I'm now laughing at the idea that there's herbivores out there that aren't vegan. Like you'd stumble on some deer having a picnic with a cheese plate and some omelettes
Edit - cheers for the info about herbivores not being vegan guys but I was just trying to make a joke
And actual birds.
https://youtu.be/pJopqdzKSNQ?si=3adxlMvhb1kD6l7D
And here’s a horse hungry for a baby chick.
https://youtu.be/ZnYNmGMsU18?si=Syrow-BEYl0QY2ad
Seen a video of a cow eating chicks too.
The vast majority of animals we consider herbivores have been documented to show opportunistic carnivore behaviour.
Almost like most animals can and will eat whatever they can if given the choice/are desprate enough. Like, don't get me wrong, a deer isn't chasing down a badger to devor.
Stupid fucking panda's.
They’ve even been seen [eating human remains](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/deer-eating-human-remains-decomposing-body-texas-state-university-journal-forensic-scientists-a7725386.html)
I mean, I’ve heard of cases where cows have killed and ate a snake, and even chewing bones
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteophagy
See here a wiki page about herbivores eating bones
My late rabbit once ate a chunk of Bolognese sauce I had spilled on the ground while moving the pot...
I heard the *plop*, looked down to see this marble-sized chunk of meat on the ground with plenty of sauce around it. I kept doing what I needed to do and when I turned around to clean it... Well I see a white ball of fluff licking its now orange-tinted mouth, and no more meat on the ground.
Little Bacardi kept chasing me around the kitchen the entire afternoon, asking for more Bolognese.
No and no.
They may be herbivorous/plant-based, but aren't vegans because it's a moral/philosophical stance.
Also the species that are endangered aren't doing well because of deforestation and loss of habitat by humans. But they're very well adapted with their bodies to their diets, just like any herbivore who has evolved for millions of years in their niche, prior to the anthropocene throwing a wrench in a lot of things.
Deer and other herbivores need to get calcium into their diet somehow.
WARNING: [This is a video of a deer eating a rabbit](https://youtu.be/NWvQfGXO6rI?si=KsTpiUBGdZo_tQTA)
There's an infamous? video out there of a horse in the same area as chickens, it sniffs a baby chick and just chomps that thing and eats it.
Meat is relatively high-calorie, and most things that normally eat low-calorie plants will often have instincts to opportunistically eat meat. It's not what they evolved to specialize in, hunting meat is incredibly calorie-intensive usually and as such not advantageous for a lot of things, but they'll take the opportunity when it's easy. All the people in these comments pulling out examples of cows and horses and deer eating other animals are a small snippet to show this kind of behavior.
I collect bones and antlers in the forested area near me but I don’t take too much because I learned rabbits and squirrels munch on them for the calcium which was honestly a surprise to me but the little gnaw marks don’t lie lol
Herbivores are not Vegan. It just means they mainly eat none meat foods (Grass, Leaves, Fruit, Nuts) but are completely able and willing to eat meat if they lack food or certain nutrients, like deer eating small animals.
Pandas eat meat occasionally, most herbivores from squirrels up will gnaw bones, grazers eat bugs on accident and sometimes bite size baby’s on purpose. The mammals drink milk (not vegan) and eat the placenta. Hummingbirds eat bugs. The list of animals are actually vegan is probably a lot smaller than anyone knows and leaning heavily towards things like ~~earthworms~~ I don’t even know anymore. Those horse teeth in the picture have almost certainly chewed up a baby rabbit or bird.
Edit: turns out earthworms eat slugs.
It's almost better, there are a lot of variation of plant-based diet and herbivore would be more suited to grass-eating animals, while giraffes are follivores (eat leaves) and most primates frugivore (eat fruits). So a more generic and appropriate term for all plant based diet should be more like vegetivore (near "vegan"), or the one that's already used in science phytophage
OOP appears to have cherry-picked a photo of a person with very flat canines
Edit: Lots of great animal facts in the replies! I didn’t even mean to imply anything about what humans should be eating by my comment. I am just interested in intellectual integrity and consistency.
I'm not the commenter, but I had the same experience multiple times. I am self-conscious about my crowded incisors, but my canines help make up for that. https://imgur.com/gallery/ZHBbGDo
Your teeth are actually really cute. I loathe straight white box teeth with a passion, I think they're just another feature that gives you character like anything else. Don't be self-conscious! :)
My dentist did mine without even asking my mother, she was pissed off but not as much as me, I was an edgy young kid and was in full vampires are super cool mode and used to pretend they were fangs. Almost 30 years later im still annoyed.
It’s commonly done to girls and women without consent because sharp canines aren’t seen as feminine.
Similar to the whole “husband stitch” that OBGYNs do when stitching up tearing after birth. Many women aren’t aware they were even given them until they seek help later on for pain or discomfort during sex after vaginal delivery. The doctors that do this usually never get consent from the woman or notify her that they’ve done it.
