this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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There was just a case where a woman gave birth to a baby in the woods, left it there and left for a vacation. If it weren't for the family dog desperately trying to save the baby and getting noticed by a stranger, nobody would have ever known as even the rest of the family was defensive of the woman.
This shows morality is not only not an exclusively trait but not even an exclusively human trait.
I am not sure that I agree that the dog's behavior necessarily demonstrates "morality." You might be anthropomorphizing a bit. I am not a biologist or anything, so I could be way off base... But is it not possible that the dog was acting on instincts to protect newborn offspring? Similar to when animals "adopt" babies from other species as their own?
Morality implies that the dog did a thing because it's "the right thing to do," when in reality, it might have just been a self-preservation instinct kicking in. Dog sees newborn that's clearly the offspring of the being that takes care of it, dog tries to preserve that newborn's life in order to keep the gravy train going.
Just my (again, non-expert) thoughts.
Zealots judging by the news coming out of america do not care about such trivial details as "facts", "medical science" and "behavioral science". It is unnecessary for them to take that into consideration.
You can remove the argument from morality safely from your answer just by stating the dog acted upon instinct, based off the notion dogs are pack animals, that have a closely knit symbiotic relatioship with human, which can be used to in favour of the dog finding a newborn activated the instinct of preserving their pack.
The way you approached the subject can be easily side tracked through arguing you are atributting self interest to the animals actions, as in, it keeps the newborn alive, thus, their own preservation is assured.
If acting on true self interest, the dog should have allowed the newborn to die.
Side note: who discards a newborn in such calous way? How unbalanced is the person?
That's not necessarily true. No more human offspring means no more symbiotic relationship.
No offspring, closer symbiotic relationship, with more resources available.
Maybe.... We're probably overthinking it and it's just a "protect baby" instinct.
And that is a very possible scenario.
Do you have source?