I do not believe animals feel pain. I do not believe they are conscious. I believe they are little (or sometimes big) natural creatures with a brain that is a shadow of the human brain but, even more so, without the ability to interpret their surroundings with the same awareness of man, who was designed “in Gods image”, which animals were not.
Animals are “meat on the hoof”, which require no refrigeration as long as they are kept functioning. As a bonus, they also serve the same purpose for adults and children that a teddy bear serves for small children. If my wife dies before me, I will get a Golden Retriever and name him Chester. I will not get him “fixed”.
Your belief on this is religious, which is fine, and most of us are happily eating loads of animals. But I don't agree with your belief that animals are sort of machines or teddy bears, both of which are man made. And in terms of awareness, your average farm animal may not be especially keen, but I do not want to test my awareness of surroundings against a grizzly bear, lion, etc that has decided to hunt me.
Yes, they do. Take it from someone who's had to patch a few of them up.
I've read some wild things on this board but this is right near the top.
You might want to look up excerpts of Ken Ailabek's (sp?) book on the Soviet bio-weapon testing on animals at the Biopepriat facility. Based on the behavior of the chimps they were testing weapons on it is impossible to maintain your conclusion.
My cat can feel pain and I assure you is a perfectly conscious creature. As advanced anywhere near as a human, well no, but aware just the same. I can't for the life of me figure out what possible experience you might have had to believe what you do. Are you fully conscious?
Here's a little experiment to try to test your hypothesis. Light a cigarette and tape it onto a 6' stick. Sneak up behind a pitbull and hold the lit cigarette against his rump until it starts to burn into the flesh.
Get back to us and let us know if it showed any indication of feeling pain.
Your understanding of animals' minds is not based on facts.