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Originally Posted by Masa Lets put it this way if an animal is afraid of a dungeon it would never go there, but if a human is afraid of a dungeon he can decide to there anyway.
Humans can control themselves despite instincs but animals are controlled by their instincs. To animals there is just breeding and surviving but to humans there's much more to it. |
I have to disagree with this as a blanket statement. In the animal kingdom a mother (and sometimes a father) will do something that she is frightened of to protect her babies. They can make a cognitive assessment of the situation and decide based on the factors involved if there is a reason. You can also get peer pressure in some animal packs.
Where I grew up we were right on the edge of a washed out riverbed that lead into the mountains and there were lots of coyotes. By themselves they would never come across the street into the neighborhood, but I've witnessed a group of them walking nearthe street, then one will walk away from the pack, hesitate, then run across the street dashing between the houses before running back to the pack. It looked exactly like a bunch of middle school kids daring each other to run up to a haunted house.
And in training, I've gotten my dog to do plenty of things he was scared of (running through a tube, running across a balance beam 5' off the ground, running over a teeter-totter). He used my comforting presence to overcome the fear, just like a child will do with their parents.
Humans do have a generally higher level of functioning than animals but in a lot of aspects, they aren't significantly different. And if it came down to it, I don't think my decision would be based entirely on human vs. animal but on the aggressor. If my dog attacked someone, I would protect the person. If someone attacked my dog, I would protect my dog. And if it came down to killing in that defense, I would kill someone that attacked my dog (or kill my dog if I had to to protect someone he attacked), so in that instance I would choose animal over human.