Summary
The number of wild animals vastly exceeds that of animals on factory farms, in laboratories, or kept as pets. Therefore, animal advocates should consider focusing their efforts to raise concern about the suffering that occurs in the natural environment. While in theory this could involve trying directly to engineer more humane ecological systems, in practice I think activists should concentrate on promoting the meme of caring about wild animals to other activists, academics, and other sympathetic groups. The massive amount of suffering occurring now in nature is indeed tragic, but it pales by comparison to the scale of good or harm that our descendants — with advanced technological capability — might effect. I fear, for instance, that future humans may undertake terraforming, directed panspermia, or sentient simulations without giving much thought to the consequences for wild animals. Our #1 priority should be to ensure that future human intelligence is used to prevent wild-animal suffering, rather than to multiply it.
Other versions of this piece
Summary of why suffering probably dominates happiness
I personally believe that most animals (except maybe those that live a long time, like >3 years) probably have lives not worth living, because I would trade away several years of life to avoid the pain of the average death, and this is assuming that even their lives are net positive (which is dubious in view of cold, hunger, disease, fear of predators, and all the rest).
However, this belief of mine is somewhat controversial. I think the claim of net expected suffering in nature needs only a weaker assertion: namely, that almost all of the expected happiness and suffering in nature come from small animals (e.g., minnows and insects). The adults of these species live at most a few years, often just a few months or weeks, so it’s even harder in these cases for the happiness of life to outweigh the pain of death. Moreover, almost all the babies that these species have die (possibly painfully) after just a few days of being born,
Breeding characteristics of Yaks. Cross breeding of male yaks with common cows in order to produce viable and exceptionally well desired hybrid offsprings is one the most important subject matter as far as local population is concerned. Breeding closely related to domestic cows, pure yak can cross with the domestic cow to produce fertile female offspring and infertile male offspring. The female offspring is locally called “ zhomo ’’ and male is called “zho . These hybrids are better than the yak and cow. The female zhomo are considered to be the good milk producer and the male zho are used as draft animal (for the purpose of loading and working). Breeding system in Gilgit Baltistan. Various breeding systems are practiced in the area in order to produce desirable generations. The most obvious and distinctive among all breeding systems is Yak-cow cross. The farmers and yak herders of the area have sophisticated their indigenous knowledge regarding yak- cow breeding that the
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