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Frivolous Poll of the Day: Piglet Eats a Grape


MercyA
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Your Reactions!  

96 members have voted

  1. 1. My reaction to Ophelia the Piglet enjoying her grape:

    • Totally adorable / squee / I am in love.
      31
    • That's pretty cute.
      39
    • I am indifferent to piglets eating grapes.
      17
    • Not cute.
      7
    • Ewww.
      2


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Adorable. I love animals. Except snakes. :)

 

Years ago, ds did a market hog for 4H and this reminded me how cute our Porker was. Pigs are surprisingly smart. They have the most adorable, floppy ears and ours loved it when we scratched him behind the ears. We never fed him a grape though...

 

Edited by Liz CA
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Adorable. I love animals. Except snakes. :)

 

Years ago, ds did a market hog for 4H and this reminded me how cute our Porker was. Pigs are surprisingly smart. They have the most adorable, floppy ears and ours loved it when we scratched him behind the ears. We never fed him a grape though...

 

They are super smart! Professor Donald Broom at Oxford University said that they “have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds.†I've read that they learned to play video games as quickly as chimpanzees (and were more interested in the games!) And here's an interesting paper that shows that they:

 

Have excellent long-term memories

Understand symbolic language

Have a sense of time, remember specific episodes in their past, and anticipate future events

Are excellent at navigating mazes and other spatial tasks

Play creatively

Live in complex social communities and easily distinguish other individuals, both pigs and human

Have an understanding of the perspective of others as shown in their ability to use tactical deception

Are emotional and exhibit empathy

Show a form of self-recognition and self-agency in their abilities to manipulate joysticks and use mirrors to find food

Have distinct personalities 

 

I  :001_wub: pigs.

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The smacking noises and baby talk give me the nails-on-a-chalkboard feel. But the pig is cute!

 

Me too.  Not the baby talk - the eating sounds.  I have misophonia and should have known better than to click...but baby pig!!!  I had my fingers jammed in my ears at the first sound. :-(

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They are super smart! Professor Donald Broom at Oxford University said that they “have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds.†I've read that they learned to play video games as quickly as chimpanzees (and were more interested in the games!) And here's an interesting paper that shows that they:

 

Have excellent long-term memories

Understand symbolic language

Have a sense of time, remember specific episodes in their past, and anticipate future events

Are excellent at navigating mazes and other spatial tasks

Play creatively

Live in complex social communities and easily distinguish other individuals, both pigs and human

Have an understanding of the perspective of others as shown in their ability to use tactical deception

Are emotional and exhibit empathy

Show a form of self-recognition and self-agency in their abilities to manipulate joysticks and use mirrors to find food

Have distinct personalities 

 

I  :001_wub: pigs.

 

 

That makes me feel really guilty about the bacon I ate yesterday.

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That makes me feel really guilty about the bacon I ate yesterday.

 

I understand, but, really, all animals have the capacity to suffer, so I feel guilty about eating the not-as-smart ones, too.

 

I'm guessing that doesn't make you feel any better, though.  ;)

 

ETA: Not preaching, just commiserating.

Edited by MercyA
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Adorable!

 

You would be hard-pressed to find an animal that I don't find adorable  :lol: . Rodents, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds...I love them all.

 

Yep, me too. And you can often find my daughter cooing over lizards and snakes and baby talking to spiders. Her life ambition is to have a goat farm. She loves their mischievousness! 

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It's funny--I can't stand it when people make smacking noises, but I love listening to animals eat. 

 

I'm this way too!  

 

My dog loves to eat apple pieces and it makes me giggle every time he crunches on one. The pig in the video kind of reminded me of that.  :001_wub:

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They are super smart! Professor Donald Broom at Oxford University said that they “have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds.†I've read that they learned to play video games as quickly as chimpanzees (and were more interested in the games!) And here's an interesting paper that shows that they:

 

Have excellent long-term memories

Understand symbolic language

Have a sense of time, remember specific episodes in their past, and anticipate future events

Are excellent at navigating mazes and other spatial tasks

Play creatively

Live in complex social communities and easily distinguish other individuals, both pigs and human

Have an understanding of the perspective of others as shown in their ability to use tactical deception

Are emotional and exhibit empathy

Show a form of self-recognition and self-agency in their abilities to manipulate joysticks and use mirrors to find food

Have distinct personalities 

 

I  :001_wub: pigs.

 

 

Ahhh Mercy. I already felt bad when our Porker had to go to the market...

Honestly, no mother was ever so relieved when ds chose something else the following year. I could not sleep the night before the last fair day and was a mess the day of the event.

Did I mention that ds is 26 and this was over 10 years ago - obviously still not completely processed this loss...

 

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Turkeys are still miserable in factory farms and in hatcheries.  I don't think lack of cuteness makes it acceptable to inflict abuse on an animal.  It feels different, but that is why I have a rational brain instead of just instinct - to tell myself that a cow or a pig or a turkey has as much right not to suffer unnecessarily as does a puppy or a kitten.

