Quite a few times already, I’ve read the question „So you vegans want lions (or other predators) to go vegan as well, right?“ Wrong.

In my opinion, to claim that vegans want meat-eating animals to go vegan is quite ridiculous and nonreflective. If you think about it, it’s pretty logical why but I will explain it here anway, using the example of the lion:

• Unlike humans that are omnivores (or even rather herbivores), lions are carnivores which means that their bodies are designed to only digest meat, they need meat to survive. We don’t need any animal products to survive.
• We as humans think about what we do, when we do it and why we we do it. Lions are instinct-driven, they just go and kill an animal when they feel hungry so they won’t starve to death, they don’t have another choice, it’s just the way they are.
• Lions don’t have the same intelligence and consciousness as humans and due to this can’t reflect on their actions. They can’t rate an action as wrong or right or feel sorry for the animal they killed. We are able to do so and with this we have the responsibility to act in a way that does the least harm to other living beings, humans or animals.
• Lions only kill as many animals as they need for food. Humans kill more animals than are even eaten. A lot of food just gets thrown away in the end which doesn’t only mean that the animals had to suffer for nothing but also that we are destroying our planet with producing so many animals procuts.
• Lions don’t keep their prey captive in horrible conditions before they kill it. The animals they kill lived a free life before, have a chance to escape and only feel pain the moment they’re killed. They didn’t need to suffer under horrible conditions in small cages, being jammed together in big halls and on horrific long ways to slaughterhouses.

So no, I don’t expect lions to go fuckin‘ vegan and I bet no other vegan who’s still quite right in the head does.

And anyway: People wouldn’t compare themselves to lions in any other aspects of their life, would they? Yes, for lions it’s normal to eat meat but so to them is killing baby lions and I bet noone would say it’s okay and normal to kill other people’s babies. We can’t compare our high developed society to wild animals. You can’t just pick one single aspect that suits you best to justify a certain behaviour and leave out the others.