Activity

When you kill a human…you eliminate a sentient, feeling, conscious person and deprive them of passing on their ideas, principals, lessons and memories to others, take away one person who has fostered and cared for others, you traumatize countless people (including perhaps yourself with the guilt you feel later).

When you cut a tree, a plant falls down and another will hopefuly grow in its place. No memories are lost. No knowledge or ideas can no longer be based on. Other trees are not traumatized. The tree does not lose the sense of fulfilment of completing its life because it never had it to begin with. The only repercussions might be; a few animals have to find new homes, someone might lose a beautiful looking tree in their backyard and there wlll be one less place to find shade.
Benefits:

Benefits of taking down a tree include: removing an invasive plant, having fuel and paper products, removing possble fire or storm hazards.

Benefits of killing someone: all pretty terribly bad ones

As for animals, those fall somewhere in between a tree falling (almost zero consequences) to killing a human (traumatic and vicious consequences).

And it also depends very much on the animal. If it is a drone ant or a rattle snake…you are leaning heavily close towards as significant as a tree falling. There are however some animals who probably (though it is not certain) suffer much more by a fellow being killed. These are almost entirely mammals with a few exceptions out there (octopuses, parrots, ravens). While they clearly do suffer to some extent when a family member or part of their pack dies (and the victim suffering while dying) it is extremely unlikely they face the same kind of debilitating trauma that humans do, nor could that animal have passed on significant ideas, memories, nor did the animal lose the chance to fulfil any special plans or goals. Most importantly, animals do not internalize emotions as we do (if they do at all) and there is no evidence to show that they relive trauma as we do.

I can think of two differences: the grief and trauma of other individuals, and the loss to the individual who is being killed / cut down / eradicated. In both, the effect on humans is the greatest out of the three cases.

@Daniel ,

We are talking about two different things. One is the experience of suffering pain. As I said, mammals outwardly show signs of suffering physical pain (when sick, injured) and also emotional distress (when cornered, abandoned, ostracised, kicked out of the nest, lose a relative/owner).

But I’m talking about the suffering that comes when you kill an animal (lets just assume its quick and painless).

The animal itself doesn’t suffer. It is the fellow animals who might. And with some solitary mammals,there will be absolutely no one there to miss them (and there are lots of solitary animals…exponentially larger amount than hermit humans). Animals feel distress at losing members of the pack or family, but there is little to no evidence that after the painful loss, they continue to constantly relive the trauma, or that animals can internalize the traumatic event, cripple and debilitate them.

As I also mentioned, there is more to the loss than just suffering. A human has knowledge and memory they can pass on to others, they can make differences in their family and community, they have plans they want to fulfil. Mammals, comparatively do not pass on knowledge that can radically change people/society and the do not have non-biological goals that they wish to fulfill.

I agree, mammals show signs of suffering, I personally accept that they do suffer and I find animal abuse disgusting. However there is no evidence that they internalize that pain in the way we do (physical and mentally crippling, relived, body altering, perspective altering, character changing, post-traumatic-stress inducing). At least not remotely to the extent it effects us. Nor is there evidence that they internalize psychological trauma remotely close to as we do.