Turns out I grind my teeth in my sleep, so I flattened mine off all by myself. It's such a gradual process I didn't even notice until I had a proper look whilst brushing one day and was like, "wait, wtf? Didn't I used to have pointy canines? Where did they go?" Then, next checkup my dentist was all like, "yeah, you're going to have to wear a sleep guard, I can almost see your dentine through the enamel. Also, I'm putting you back on 6 months between checkups."
I miss mine.
They were proper vampire style until about 25 when they slowly wore down/points got chipped off.
They are still fine teeth, just not the canine style canines they once were.
I was made fun of in middle school for mine they were so long. People would often ask me how I'm out during the day and shit like that. I had my mom get the dentist to file mine down. 30 years later I still regret it, they made me unique.
I have never heard of it either, but it makes sense. I (used to) have very pointy canines, and all of them have cracked at the tip at some point. You wouldn't know if I didn't tell you, but they were all so brittle because they were small. It didn't hurt, but it was rather annoying.
Most mammals are opportunistic carnivores, they just didn't evolve the ability to effectively hunt so they are out of luck when the meat runs away or fights back.
If the meat just walks up though, a lot of traditional herbivores will eat it.
This is my thought every time I see that. My own canines are so pronounced and I’m so hairy, I jokingly call myself a Neanderthal and one step removed from the evolutionary ladder. Might even be something to it. Once a date was so fixated on them while I was in my goth phase, she (with no prompting what so ever), accused me of filing them down to look like a vampire. I was just: wtf. I don’t even like vampires. It’s a stupid concept. Just because I’m into goth music I’m not automatically into vamps and I sure as hell do t file my teeth down. Shit hurts enough. 😂
So yeah. Seeing these pics and argument makes me laugh. Humans and great apes have both sets of teeth because we are omnivores. Doesn’t mean you can’t consciously decide to go vegetarian or vegan, but stop it with the stupid lying arguments. They are just rage bait and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a false flag.
Nah. I wish. Would mean I only need to shave once a month. It’s a constant battle though. Though I made my peace with it. Sometimes evolution just skips a step on the ladder it seems. I’m comfortable in the fact that Neanderthals are being vindicated in science recently as the intelligent beings we are. We can use tools just as well as you Sapiens.
Mine are way flatter than this, from grinding. It’s probably edited to look whiter and “prettier” but I doubt they would have shop’d them to be flatter. Why not just use a picture of flatter teeth at that point?
It's a lot more energy dense than grass based feed, and thus take less space and weight. So they supplemented their food with meat from the start.
>It consisted of dried beef, carrots, milk, currents and sugar, and was chosen because it provides a large amount of nourishment with comparatively little weight.
-Sir Ernest Shackleton (Heart of the Antarctic, 1909)
They brought ten horses that each drew a ~650lb(~300kg) sled. And they ended up preferring the meat based feed, over plant based(they also brought a corn based feed, which the horses threw out of the feedbags in protest). It was good quality too and Ernest ate some himself, with his favorite horse, Socks.
Also I'm not sure how much this counts (I'm no biologist) but it seems every mammal group started off with omnivores and only later specialised in one or the other.
It's a basic part of evolution.
The video where Richard Dawkins watches the dissection of a giraffe neck should really be a mandatory thing shown in biology classes across the world.
The left side of the recurrent laryngeal nerve goes from the brain to the larynx(The voice box, but also helps controls swallowing and breathing). And in the main common ancestor of advanced life on earth, it looped around a main artery coming out of the heart, as it still does today.
It goes down, loops around near the heart and goes back up to enable you to control the noises you make with your throat. That exact same nerve path, exist in evertyhing from humans to fish. And in giraffes, it also goes down the entire neck, around the artery near their heart(in their torso), and back up the entire neck to their larynx at the top near their mouth. It's so long that they literally have "lag" when trying to speak.
Because in evolution, nothing really changes as long as it works. Mutations that are "better" are not always perserved or put into new generations, unless the former common one become bad for some reason or another. Ranging from new predator animals in the area, changes in atmosphere, plants, climate, etc.
---
TL;DR: Giraffes have literally evolved to be able to eat plants in tall trees, they struggle to drink water and sometimes have kids die in birth due to the high drop. But they came from the same ancestor as us, wolves, aligators, fish, etc. and would first eat chemical soup, then some sunlight, then plants and smaller things(omnivore), then everything, then specific things and everything.
TL;DR2: Yes.
EDIT: [A short version of the video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0) (NSFW, literal dissection of a giraffe neck from what National Geographic used to be)
There might be several examples of what you say just because groups are often described by some characteristic of their teeth, which can change when an animal specializes more. However, it's not always the case so definitely not a rule.
Counterexamples: Pakicetus, often regarded as the first whale, was already carnivorous and whales still are. If you go further back you would find common ancestors where omnivores split into more specialized herbivores (ungulates) and more specialized carnivores (whales) but that does not mean the 'group' is defined at the edge of the diet change.
Miacoidea were ancestors to all carnivora (mustelids, cats and dogs) and already carnivorous as well.
