Dog on the menu for Chinese astronauts

[T.Neo]

You can not have a cat to herd your sheeps or to have it as a "guide cat". Of course you can't do so with any dog as well. But you can't do it with no cat.

Basing an organism's intelligence on the ability to herd sheep is very scientific...

A dog "loves" anyone he can expect to get a piece of sausage from. I wouldn't go so far to call it love altough it might be our impression. I think dogs know very well that humans are their best providers.

Humans are only their best providers when it comes to it.

You might be getting confused about what love is. It is an emotional connection. This served dogs well in the wild in their typical social groups, and is carried over to relationships with humans.

You can't replace your parents or your children like many people get one pet after another or just stuff their dead pets.

Parents are another case, but if one were bad enough they could "replace" a child. I do know of people who replace their pets... either that or they just give them the same names over and over, but I don't particularly enjoy the idea of the former.

And I suppose one could stuff their own parents or children if they wanted to...

It's a difference, unless one has social problems and prefers animal friends over human friends.

Why would preferring animal "friends" over human companions be a social problem? Seems a little judgemental to me.

It is not even healthy, human flesh is slightly toxic for humans.

Do you have a reference? This is fascinating.

 

[AirSimming]

I would never do cannibalism. This is something that has nothing to do with my instincts (of which I am pretty well aware), but with a psychological disorder, that can be culturally conditioned into people. You can convince people that cannibalism as last resort action could save their life. That is a lie, of course. If you survive long enough with human meat inside your body, you would have survived without even longer.

You are certainly aware of your instincts, under the normal circumstances of your daily life. But if you find youself in a certain situation in which you might have never been before and you are not prepared and not trained for at all, you potentially would experience yourself in a different way.

That it's a psychological disorder that is culturally conditioned into people which causes cannibalism, is something that for example British lawyers were thinking when cannibalism in seafaring was still waved aside as fish story. People were thinking that this could never happen within their "modern culture", until the Mignonette yacht and other cases like the Donner Party took place. All those cases had on thing in common: an almost hopeless situation. That the involved persons were not comming from "such a culture" is what makes historians and other scientists interested in. But it's still a taboo subject.

By the way, I think that it is a myth that human meat is toxic just like drinking distilled water would kill you.

 

[T.Neo]

By the way, I think that it is a myth that human meat is toxic just like drinking distilled water would kill you.

Are you suggesting human meat is healthy?

Perhaps, then, I should eat only humans now. Since I am a human, the best food for me would be other humans. I bet it has detoxifying properties and is full of nutrients...

 

[Urwumpe]

By the way, I think that it is a myth that human meat is toxic just like drinking distilled water would kill you.

Prove me wrong. If not on the human meat, on the distilled water.

Distilled water does indeed kill you: if you drink it as replacement for normal water over a longer period of time. Once doesn't kill you more than normal water would. But over a week, you could reach deadly levels, especially if your food does not compensate for it.

The same applies to human meat - there are some illnesses around that strangely only appear in tribes with existing ritual cannibalism (eating your dead for taking a part of the soul with you), that range from forms of intoxication to Creutzfeld-Jacob symptoms (named Kuru in the Indonesian).

 

[Hartmann]

So?
We eat cows, and India don't protest, we eat pigs and Israel don't protest.
Some African tribes still eat people in their rituals, and no one seems to object.

Yes true

I eat horse as a lot of people in europe ,and is very acepted.

if they want dog. cat, insects or other things what is the problem ?

 

[AirSimming]

You might be getting confused about what love is. It is an emotional connection. This served dogs well in the wild in their typical social groups, and is carried over to relationships with humans.

If you disappear and somebody else would take the master role, the dog will also love its new master. For the dog it doesn't really matter. He will be fine and happy with any pleasant master i.e "love" him.

Relationships between humans and animals are something totally different than relationships between humans, due to our consciousness and needs for conversation and other things you can't do with animals. As sweet and as peaceful as animals might seem, they are simply no replacement for loved ones and friends (at least not in my case luckily). Otherwise it's sad for those lonely or socially weak persons. I fell sorry for them.

 

[Urwumpe]

If you disappear and somebody else would take the master role, the dog will also love its new master. For the dog it doesn't really matter. He will be fine and happy with any pleasant master i.e "love" him.

You don't have much experience with dogs, do you? Dogs are actually suffering pretty much under such changes, it is the same with their ancestors, wolves. Changes in the hierarchy are never taken that easy. They rarely suffer their whole life long, but it does happen.

You can also observe it for some cats. While cats generally see humans as nuisance, in the best case as servant, there are also known cases where cats show depression symptoms after the death of their main human contact. I think for cats, in my personal experience, that it is not because of the human person, but of the changed world around them...cats are very habitual animals.

