Dr. Jonathan Balcombe (vegan) on the Incredible Intellect and Emotional Intelligence of Animal-People, Part 1 of 2

Dr. Jonathan Balcombe is a distinguished British biologist with a PhD in ethology. He has authored numerous books and scientific papers on animal-people’s inner lives and behavior, as well as animal-people protection. When speaking of us animal-people, he says: “As science continues to make new discoveries about animal minds and feelings, I hope it strikes a chord for more considerate, ethical treatment of animals.”

In his book “What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins,” he reveals the amazing facts that will change the way we think about fish-people. “There are some fishes who actually look after their eggs, and their young, for several weeks. So, it was very devoted parenting. This is something that people need to be aware of, that these animals have social lives. They have cares, and woes, and worries, and concerns, and stresses, and happiness and pleasure. They have a rich experiential physical and emotional life like we do.” “Studies have been done showing that a fish, for instance, who gets stroked, who gets caressed, gentle caresses on the skin, they like that, and it makes them feel much less stress. So, these kinds of experiments show that these animals have emotions, and have pain, and have stress, and we need to treat them accordingly.”

“Far and away the most animals we harm are to eat them. And we're talking about tens of billions of land animals, especially chickens. And, in case of fishes, we're talking about hundreds of billions, and possibly over a trillion every year. And, not only the numbers are high, but the conditions they live in are really appalling, especially if it's factory farms or aquaculture operations. So the conditions, and the short lives, and the methods of killing them, are all pretty horrible. And it's all to feed us.”

Dr. Balcombe proposes the vegan diet as a solution to this very real problem that all of us earthlings are currently facing because it not only affects us animal-people, but the destruction of the environment is also affecting humans.