to invertebrates (insects, or the lobsters that you boil alive, for example). These are r-selected species that don’t have a high enough brain function to suffer.
Of course, it’s not always about being cruel or not. It’s probably a bad idea to anthropomorphize a lobster, but there’s no more reason to step on it and crush it on the sidewalk than there is to smash a TV you come across in the forest. Wanton destruction, especially of a living thing, is not good. And if you’re a Christian, you ought to feel a burden to take care of the lobster, either eating it or placing it back in the ocean (and you clean up the TV in the woods instead of smashing it everywhere). Why? Because our God, in whose image we are created, is a creative and nurturing God of order, not a chaotic, destructive God. So create, nurture, promote order. Reject chaotic behavior and wanton destruction.
I believe that concern for most r-selected species and species with lower brain function should be focused on the population of the species. If there’s a spider that’s nearly extinct, it’s an abomination of our fundamental task as humans (to care for God’s creation) if we let our children step on the creature as if it’s the dime-a-dozen jumping spider. Not because the creature is suffering, but because God created this wonderful animal, and placed it in its ecosystem to serve an important role (it has extrinsic value), and he called it good (it has intrinsic value), and placed it in our care.
So care for dogs, cats, orangutans, and whales (k-selected species with high brain function), because they can really suffer, and care for r-selected species with low brain function (spiders, mice, and lobsters) because the creator has asked you to tend the garden. Wanton destruction of life is wrong. It’s just not (always) cruel.
Now, also form a Christian garden tending perspective, it’s sometimes necessary to be destructive to a local population of a species, in order to promote a robust ecosystem, as well as human health and happiness (almost always related). I have been trapping mice in my chicken coop for a long time. It can be pretty brutal. The mice suffer sometimes, though I’ll spare you the details. Still, mice as a species are thriving, and it will be unhealthy if I let their numbers explode (they will, as an r-selected species with too few natural predators around and too much easy access to chicken food). If I had an elephant problem, or even a wolf problem, in the chicken coop, well, let’s just say things would be different. Things would also be different if the field mouse was going extinct. I’d feel an obligation to promote the health of their population, as I do the health of the honeybees in my area (our yard holds tons of clover, which I avoid mowing frequently because the bees love it, even though we suffer about five bee stings per year, as a family, for it).
No dictionaries were harmed in the writing of this post. The terms used, and their definitions, come from my own semi-educated head. I was wrong once before, so it’s conceivable I got something wrong here.
Note that some members of the Farm crew will disagree with this assessment. Perhaps I can compel one of them to write a rebuttal.