 

I did not think the piglet would be cute, but it was cute.

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Turkeys are still miserable in factory farms and in hatcheries.  I don't think lack of cuteness makes it acceptable to inflict abuse on an animal.  It feels different, but that is why I have a rational brain instead of just instinct - to tell myself that a cow or a pig or a turkey has as much right not to suffer unnecessarily as does a puppy or a kitten.

 

I did not think the piglet would be cute, but it was cute.

 

We've had chickens and two turkeys on our mini-farm around the same time we had the pig.

Cute or not, I did love them all.

Factory farming is horrible for chickens / turkeys. I am having a hard time discussing it since our girls (and boys) were free range.

There are humane ways to dispatch a bird (or other animals) where much less - if any - cortisol is dumped into their system.

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Yes, that's true, mine wasn't all that logical either.  I gave up dairy while nursing my 3rd because I just woke up one day and felt a strange sort of kinship with the mama cows.  

 

Plus, instinct is the source (Einstein would say, anyway) of all true revelation and understanding - logic/rationalization is just the layer we put on top of it.

 

Found the quote:

 

"The supreme task of the physicist is the discovery of the most general elementary laws from which the world-picture can be deduced logically. But there is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition [...]. ~ Albert Einstein"

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Yes, that's true, mine wasn't all that logical either.  I gave up dairy while nursing my 3rd because I just woke up one day and felt a strange sort of kinship with the mama cows.  

 

If anyone feels like having their heart completely broken, they can watch this video of a baby cow being taken away from his mama.

 

I've told this story here before, but I was once touring the dairy farm of a friend and saw a cow whose baby had just been taken away. The momma was still bloody from giving birth. She was obviously very distressed. Her eyes were bulging out of her head. I asked the young man giving the tour if she was missing her baby. He replied, "No, they don't care." We could hear her bellowing over and over again later on, and the young man said off-handedly, "She's calling for her baby." Talk about cognitive dissonance.  :(

Edited by MercyA
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Ahhh Mercy. I already felt bad when our Porker had to go to the market...

Honestly, no mother was ever so relieved when ds chose something else the following year. I could not sleep the night before the last fair day and was a mess the day of the event.

Did I mention that ds is 26 and this was over 10 years ago - obviously still not completely processed this loss...

 

I can only imagine how hard that must have been.   :grouphug:

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That's right, but starting somewhere is a better choice than no choice, kwim ?

 

Yes! I greatly admire consistency in these things, but it's better to do something than nothing.

 

There are some very easy things that can be done to reduce animal suffering and that honestly (I say to my shame) don't require much personal sacrifice on my part at all. I buy bath and beauty products that haven't been tested on animals. I don't buy leather or fur coats, belts, or purses. I don't buy new down, wool, or angora clothing. (I've accidentally bought two used down coats.) I don't buy veal, lamb, or fish. I buy coconut milk coffee creamer and rice milk for cereal. I only use eggs that I get for free. (My dad is a grocer and by law is not allowed to sell eggs from cartons that have been opened.)

 

I tend to eat things I know I shouldn't (like pork!) when I'm at family or church gatherings. It's easy to not make it for myself at home, but I need to be intentional about not eating it elsewhere, too. There's really no good reason for it. 

 

I have to limit my intake of soy, beans, and nuts due to their oxalate content (I get kidney stones) and their histamine content (I have chronic urticaria). I can't eat enough of them to get sufficient protein. I also get very anemic without any meat, even though I take iron. So it's difficult. But that doesn't mean I can't do anything, and I'm sure I can do more than I currently am.

 

Thanks for the encouragement, all.

Edited by MercyA
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I have to limit my intake of soy, beans, and nuts due to their oxalate content (I get kidney stones) and their histamine content (I have chronic urticaria). I can't eat enough of them to get sufficient protein. I also get very anemic without any meat, even though I take iron. So it's difficult. But that doesn't mean I can't do anything, and I'm sure I can do more than I currently am.

 

Thanks for the encouragement, all.

 

fwiw, I had several bouts of bad kidney stones during my first pregnancy and the couple years after & even needed lithotripsy but I've been fine on veg*n diet ever since I started supplementing with magnesium.

 

If you take magnesium it will bind with the oxalate in the stomach and be excreted that route, rather than leaving the oxalate to float around and start crystallizing in the kidneys. 

 

I eat tons of high oxalate foods with no recurrence of stones. I do have one kidney with some slight and probably permanent physical damage from the horrible stones years ago, and I have some herbal remedies from Europe which I use as a cleanse to flush gunk out of it every 6 months or so but that's it.... 

 

 

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Eh. I voted indifferent. Baby animals are always cute but I've seen way cuter videos than this one. It's cute but only because it's a baby. 

 

Also, am I the only one who thought the title referred to Piglet of Pooh fame? I was already trying to picture Piglet eating a grape.

Edited by Lady Florida.
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