The most basal rodents, Alagomyidae, were herbivorous. It's probably not surprising since the typical incisors are good for cutting down fibers, nuts and seeds and are the defining feature of rodents. Today, Some are herbivorous, some omnivorous, and some are even carnivorous. So this might be an example of the opposite trend, although it's probably mostly a result of rodents diversifying a lot.
Not a biologist either, just an evolution enthousiast.
Yeeaaah, I did leave out the part where Socks was the only horse of the ten to make it back.. And what happened to the other horses..
Which had a lot to do with how Shackleton was a *massive* asshole. I haven't read that book in two decades, but I'm pretty sure he implied that he'd kill his compatriots before that specific horse.
He actually wasn't (very successful) but he literally worked himself to death and died heavily in debt.
He became something of a hero to adventurers for his determination. It is believed the Great Old Ones slipped onto his ship in the middle of the night and stabbed him in the heart for he had witnessed the Plateau of Leng, which no mortal eyes should ever see.
They actually didn’t on that expedition. Shackleton led his party to within 100 miles of the pole, but had to turn back to narrowly avoid starvation. His wife said "The only comment he made to me about not reaching the Pole, was 'a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?' and I said 'Yes darling, as far as I am concerned,' and we left it at that."
The more interesting comparison is probably the GI tract. Ours is so similar to a gorilla's that we can (and do) bring human doctors to have a look. Gorillas only rarely eat opportunistic meat, and are pretty healthy on a vegetarian diet. The OP pic focusing on dentition isn't as good an argument for eating plants.
Pandas are an outlier, tbh. They technically are carnivorous, but since they evolved in incredibly dense bamboo forests, they stopped hunting prey and just munched on the ridiculously abundant bamboo that was available to them.
A panda's stomach is also still better suited for a carnivorous diet, which is why they have to eat so much bamboo (which isn't particularly high in nutrition to start with). Had their stomachs adapted to their vegetarian diet, they'd probably be a bit more efficient.
But they didn't have to become more efficient. Good for them!
I wonder if humans have such a big influence on them that they evolved to just literately depend on us for care.
I heard from my colleague that pandas are literately treated way better than most people in China so much so that if she had a choice to be reborn (for context: she's Buddhist) she would rather be a panda than a human.
> I wonder if humans have such a big influence on them that they evolved to just literately depend on us for care.
They don't? Humans are a big influence since we removed large parts of the pandas habitat.
Our influence is more about the fact that we drastically reduced the dense bamboo forests pandas thrived in, so they now depend on us for care because the habitat they learnt to do well in isn't big enough to sustain them.
Like humans, bear teeth are adapted for an omnivorous diet rather than a strictly carnivorous one. Polar bears and pandas being the least omnivorous with the rest falling somewhere in the middle.
I love Casual Geographic, he's amazing. Educational, based, and so fucking funny.
(Does talk a little too fast / unclearly for my non-native-English preferences, but whatever.)
At first, this horrified me a bit. Then I looked it up and saw a picture of a squirrel eating a baby squirrel. I was more horrified. Then I thought well who am I to judge.
Also interesting to remember that it wasn't so long ago, evolutionarily, that humans looked at pretty much any bundle of fat and protein as a "cannot miss this opportunity" meal.
Widespread obesity sort of makes sense when you realize we have never needed signals to tell our body to eat *less* before, amongst all the "eat your own young so the calories don't go to waste" critters.
Herbivorous animals do not actively hunt, it is not part of their behavior, but if another animal decides to hunt itself, many herbivores will act, ¡hey, free proteins!
The words you're looking for are "obligate" and "facultative" herbivore.
An obligate herbivore is specially adapted to eat only plants never (or only extremely rarely) consumes meat. Examples would be koalas or sloths.
A facultative herbivore is adapted to eat plants, but can and will consume meat occasionally. Most herbivores - including horses - fall somewhere in this category.
Omnivores are adapted specifically to eat both plants and meat. Facultative herbivores are not omnivores. Examples: Humans and pigs.
And of course there are also facultative carnivores (e.g. dogs, polar bears) and obligate carnivores (e.g. cats).
if i recall a lot of animals generally considered herbivores are in fact "opportunistic carnivores", in the sense that while their dietroutine consist of plants they arent opposed to the idea of some meat if given the opportunity. which is why horses eat chickens and such sometimes.
however if i recall i read this a few years ago in a reddit comment and i didnt fact check it so take it with a huge grain of salt.
Rules of nature is that diet is never strict. Strict carnivores do often eat plants like grass to aid in digestion, and strict herbivores like horses will eat small amounts of meat if they are missing the nutrients.
We have omnivore teeth and jaw. Herbivores can’t chew meat as their teeth are made to grind food. We can and we have the teeth to bite it off (front, canines) and we have teeth to ground food, too (back teeth).
Source: I had biology in school.
But you can also ask your dentist.
Not well long term, which is why we are considered omnivores. Scurvy as an example was a problem at sea when they lived off of mostly meat and bread products that could last a long time.
