I think that some of this may be an innate distress reaction among particularly sensitive children, as well. Some kids are so emotionally OE about this.


As startlingly empathetic as my DD is (and she is), she has no problem watching me... erm... prepare rabbits for consumption, and has no problem with eating animals. She DOES, however, have a problem with the maltreatment of animals, or factory farming, as it were. She asks a LOT of questions about euthanasia methods, and they are tough questions, frankly.

But for other kids, death is just plain horrifying, and if the purpose of that death is to serve some human purpose, it's just wrong in their hearts and minds. DD really isn't that way-- and never has been. She knows why animals are used in research, agrees with their use as food and as pets/tools. She seems to have adopted the attitude that animals should be treated very well while they are living, they should be VERY humanely killed (when that is necessary) and that those deaths should not be meaningless.

I can't really argue with any of that, though I tend to go a bit further than she does there, in spite of my many years of animal research.


Philosophically, she isn't wired to think of animals as having souls, I think. She also LOVES meat, so I don't think that there has ever been any real chance that she'd wake up some morning and realize that she is eating furry creatures. She's always known and it doesn't bother her. (Weirdly.) Bugs me a lot more than her, honestly.



Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.