 

[AirSimming]

Prove me wrong. If not on the human meat, on the distilled water.

Distilled water does indeed kill you: if you drink it as replacement for normal water over a longer period of time. Once doesn't kill you more than normal water would. But over a week, you could reach deadly levels, especially if your food does not compensate for it.

Well, we did even drink it in the chemistry lessons because most of the pupils thought it is deadly, just as usual. Drinking only distilled water can cause equal problems like almost any single-sided diet, but it doesn't "kill" you. It's really just a myth. Some people drink distilled water because they believe it's good. Of course it is clean, but honestly it just tastes like nothing. But you should get the missing minerals from elsewhere if you only drink distilled water and nothing else instead. But who drinkes only water and nothing else?

Let's see what Wikipedia says...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_distilled_water

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destilliertes_Wasser#Wirkung_auf_den_K.C3.B6rper

The same applies to human meat - there are some illnesses around that strangely only appear in tribes with existing ritual cannibalism (eating your dead for taking a part of the soul with you), that range from forms of intoxication to Creutzfeld-Jacob symptoms (named Kuru in the Indonesian).

I don't know much about human meat. But I can't imagine that it's much different to some animal meat. I think what might be risky is the "storage". I also think the often called addiction to eat human meat is more psychological rather than physical.

 

[Urwumpe]

But you should get the missing minerals from elsewhere if you only drink distilled water and nothing else instead.

Not automatically - you would need to pay attention to a proper diet, since many kinds of food, especially if you eat mostly meat, would drain you additionally of the needed minerals.

I don't just know the exact ions that you need to get, should be a tiny bit of salt with some extras. Magnesium was among the threatened minerals, but I think this is more related to the meat than the distilled water.

 

[AirSimming]

You don't have much experience with dogs, do you? Dogs are actually suffering pretty much under such changes, it is the same with their ancestors, wolves. Changes in the hierarchy are never taken that easy. They rarely suffer their whole life long, but it does happen.

You can also observe it for some cats. While cats generally see humans as nuisance, in the best case as servant, there are also known cases where cats show depression symptoms after the death of their main human contact. I think for cats, in my personal experience, that it is not because of the human person, but of the changed world around them...cats are very habitual animals.

My family (my parents and my sister) has 4 dogs: two Borger Colies, a Bavarian mountain-scenthound and a dachshund. They actually don't mind who is taking care of them. As you said, it's certainly rare cases.

---------- Post added at 09:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 PM ----------

Not automatically - you would need to pay attention to a proper diet, since many kinds of food, especially if you eat mostly meat, would drain you additionally of the needed minerals.

Not only because of this, but it's certainly always good to eat more fruit and vegetable than "currywurst" :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Not only because of this, but it's certainly always good to eat more fruit and vegetable than "currywurst" :lol:

Don't attack the holy phosphate hose! It is the local specialty of my hometowns.

But we sure don't have such a digestion system for ONLY digesting meat... the focus is more on a higher proportion of vegetables and fruits. But also not all kinds of plants.

 

[AirSimming]

Don't attack the holy phosphate hose! It is the local specialty of my hometowns.

But we sure don't have such a digestion system for ONLY digesting meat... the focus is more on a higher proportion of vegetables and fruits. But also not all kinds of plants.

In my hometown we say "glutamate rod" or "eyes, lips, and ass" (you never exactly know what's in it) :lol:

I love it, sometimes. But of course vegetables and fruits still prevail.

Just one thing I still wanted to reply:

that you would eat the dog of your parents, if this is your "only" chance, already suggests that you won't look very hard for "other" chances.

I might have expressed myself incorrectly. I actually mean that I would do so in a certain, hopeless scenario. For example, if you are on a lifeboat in the middle of an ocean, or lost somewhere in the desert without any experience and preparation, there is actually no other chances you could look for. That's what makes the happened cannibalism to western people an interesting phenomena. The lifeboat scenario was real for the crew of the Mignonette yacht (the desert scenario also was a real one for a group of American settler). But they didn't even have animals aboard, not even freshwater if I remember correctly. Grabbing a fish with your blank hands should be pretty much impossible in a lifeboat, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. So they did not only eat their young, deathly ill mate to survive. It's quite uggly, but they even did drink his blood because they've had just nothing else. In the end, they got rescued by a German ship after weeks if I remember correctly. I don't know if they would have survived without that cannibalism.