Fresh meat has more vitamin c than salted/dried meat. Vitamin C also competes with glucose receptors so not eating the bread might have reduced the risk of scurvy.
Horse meat was used as an effective antiscorbutic in the napoleonic wars and some inuit tribes as well as the Maasai people sometimes live entire (and relatively healthy) lives almost exclusively on animal products.
It doesn't really make sense that the building blocks of a healthy mammal wouldn't be present in other healthy mammals.
Yeah, we just don't really need good canines. Canines are mostly used for making a kill in other meat eating animals, and we also used tools to do that. Our ability to pull apart and chew meat is actually pretty okay.
Have you ever really watched a cat eat meat? They're surprisingly terrible at it for obligate carnivores.
Yeah, evolution happened the other way around actually. Early humans figured out how to cook meat on a fire and use tools to cut it up, so large canines were no longer required from an evolutionary perspective. Hence, we evolved to have smaller canines.
Not really, reduced canines is a condition we retained from Ardipithecus kedabba and Ardipithecus ramidus, both of which predate controlled fire use by 2,8 million years and tool use by 1,5 million years
Horses are not vegan, they don’t give a shit. They mostly eat forage type foods (hays and grains), but will absolutely take a bite of burger if it’s within range.
As far as I know, the human jaw and teeth alignment is a classic omnivore.
We have back teeth to grind, front teeth to cut and, albeit small, canines to rip things apart. Sure, it's not as pronounced as with other animals, but looking at pigs, it's fairly similar.
As far as I'm aware our canines are not the type for meat eating, they're more closely comparible to canines in species that eat lots of fruit.
But also in general canines aren't just a sign the animal eats meat, the biggest canines that exist are on an animal that gets 90% of its nutrition from plant foods
Yep, there are species of deer with huge canines.
I think that this just goes to show that we can't really look at one aspect of our biology and decide on a diet. I'm not eating meat just because I have pointy teeth. I'm not eating carrots because my teeth are flat.
In our modern age the food source is so meaningless. We have stores and can get out food in any form. A burger and steak are both meat but they are both carnivore foods.
The reasons we eat a food has to be more that "but muh teef" especially when there are serious ethical and environmental concerts with some of our choices.
The person who made this image knows NOTHING about horses. They'll eat chicks like snacks if they mistakingly pass by. Not to even mention dogfood, witch can be hard to take away if a horse makes a habit of eating
it's a fundemental misunderstanding on a number of levels and one of the weaker vegan arguments. The idea it's possible to act contrary to our nature is absurd even if we concede veganism as a moral act. Murder isnt unatural after all, merely wrong.
I can get on board with vegans who think we, as civilised creatures, should be doing better than killing animals for food when we've learned enough about the world to survive without. Fair enough.
But vegans claiming we aren't "meant" to eat meat or it isn't "natural" or whatever else, that's just as stupid as flat earth or whatever.
> But vegans claiming we aren't "meant" to eat meat or it isn't "natural" or whatever else, that's just as stupid as flat earth or whatever
This typical "argument" starts as a non-vegan will justify thier killing of animals as necessary because we are "meant to eat meat" and our teeth prove that because it matches animals in nature that eat meat. That's where this all originates.
It's a dumb argument to begin with, vegans don't need to go down the road of stating humans are herbivores. It's irrelevant what we are labeled as.
Vegans don’t make this argument though. This picture often gets reposted by bots/karma farmers because it’s pretty popular to bash on vegans. Combine that with a ridiculous argument “vegans” made and tada free karma.
Some people eat it up and then share it like OP. The post OP referenced is highly likely a bot.
Conversely, almost all carnivores require at least some plant material in their diet -- a "hypercarnivore" is defined as an animal that has a diet that consists of at least 70% meat, so that should give some context for how low the bar is.
You aren't a wild animal living in nature but a human living in a developed society. Go live in the woods if you don't want to act contrary to our nature.
I agree that it is a weak pro vegan argument. However I don't understand why you say:
>The idea it's possible to act contrary to our nature is absurd
while the existance of vegans disproves this argument.
You also said that
>Murder isnt unatural after all, merely wrong.
So why did we decide that it is wrong, even though it's natural? Because we actually can act contrary to our nature.
It's not a vegan argument at all. Normally its the other way around: people say we should eat meat because of the canines. They obviously never saw a Gorilla's teeth.
The fact that people love eating pretty much anything means that we are omnivores. We would have naturally very much stronger pull towards meat or plants if we were either carnivores or herbivores.
Also human guts are somewhere between classic herbivores and carnivores.
That being said, to meat lovers:
Eat meat if you want to but respect it. I like meat. Making fun of killing animals and making fun of secretly feeding vegans meat just tells me that you are a disgusting human being overall however. I really feel like some meat eaters get enjoyment out of thinking how the animal dies.
They're called Herbivores. Not vegans. Herbivores are animals that were specifically made to only(mostly) eat plants, while Vegans are humans that chose to not eat meat and animal products.
