Thank you, Joey Daly, for such an emotive question!
Whenever wondering whether something is possible, a good place to start is with experience; for if it has ever manifested in experience, then of course it must be possible. When wondering whether animals can be cruel, then, we may start by asking: Has an animal ever been cruel? Well, humans are cruel all the time; we set the standard. But I assume you mean non-human animals. So, has a non-human animal ever been cruel?
An animal has never been cruel to me, personally; nor can I recall ever seeing an animal be cruel in the flesh, but perhaps once in a documentary. I had an image of orcas playing with seals in what seemed to be a cruel way. I found the footage on YouTube (here). An orca can be seen using its tail to flick a seal high into the air, which certainly seems cruel – but is it, really?
Google defines ‘cruel’ as ‘wilfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it.’ I thought at first that ‘wilfully’ meant ‘autonomously’, but another Google search revealed that it in fact means ‘with the intention of causing harm.’ The orca certainly causes pain and suffering, but does it do so with the intention of causing harm?
Before an animal could ever intend to cause harm, it must first have empathy; for without the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, it couldn’t intend to cause any feelings whatsoever. So, do orcas have empathy? Yet another Google search reveals that they do; in fact, proportionately speaking, the area of the brain responsible for empathy is far larger in orcas than it is in humans. Perhaps, then, the intention to cause harm is even less forgivable in orcas than it is in humans.
So, orcas have empathy, but that doesn’t mean that this particular orca intended to cause harm. Maybe it yeeted the seal purely for entertainment, in much the same way we would throw a frisbee; any harm thus caused was only incidental. Alas, I think the orca is still in hot water. Recall the definition: someone (or something) is cruel not only if they wilfully cause pain or suffering to others, but also if they feel no concern about the pain and suffering of others. If the orca yeeted the seal purely for entertainment, then surely it felt no concern about any pain and suffering thus caused. What if it felt some concern, but just prioritised its own entertainment? Is that a legitimate loophole, one big enough to fit an orca? I will let you decide.
Suffice to say, if it is a legitimate loophole, then I guess the orca isn’t cruel after all; the question of whether animals can be cruel would thus remain open – less open than before, I hope, but open nonetheless. But, if it is not a legitimate loophole, then perhaps we need to revise our definition of ‘cruel’; for there seem to be cases of orca-on-seal cruelty which the definition does not currently capture.
What do you think? Can animals be cruel? Let us know in the comments.
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I did a BA in Mathematics and Philosophy at Lancaster University, followed by an MPhil in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. I spent a lot of time studying Kant (his first Critique), the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. My favourite philosophical idea is Quine's idea that the common-sense theory about physical objects and the gods of Homer are both just posits; the only difference is that the theory of physical objects turned out to be more efficient – that was the last idea to truly blow my mind.
I really can’t get past: “google defines…”