+Toofy Gwin: "Don't try to play on 'love of animals'. That is a completely different subject of whether humans should have meat in their diet....hence "canine teeth" in our mouths."

Hmm... I also find the topic of canine teeth to be interesting, +Toofy Gwin; thank you for expressing your interest and introducing the topic for discussion in your thread.

As I understand it, it appears that using dentition as an indicator of diet is a rather hard case to make (in humans or in other animals).

For example, we could consider cats as a clear example of a predator, which I think is a really good choice since they are obligate carnivores that (unlike humans) do not thrive without meat protein. However, dogs have pretty much the same oral construction and remain perfectly healthy on a vegetable based diet.

Gorillas are herbivores, only straying from this in exceptionally rare (usually highly stressful) situations, but when they do eat flesh they do not use their canines to do so; the only use they put their canines to is for social display (i.e. intimidation and expressing emotions).

All this by way of suggesting that we humans, having cuspids of a much smaller size which are also never actually used for processing flesh, cannot reasonably be classified as meat-eaters based on our teeth.

At least, that's how I see it -- what do you think?

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This post is one in a series in which excerpts of discussions on veganism from other threads are reposted (or paraphrased) for the sake of expanding the conversation. As always, your thoughts and questions are welcome. See the full collection via the #spommveganchats hash (or perhaps with a more robust search, such as goo.gl/JoxZC).

(for anyone requiring/desiring more context, the original conversation can be found at goo.gl/vdD7G, with back-references to a previous conversation found at goo.gl/rWx64)

#vegan   #dental   #meat   #logicalfallacy  

Even if we had massive fangs, it wouldn't justify killing animals for the enjoyment of eating their dead bodies. It is proven time and time again that we can live on a plant-based diet in great health, so the shape of our teeth puts us under no obligation to kill. But if we look at this argument more closely - firstly there are animals with far bigger canines than us who eat a plant-based diet, like primates and rhinos and so forth. Secondly, our own "canines" are only named that way because of their position and biological classification in our jaw. They have no similarity at all with true canines which actual carnivores have like lions. They are of no use in biting through raw animal hide, especially not that of a living creature.