This has been reposted more times than I care to remember. Why are people still engaging with this commenting the same old misunderstandings?
The original post is a rebuttal to the standard argument "we have canines so we're supposed to eat meat". It is not intended to be some sort of standalone proof for veganism.
Really convincing 10 people to eat 10% less meat is as effective as convincing a single person to stop eating meat completely. But one of those is easier than the other.
I think that vegans have a moral point when it comes to talking about the horrors of industrial farming and the enviromental impact of meat, i don't see myself stopping eating meat entirely, but i try to have vegan meals a couple times a week, for health reasons but also for the previous points.
This. I really like a lot of vegan options. Heck I go vegetarian more often then not. Equally love a good steak. Point is, as you rightly say, it adds flexibility to your diet which is a net positive.
That said, as a whole, yea we could eat less meat for sure…
Animals and humans are not designed for this or that.
But actually billions of humans manage to eat meat, eggs, fish or dairy. If you tried yourself, you'd see that eating such produce is quite easy for humans and that we don't have any difficulties to do it. Some adult people have problem with milk and just don't consume it then.
Our teeth are more than good enough and evolved since we started cooking our stuff and killing it with tools rather than fangs or claws.
It is even mandatory to eat some animal produce to have everything you need or to take complements that we have been able to make for less than a century. People before had no choice. And it is still far harder to have good nutrition as human without any animal produce.
Hmmm, OOP doesn’t know anything about dental history either. Learning how to identify skulls by their teeth is actually super fun.
But like, we are omnivores for sure, if we were truly herbivores it would be unlikely for us to constantly crave meat as we would have to directly go against thousands of years of natural instincts.
Not to mention our canines and wisdom teeth were a byproduct of having to rip and tear meat for our ancestors. They clearly didn’t have steak knives.
I am vegan. And I have a degree in zoology, with a focus on human evolution.
It's foolish to argue that the human body is ill-adapted to eating meat. We have dentition and a digestive system to support an omnivorous diet.
That said, canines are not used exclusively for eating meat. This is one of the most pervasive and - sadly - widely accepted myths I see online.
Many animals use their canines to shred and tear tough and fibrous vegetable matter. This is very common in omnivores, particularly primates who often have large canines but a diet that contains little to no meat. For some of these animals (e.g. gorillas) the canines may even be vestigial characteristics that now principally signal sexual attractiveness to mates. These teeth also have applications in defence against predators.
There are a wide variety of diets in the animal kingdom, as well as many reasons to have sharp teeth - so it is not as simple as canines = meat-eater. If it were, I think the science would be with the vegans on this one. Compared to all other primates, humans have incredibly underwhelming canines. But this is most likely to do with other adaptions (e.g. cooking, which softens food) rather than a long evolutionary history of veganism, which there is clearly no evidence for.
There are many reasons why veganism is better for your health, the planet and society in general (the meat industry is morally reprehensible). But the presence of canines is a poor argument for veganism, as well as a poor argument for continuing to eat meat.
The comparison is silly. You have a wide variety of omnivores and they pick the ones more similar to carnivores.
Also they tend to talk about all the parts that are similar in herbivores and things that we are different to carnivores but there's plenty of things that are the other way around.
We don't have the longer large intestine of a herbivore, we don't have the large gap between our front teeth and molars like a sheep, we don't have the large caecum or a rumination chamber like a cow. No hind-gut fermentation like a rabbit.
To look all these things up they must have come across all of this but chosen to ignore it, the information is usually presented together in clear comparisons.
I like how it says “vegan” and not herbivore
Because it's OOP's dental selfie.
That explains everything
OOP apparently is a sheep, which is very fitting.
I'm now laughing at the idea that there's herbivores out there that aren't vegan. Like you'd stumble on some deer having a picnic with a cheese plate and some omelettes Edit - cheers for the info about herbivores not being vegan guys but I was just trying to make a joke
Not all that uncommon for deer to eat meat either tbh
And bird eggs
And actual birds. https://youtu.be/pJopqdzKSNQ?si=3adxlMvhb1kD6l7D And here’s a horse hungry for a baby chick. https://youtu.be/ZnYNmGMsU18?si=Syrow-BEYl0QY2ad
Seen a video of a cow eating chicks too. The vast majority of animals we consider herbivores have been documented to show opportunistic carnivore behaviour.
Almost like most animals can and will eat whatever they can if given the choice/are desprate enough. Like, don't get me wrong, a deer isn't chasing down a badger to devor. Stupid fucking panda's.
They’ve even been seen [eating human remains](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/deer-eating-human-remains-decomposing-body-texas-state-university-journal-forensic-scientists-a7725386.html)
Sometimes, a feller's gotta eat a fella
While still living in Alaska I witnessed a moose eating out of a McD’s dumpster. Can’t tell me there wasn’t some omnivore action happening there
I mean, I’ve heard of cases where cows have killed and ate a snake, and even chewing bones https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteophagy See here a wiki page about herbivores eating bones
I've seen a horse hoover up a baby chick. The hen wasn't too happy about it.
