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“Getting over it doesn’t mean forgetting it. It just means reducing the pain to a tolerable level, a level that doesn’t destroy you.”

— Kevin Brooks

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I think it's a common misconception that domesticating animals is somewhat like enslaving them. It really is more of a symbiotic relationship. No wild animal would have willingly put up with early humans if they didn't get something out of it. Wolves wouldn't have stayed with us and become dogs if they weren't getting food and safety out of it. Many large herbivores that are now domesticated could and would have easily trampled their early human captors or broken their enclosures open if they didn't have a reason to stay. Sometimes individual animals still do if we don't give them what they need.

The animals that have stayed with us for thousands of years have evolved to cooperate with us better. Dogs have additional facial muscles around their eyes that wolves lack in order to mimic human facial expressions. Sheep grow their wool perpetually while their wild counterparts don't because a bigger fleece means they're more likely to be allowed to breed and be kept around. Domestic dairy cows produce much more milk than wild bovine species and domestic hens lay more eggs. Do you know how energy costly producing eggs or milk is for an animal? It's pretty intense! They wouldn't be able to do that if we hadn't given them the food and safety from predators and the elements to.

And we really need to show these animals respect and gratitude for what they give us by taking excellent care of them. They gave up a lot to be with us, often including the means to take care of themselves in the wild. That's a huge reason why I'm not against using animal products, but I hate factory farming. They are still living, breathing creatures with needs and feelings. They deserve a comfortable life and, when the time comes, a humane death.

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Silkworm moths are and INCREDIBLY good example of domestication.

Here's a wild silk moth, their ancestors.

It's a pretty standard moth. It spends most of its life as a caterpillar eating leaves, then turns into a moth, breeds and dies.

These are domestic silkworm moths.

They're much larger, especially the females, because they never have to taste absence in their lives, and can sustain a greater body mass.

They're leiucistic- they don't need camoflague anymore, so they don't bother with it.

They're flightless- the only reason moths fly is to evade predators, find mates and find places to lay eggs, and neither they nor their countless generations of ancestors have ever had to run away from anything, or struggle for anything. They don't bother wasting calories growing wings that can hold them up. Flying is the single most energy burning type of movement there is, so why would they, when everything they could ever want is within arm's reach?

They vastly overproduce silk, so they end up with these huge cocoons.

Now, you might go "but don't we exploit them??? Isn't it bad??"

So let me explain.

Traditionally, many caterpillars are boiled in their cocoons, killing them instantly. The caterpillars are then used as food (because they are edible and delicious) and the cocoons unwrapped to make silk thread.

Does that sound bad?

Okay, let me explain further.

Silk moths do not have mouths.

A silk moth, once emerged, slowly starves to death.

This is not because of domestication- this is normal for most moths.

Moths live basically their whole lives as caterpillars. They have, what, four or five days as a moth? Maybe a week. They can't eat. They can't defend themselves. They breed, and then die.

Most silkworms die far, far before they ever become a moth. And most moths die before they get to breed.

So how silkworm farming goes, once you understand it all, is like this:

More caterpillars than would ever survive from their eggs in the wild are born. From the moment of their birth humans provide them with a perfectly safe, perfect temperature habitat with their whole families, where they never run out of carefully picked mulberry leaves (they don't have to eat mulberry but it is their favourite) for their whole lives. They want for nothing, and the rate of their survival goes from one in a hundred or so to basically ninety nine out of a hundred. They live happily, make their cocoons, and then more of them survive past that stage than ever would in the wild. The rest are eaten, far less painfully and than they would in the wild. The many survivors have big orgies and then die of old age, knowing their children will live equally safe, idyllic lives.

And also all the waste product they make in the process that they DO NOT CARE ABOUT becomes one of the most valuable and useful natural materials in existence that until plastic started fucking the world up was very happily used for any fabric that needed to be light and strong.

The VAST majority of animal "exploitation" in farming is the same story. An animal, who by the way does not have a concept of a soul and does not care about what happens to them when they die, lives a life of unthinkable peace and bliss, lives longer than it normally would ever imagine, has some of something it normally produces anyway taken as compensation for the promise of this kind of life continuing basically for the rest of its life, and dies pretty contently, after which its body is usually used much the way it would be in the wild- eaten, which literally none of them mind because that's literally normal and what always happens to dead things.

That's it!