Original question by: @tetris11@lemmy.ml
By convincing ourselves that we can't.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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I think if animals could suddenly communicate with humans, those in power would be driving them to extinction even further as the animals would be very against the destruction of their homes and may hurt the bottom line.
If we had always been able to communicate with them, they might have rights.At least in some places.
Every which way. Humans are absolutely the very worst communicators on this earth. Rocks communicate better than we do!
„The goat is lying!!!“
That took me a moment.
In the US, we'd use it only to further exploit animals and further enrich the 1%.
Corporate America will immediately determine and then monetize all their needs. In a generation we'll have cats paying for enough mice to get them through the week with the last of their earnings from the previous 2 weeks of catching hundreds of mice for their employers.
Then there will be a Republican-led effort to get people to stop spaying and neutering them, so the 1% will always be assured there are enough hungry cats to keep the folks at the top wealthy.
Edit: Sounds fucking ridiculous that anyone would voluntarily create or work within such a system doesn't it?
"If you can talk, you can work!"
💯
I kinda like to think cats would have this sort of attitude though:
Cats would absolutely be anarchists LMAO
This nanny state for multi-leggers must end. Fancy Feast queens.
“Where are my testicles, Summer?”
Seriously though, there are so many ways conversations with animals could go wrong. Factory farming. Fur farms. Neutering, spaying and declawing. Eyestalk ablation. Medical and cosmetics testing. Bullfighting. Selective breeding and artificial insemination.
Can't find it right now but here was a great comic about giving a dog the power to speak and they said "give me some of that food you are eating" and the humans said "nope, this is our food" and the dog was so betrayed. Obviously if humans just -understood- that dogs wanted human food they would give it, right?
Right?!
We wouldn't like what they have to say, and would pretty quickly move from abusing them out of apathy to abusing them out of malice.
I mean, we have enough trouble being nice to slightly different humans, right?
Furries.
All they would have to do is ask why we are destroying their homes to make our own or why we raise so many of them just to slaughter and consume them.