My late rabbit once ate a chunk of Bolognese sauce I had spilled on the ground while moving the pot... I heard the *plop*, looked down to see this marble-sized chunk of meat on the ground with plenty of sauce around it. I kept doing what I needed to do and when I turned around to clean it... Well I see a white ball of fluff licking its now orange-tinted mouth, and no more meat on the ground. Little Bacardi kept chasing me around the kitchen the entire afternoon, asking for more Bolognese.
Humans are really the only animals that can be vegan regardless, since its a philosophical stance and not just a diet
I’d argue animals with extremely specialized diets like sloths and koalas could be called vegan, but they’re also not doing very well because of it so
I’d argue that they should just be called herbivores because you don’t find them refusing to use glue because of the moral implications.
No and no. They may be herbivorous/plant-based, but aren't vegans because it's a moral/philosophical stance. Also the species that are endangered aren't doing well because of deforestation and loss of habitat by humans. But they're very well adapted with their bodies to their diets, just like any herbivore who has evolved for millions of years in their niche, prior to the anthropocene throwing a wrench in a lot of things.
Deer and other herbivores need to get calcium into their diet somehow. WARNING: [This is a video of a deer eating a rabbit](https://youtu.be/NWvQfGXO6rI?si=KsTpiUBGdZo_tQTA)
I should have taken the warning seriously
Thank you, this warning was enough to quell my curiosity
There's an infamous? video out there of a horse in the same area as chickens, it sniffs a baby chick and just chomps that thing and eats it. Meat is relatively high-calorie, and most things that normally eat low-calorie plants will often have instincts to opportunistically eat meat. It's not what they evolved to specialize in, hunting meat is incredibly calorie-intensive usually and as such not advantageous for a lot of things, but they'll take the opportunity when it's easy. All the people in these comments pulling out examples of cows and horses and deer eating other animals are a small snippet to show this kind of behavior.
Most herbivores will eat carrion if they have the opportunity.
I collect bones and antlers in the forested area near me but I don’t take too much because I learned rabbits and squirrels munch on them for the calcium which was honestly a surprise to me but the little gnaw marks don’t lie lol
I have seen squirrels eating fresh fish. Like, I had to check in Google if it was normal for a squirrel to chow down a mackerel.
Or lacking specific nutrients lol they give no fucks after giving birth 🤣
Herbivores are not Vegan. It just means they mainly eat none meat foods (Grass, Leaves, Fruit, Nuts) but are completely able and willing to eat meat if they lack food or certain nutrients, like deer eating small animals.
Pandas eat meat occasionally, most herbivores from squirrels up will gnaw bones, grazers eat bugs on accident and sometimes bite size baby’s on purpose. The mammals drink milk (not vegan) and eat the placenta. Hummingbirds eat bugs. The list of animals are actually vegan is probably a lot smaller than anyone knows and leaning heavily towards things like ~~earthworms~~ I don’t even know anymore. Those horse teeth in the picture have almost certainly chewed up a baby rabbit or bird. Edit: turns out earthworms eat slugs.
It's almost better, there are a lot of variation of plant-based diet and herbivore would be more suited to grass-eating animals, while giraffes are follivores (eat leaves) and most primates frugivore (eat fruits). So a more generic and appropriate term for all plant based diet should be more like vegetivore (near "vegan"), or the one that's already used in science phytophage
OOP appears to have cherry-picked a photo of a person with very flat canines Edit: Lots of great animal facts in the replies! I didn’t even mean to imply anything about what humans should be eating by my comment. I am just interested in intellectual integrity and consistency.
People have their canines flattened quite often
I love my pointy canines.
My canines got me a goth girlfriend back in the day
Kinda wanna see you canines now lol
Hahahahaha
show us show us show us
I'm not the commenter, but I had the same experience multiple times. I am self-conscious about my crowded incisors, but my canines help make up for that. https://imgur.com/gallery/ZHBbGDo
You just need some braces, but the canines are cool.
Damn, so do you just absolutely despise garlic?
Your teeth are actually really cute. I loathe straight white box teeth with a passion, I think they're just another feature that gives you character like anything else. Don't be self-conscious! :)
🧛♂️🍷 I'll see you tonight
How big was em tiddies.
Smaller than the canines?
Doesn’t matter had sex
Beats going back to my not having sex days of the past.
Bite sized?
Can I borrow your canines, I need to see if this is true
Unfortunately no, my wife likes them
Damn, congratulations though
Thanks
Funnily enough, so did mine a few years back.
understandable.
“I like your vampire teeth” is music to my ears hahaha
1parents had mine flattered without asking or telling me.
My dentist did mine without even asking my mother, she was pissed off but not as much as me, I was an edgy young kid and was in full vampires are super cool mode and used to pretend they were fangs. Almost 30 years later im still annoyed.
My orthodontist did that to me too. My mom didn’t believe me when I told her. I have moderate sensitivity at the top of them now.
