#animals

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man. ↗

— Mark Twain

#dogs #different

the mangrove killfish, lives in South American and southern US coastal swamps that can either dry up or become so toxic that the fish has to find refuge in the mud or by flipping and jumping across land. Amazingly, its skin and gills change so the killfish can breathe air and survive out of the water for as long as ten weeks. ↗

— Karen Shanor

#change

Daisy didn't just change our lives, she changed our destiny. ↗

— Maryam Faresh

#cats #cesar-millan #deafblind #dogs #inspirational

I think it's cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I'd feel honored. ↗

— Ke$ha

#death #fashion #roadkill #death

It's brutal out there. A bear will eat a lactating ewe alive, starting with her udders. as a rule, animals in the wild don't get good deaths surrounded by their loved ones. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#food #death

The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other's colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their being. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer. ↗

— Louise Erdrich

#fate #humanity #myth #nature #design

...if he sees his fellow humans as anything more than complicated animals. Not so different from a deer or a wolf, knitted together with the same sinew but in another design. ↗

— Benjamin Percy

#design

I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends - the fear, the terror, the pain - and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being. ↗

— Rai Aren

#animals #compassion #equality #ethical-vegan #kindness

Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#eating #meat #responsibility #slaughter #equality

I am no theologian, and do not have the answers to these questions, and one of the reasons I enjoy the animals on the farm so much is that they don't think about their pain, or question it, they accept it and endure it, true stoics. I have never heard a donkey or cow whine (although I guess dogs do). I told my friend this: pain, like joy, is a gift. It challenges us, tests, defines us, causes us to grow, empathize, and also, to appreciate its absence. If nothing else, it sharpens the experience of joy. The minute something happens to me that causes pain, I start wondering how I can respond to it, what I can learn from it, what it has taught me or shown me about myself. This doesn't make it hurt any less, but it puts it, for me, on a more manageable level. I don't know if there is a God, or if he causes me or anybody else to hurt, or if he could stop pain. I try to accept it and live beyond it. I think the animals have taught me that. The Problem of Pain is that it exists, and is ubiquitous. The Challenge of Pain is how we respond to it. ↗

— Jon Katz

#farm #pain #problem #experience