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Can animals understand beauty outside of sexual attraction?

Anonymous #1

Hi! I was just wondering what you guys thought because I had a debate with my friends about this...

Reply 1

OxFossil

Original post by Anonymous

Hi! I was just wondering what you guys thought because I had a debate with my friends about this...

We are animals. If you think humans are capable of "understanding beauty" (whatever that means) outside of sexual attraction, then there's your answer. If you are talking specifically about non-human animals, then the closer they are to humans in evolutionary terms, the closer their view of the world, and their emotional and rational world is likely to be to ours. At the very least, we can observe that animals are drawn towards some specific things over others. For example, given a choice, a squirrel will always head for a tree, whilst a horse will aim for a field. One can rationalise this by saying these are the habitats they are best adapted for, but how do they "know" they need to be in that place? What do they feel when they are faced with a choice? Subjectively, it's surely some kind of attraction - a sense that that thing is more "right" than any other....