Of course it's just individual cases. But it happened more than just one time, to people of so called civilized countries, although I don't really call Europe civilized in the 19th Century. But it even happened in the 20th Century as we know. The interesting question is: what would I do in such a surreal situation? What would I think? Since it was actually normal people who did it, not cannibals. It seems that the will to survive can generate the most unexpected evil of humans, of course strongly dependant on the situation. Even I can't imagine to do something like that. But I can not 100% expect how exactly I would react in such a situation. Today we have GPS, mobile phones, we are usually better prepared etc. So the chances that something like this happens again anytime soon are rather rare I guess. But potentially it seems to be possible even for "civilized" people.

 

[T.Neo]

They actually don't mind who is taking care of them.

Are you sure? Perhaps they don't mind you feeding them for a day, but they will mind when the social environment around them is disrupted long-term.

As you said, it's certainly rare cases.

No, he said lifelong suffering is rare. This does not mean that suffering is rare.

But we sure don't have such a digestion system for ONLY digesting meat... the focus is more on a higher proportion of vegetables and fruits. But also not all kinds of plants.

Indeed.

He who thinks humans are herbivores, should be content with a field of grass...

 

[Ghostrider]

Are you suggesting human meat is healthy?

Perhaps, then, I should eat only humans now.

Please don't. Humans nowadays are full of toxins and all sorts of unhealthy stuff. If you really want long pig, at least eat some hunter-gatherers from the Amazon or the like, but don't eat townsfolk. Above all, keep away from liver, kidneys and assorted icky parts.

 

[AirSimming]

Are you sure? Perhaps they don't mind you feeding them for a day, but they will mind when the social environment around them is disrupted long-term.

It was already disturbed for more than 6 weeks without any problems.

Please don't. Humans nowadays are full of toxins and all sorts of unhealthy stuff. If you really want long pig, at least eat some hunter-gatherers from the Amazon or the like, but don't eat townsfolk. Above all, keep away from liver, kidneys and assorted icky parts.

Meat generally is not good for regularly consumption I think. Not that the meat which comes from factory farming also can be "full of toxins". But meat also causes a hard time for the digestive organ. I think meat once or twice a week is okay.

I think that people who do not smoke, drink and especially do not swallow pills/medicine all along, and don't suffer from stress, are not really "full of toxins". That's a little bit exaggerated like people tend to exaggerate almost everything. We all should be dead about ten times already, beginning by acrylamide in chips, going on with fine dust up to the NZCFS (New Zealand Cow Fart Syndrom). But actually, today you have rather good chances to become rather old and remain healthy. In my case, I statistically (depending on the region I live in and how I live) might go beyond the 90s with all of the toxins within my body. Thanks that I never even suffered from anything else than just a short cold

 

[Suzy]

Extract I just remembered from a book ("Letters from St. Petersburg"):

Tatiana lived to regret surviving Pavlovsk. Within two months the German Wehrmacht reached the outskirts of the City and surrounded it, and thus began the horrors of the 90 day Siege of Leningrad. Tatiana and her three pet dogs, strays she had long ago rescued, eked out a shaky existence on rations and handouts for nearly two years. Unable to bring herself to eat the rats or indeed dogs that became standard fare in the final months of the siege, and horrified by the fixated stares of desperate neighbours at her pets, Tatiana barricaded herself in her apartment. There she and her loyal old dogs lay together on her big bed and silently succumbed to starvation.

---------- Post added at 02:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:37 PM ----------

If you disappear and somebody else would take the master role, the dog will also love its new master. For the dog it doesn't really matter. He will be fine and happy with any pleasant master i.e "love" him.

Not necessarily...

 

[T.Neo]

It was already disturbed for more than 6 weeks without any problems.

Perhaps you were just not looking properly, as you clearly have disbelief in such a concept.

But meat also causes a hard time for the digestive organ.

Not really. The human digestive system can cope with meat. But if you eat only meat and no fiber, for example, then yes you will have a problem.

 

[AirSimming]

Not really. The human digestive system can cope with meat. But if you eat only meat and no fiber, for example, then yes you will have a problem.

Meat, especially red one, is hard to digest.

 

[T.Neo]

I remain skeptical about that statment, given what you've said about human flesh, or example.

I've heard of an excess of red meat causing arthritis or hypertension, but never digestion issues. Perhaps this is a personal problem for you.

 

[AirSimming]

I've heard of an excess of red meat causing arthritis or hypertension, but never digestion issues. Perhaps this is a personal problem for you.

Just ask a doctor or the next nutritionist. They'll guess to eat less red meat (like I said maybe 1 or 2 times a week is enough), and better poultry instead. Just like smoking, alcohol and fat, meat-rich cost is one of the basic risk factors of bowel cancer due to its bad digestive properties. Daily consumption of red meat is expected by some studies to increase the risk of bowel cancer by up to 50%.