Going a bit on a tangent here as far as the topic of the article, but... It's mind-blowing and depressing to realize that there are apparently millions of Americans who believe that dogs can't feel pain.
The average American who may not care that much is one thing.
But it's even more mind-blowing how many vegetarians believe fish can't feel pain, so while they reject eating pork, beef or chicken because the poor animals suffer, they still find it fine to eat fish.
Those are the informed people! If they don't understand, why should the uninformed ones?
"But it's even more mind-blowing how many vegetarians believe fish can't feel pain, so while they reject eating pork, beef or chicken because the poor animals suffer, they still find it fine to eat fish."
I know this trope, but I have actually never met a vegetarian who think like this.
I know vegetarians who eat fish, because it is further away, from humans, DNA wise. Or in general they just feel fine with eating fish and they do what they feel fine with, which makes sense to me. But I never actually met a person who believe fish (or animals in general) can't feel pain. I met many who are ignorant of pain of others, yes, but I never met one who actually believe that. Is this a US thing?
IMHO if you eat fish youre just not a vegetarian but pascaterian. There are strong roots for this behaviour in the Catholic faith, which prohibits eating non-fish meat on certain days. Funnily enough that doesn't include beavers, platypuses and some other water-dwelling animals [1].
It gets worse. Did you know that most doctors once believed that infants couldn’t feel pain?
“Until as recently as the 1980s, researchers assumed newborns did not have fully developed pain receptors, and believed that any responses babies had to pokes or pricks were merely muscular reactions.” [https://time.com/3827167/this-is-a-babys-brain-on-pain/]
As a result, doctors would perform surgeries without anesthesia on newborns. This is absolutely mind boggling.
