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Answering Arguments Against Animal Rights |
| Part XII -- Argument Nine: Killing animals is part of our nature |
Argument nine: killing animals is part of our nature.
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Carnivores have claws. They perspire through their tongues.
They have sharp, pointed front teeth.
They secrete acidic saliva, have no flat back molar teeth, have strong hydrochloric
stomach acid, and an intestinal tract only three times their body length
(in order to quickly eliminate decaying meat.)
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All of this is also true of omnivores because omnivores were once carnivores
who have evolved to the point where they don't require meat to live.
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By contrast, humans and other herbivores have no claws, perspire through pores
in their skin, have no sharp pointed front teeth, have stomach acid twenty times
less strong than carnivores, and have intestinal tracts twelve times their body length.
We know that we are not carnivores or omnivores because eating meat causes health problems for us,
such as clogging of the arteries and cancer of the bowels.
Since we are not carnivores, it is against our nature to kill.
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A variation of this argument states that it's part of our nature to kill
other animals simply because we've been doing it for so long.
But just because a practice has been carried on for a long time, that does
not make the practice natural.
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War has been going on since the dawn of man, as has slavery, the battering
of women, the abuse of children, and any other crime that you may care to mention.
So the mere fact that humans have engaged in an activity for
millennia does not make that activity natural or moral.
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