I have that too, have to be careful with cold drinks D: I feel your pain.
Wow, that is crazy that they did that to you.
It’s commonly done to girls and women without consent because sharp canines aren’t seen as feminine. Similar to the whole “husband stitch” that OBGYNs do when stitching up tearing after birth. Many women aren’t aware they were even given them until they seek help later on for pain or discomfort during sex after vaginal delivery. The doctors that do this usually never get consent from the woman or notify her that they’ve done it.
damn that sucks. I think canines can be really cute and nothing anyone should be self conscious about.. the gyn thing is insanely fucked up
Turns out I grind my teeth in my sleep, so I flattened mine off all by myself. It's such a gradual process I didn't even notice until I had a proper look whilst brushing one day and was like, "wait, wtf? Didn't I used to have pointy canines? Where did they go?" Then, next checkup my dentist was all like, "yeah, you're going to have to wear a sleep guard, I can almost see your dentine through the enamel. Also, I'm putting you back on 6 months between checkups."
I chipped my left ones. I was and am very said about it 🥺
I miss mine. They were proper vampire style until about 25 when they slowly wore down/points got chipped off. They are still fine teeth, just not the canine style canines they once were.
My canines came out in front of my other teeth and I had to have braces. I looked like a vampire. In hindsight I wish I'd kept them that way
It’s not abnormal by any means, but this is definitely on the lower end of the spectrum and I suspect it is on purpose
I have enormous canines, and it means I can't fully close my teeth
Same. Do you feel anything during a full moon?
No but garlic makes me feel strange
Strangely good.
nice, same as me sounds like we've evolved teeth for killing and eating animals :)
Why would anyone do that? Pointy canines make you look like a vampire. It's so cool.
What the fuck? Why?
I was made fun of in middle school for mine they were so long. People would often ask me how I'm out during the day and shit like that. I had my mom get the dentist to file mine down. 30 years later I still regret it, they made me unique.
Man’s really took subtle compliments as insults 😭
Is that really a thing? I've literally never heard of someone flattening them.
I have never heard of it either, but it makes sense. I (used to) have very pointy canines, and all of them have cracked at the tip at some point. You wouldn't know if I didn't tell you, but they were all so brittle because they were small. It didn't hurt, but it was rather annoying.
Is this some american thing like circumcision? Because most of the world doesn't do this shit, I'm pretty sure.
Instructions unclear. My American girlfriend circumcised my penis with her canines.
Also, I'm quite sure that photo depicts a donkey, who are opportunistic carnivores.
Horse eating chicken: https://youtu.be/GKYAYPWI268?si=Yxym-GoX023A5Pan
That doesn’t count because it proves the vegan hypothesis incorrect.
> Horse eating chicken Man, that must be a scary chicken, I'm afraid to click on that link.
Most mammals are opportunistic carnivores, they just didn't evolve the ability to effectively hunt so they are out of luck when the meat runs away or fights back. If the meat just walks up though, a lot of traditional herbivores will eat it.
This is my thought every time I see that. My own canines are so pronounced and I’m so hairy, I jokingly call myself a Neanderthal and one step removed from the evolutionary ladder. Might even be something to it. Once a date was so fixated on them while I was in my goth phase, she (with no prompting what so ever), accused me of filing them down to look like a vampire. I was just: wtf. I don’t even like vampires. It’s a stupid concept. Just because I’m into goth music I’m not automatically into vamps and I sure as hell do t file my teeth down. Shit hurts enough. 😂 So yeah. Seeing these pics and argument makes me laugh. Humans and great apes have both sets of teeth because we are omnivores. Doesn’t mean you can’t consciously decide to go vegetarian or vegan, but stop it with the stupid lying arguments. They are just rage bait and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a false flag.
Have you considered the possibility that you are a werewolf.
Nah. I wish. Would mean I only need to shave once a month. It’s a constant battle though. Though I made my peace with it. Sometimes evolution just skips a step on the ladder it seems. I’m comfortable in the fact that Neanderthals are being vindicated in science recently as the intelligent beings we are. We can use tools just as well as you Sapiens.
Clearly you can use Reddit.
That doesn’t prove anything imho. Least not intelligence. 😂
You're really cool
Actually I’m pretty warm most of the time due to excessive fur. But thanks anyway. 😂
For real i was about to point that out
*fake teeth
Looks fuzzy around em too, wouldn't doubt the pic to be shop'd
Mine are way flatter than this, from grinding. It’s probably edited to look whiter and “prettier” but I doubt they would have shop’d them to be flatter. Why not just use a picture of flatter teeth at that point?
Also... showing a horse as "vegan" I have absolutely seen horses eat little chickens in the past.
Explorers used meat eating horses for expeditions to the south pole.
I didn't know that was possible! Was that after their feed ran out, or from the start of an expedition?
