Sad but cute ! He must be the Forrest Gump of penguins...
This is another more factual based talk titled "What animals are thinking and feeling, and why it should matter"
It seems like animals world-wide are going extinct...Why should they keep fighting? ....The suffering of life may not be worth the orgasm?....They can always commit infanticide on their youth. When I was growing up, a family member raised rabbits. When the mother is in distress from humans or her conditions, she will kill her young to save them from brutality. I think that is a kind of necessary gesture...
Like you, I'd make a huge difference between the artifical life we create for them and the natural one which we influence...
That said, just being fact based, the nature's cruelty is diversified. It's not all tenderness, even before the human gets involved with its evilness. The pity is often absent, with all kinds of evolution tactics.
In the wild, the cuckoo gets rid of another bird's eggs behind the parents back, to replace it with his to assure a delegated uprising with no effort. It's a cheating technic of energy minimisation that begins by a deliberate act of violence. Some parents also kill their youth if too weak to priviledge the strong ones if ressources are lacking. Several newborn animals attack to kill their brotherhood as a first instinct of survival if it means getting more attention.
There are insects who enslave other insects for their benefit without a symbiotic relationship, similarly to how we breed. Others have mastered agricultural competency before we invented them, harming plants ? which are surprising living creatures, etc
Before the human era, most species like 98% disappeared, just from the darwinian evolution.
In that case, their lives belongs to them. For the most part, aren't they navigating through their starting conditions with acceptance, meeting with adaptation ? Their suicidal intents remain mysterious. Their exposure to suffering is righteously concerning though. Once it gets dark, I don't think it's quite comparable to ours, except accidents (wars, hunger, etc). Our survival is more or less assured compared to their paths, which freed will be an adventurous journey of maintenance, until it breaks.
I do believe we know very little about the point of view of animals, and every time we try to, it is from our limited perspective...
Personally, my intimate conviction is their consciousness is unrelated to their size, appearance, features. Just like there are genius severe autistic children, trapped in a body, I imagine a cow might have an unsuspected inner world beyond the aloofness.
Some sensitivity could be foolishly mechanical (there are unicellular blobs who appear to show intelligent learning abilities or solving problems with fluids and chemistry) but could the rest be about energy, just like Einstein hypothesized that the spirit might not originate from the material or die when unlinked ?
On a positive note, there's always friendship to save the day ;)
