How did I get here? Well, I was asked, "if you could be any animal...?"
I'm thinking way too long about the question in terms of the logistics involved. So I stop myself and just blurt out my favorite animal, "Cheetah!"
Their response was, "Nah, their life is hard. They're always on the hunt for food; you always gotta run like crazy just too eat; you don't have a long life expectancy, and it's always hot."
Baffled, I said, "why are you projecting human emotions on to a cheetah? The cheetah doesn't have any concepts of age, or expressing awareness of abnormal temperature, or 'I'm sick of running'."
This was the end of this exchange; but my brain wouldn't drop it. It pondered, "animals definitely feel fear, so they surely must feel the opposite of fear." To which I wondered, "what motivates animals to care for and protect it's young?" Humans are animals obviously and it is naturally what we must have done instinctually as early humans that we are even here. But I would argue as human mothers today, it's learned behavior and love. So my question, I think, is: Do animals tend to their young out of learned behavior, instincts, or love? And if animals are capable of love, why would we ever kill such a creature? Since, obviously, we have decided it's okay to kill animals and eat animals, is what motivates us the same as it is for animals; an instinct to survive?