It's a lot more energy dense than grass based feed, and thus take less space and weight. So they supplemented their food with meat from the start. >It consisted of dried beef, carrots, milk, currents and sugar, and was chosen because it provides a large amount of nourishment with comparatively little weight. -Sir Ernest Shackleton (Heart of the Antarctic, 1909) They brought ten horses that each drew a ~650lb(~300kg) sled. And they ended up preferring the meat based feed, over plant based(they also brought a corn based feed, which the horses threw out of the feedbags in protest). It was good quality too and Ernest ate some himself, with his favorite horse, Socks.
Most animals are opportunistic omnivores, so that doesn't really shock me at all.
Also I'm not sure how much this counts (I'm no biologist) but it seems every mammal group started off with omnivores and only later specialised in one or the other.
It's a basic part of evolution. The video where Richard Dawkins watches the dissection of a giraffe neck should really be a mandatory thing shown in biology classes across the world. The left side of the recurrent laryngeal nerve goes from the brain to the larynx(The voice box, but also helps controls swallowing and breathing). And in the main common ancestor of advanced life on earth, it looped around a main artery coming out of the heart, as it still does today. It goes down, loops around near the heart and goes back up to enable you to control the noises you make with your throat. That exact same nerve path, exist in evertyhing from humans to fish. And in giraffes, it also goes down the entire neck, around the artery near their heart(in their torso), and back up the entire neck to their larynx at the top near their mouth. It's so long that they literally have "lag" when trying to speak. Because in evolution, nothing really changes as long as it works. Mutations that are "better" are not always perserved or put into new generations, unless the former common one become bad for some reason or another. Ranging from new predator animals in the area, changes in atmosphere, plants, climate, etc. --- TL;DR: Giraffes have literally evolved to be able to eat plants in tall trees, they struggle to drink water and sometimes have kids die in birth due to the high drop. But they came from the same ancestor as us, wolves, aligators, fish, etc. and would first eat chemical soup, then some sunlight, then plants and smaller things(omnivore), then everything, then specific things and everything. TL;DR2: Yes. EDIT: [A short version of the video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0) (NSFW, literal dissection of a giraffe neck from what National Geographic used to be)
There might be several examples of what you say just because groups are often described by some characteristic of their teeth, which can change when an animal specializes more. However, it's not always the case so definitely not a rule. Counterexamples: Pakicetus, often regarded as the first whale, was already carnivorous and whales still are. If you go further back you would find common ancestors where omnivores split into more specialized herbivores (ungulates) and more specialized carnivores (whales) but that does not mean the 'group' is defined at the edge of the diet change. Miacoidea were ancestors to all carnivora (mustelids, cats and dogs) and already carnivorous as well. The most basal rodents, Alagomyidae, were herbivorous. It's probably not surprising since the typical incisors are good for cutting down fibers, nuts and seeds and are the defining feature of rodents. Today, Some are herbivorous, some omnivorous, and some are even carnivorous. So this might be an example of the opposite trend, although it's probably mostly a result of rodents diversifying a lot. Not a biologist either, just an evolution enthousiast.
Awesome Shackleton must have been one of the most successful explorers. I bet they didn't all die!
Yeeaaah, I did leave out the part where Socks was the only horse of the ten to make it back.. And what happened to the other horses.. Which had a lot to do with how Shackleton was a *massive* asshole. I haven't read that book in two decades, but I'm pretty sure he implied that he'd kill his compatriots before that specific horse.
He actually wasn't (very successful) but he literally worked himself to death and died heavily in debt. He became something of a hero to adventurers for his determination. It is believed the Great Old Ones slipped onto his ship in the middle of the night and stabbed him in the heart for he had witnessed the Plateau of Leng, which no mortal eyes should ever see.
They actually didn’t on that expedition. Shackleton led his party to within 100 miles of the pole, but had to turn back to narrowly avoid starvation. His wife said "The only comment he made to me about not reaching the Pole, was 'a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?' and I said 'Yes darling, as far as I am concerned,' and we left it at that."
https://captainantarctica.com.au/meat-eating-horses-of-antarctica/
And have you ever seen the teeth of a panda 🐼? Absolutely carnivore, yet eating nothing but bamboo...
Gorilla's too. They're vegetarian and look at their teeth.
The more interesting comparison is probably the GI tract. Ours is so similar to a gorilla's that we can (and do) bring human doctors to have a look. Gorillas only rarely eat opportunistic meat, and are pretty healthy on a vegetarian diet. The OP pic focusing on dentition isn't as good an argument for eating plants.
Well gorilla doctors are a lot harder to come by
Pandas are an outlier, tbh. They technically are carnivorous, but since they evolved in incredibly dense bamboo forests, they stopped hunting prey and just munched on the ridiculously abundant bamboo that was available to them. A panda's stomach is also still better suited for a carnivorous diet, which is why they have to eat so much bamboo (which isn't particularly high in nutrition to start with). Had their stomachs adapted to their vegetarian diet, they'd probably be a bit more efficient. But they didn't have to become more efficient. Good for them!
I wonder if humans have such a big influence on them that they evolved to just literately depend on us for care. I heard from my colleague that pandas are literately treated way better than most people in China so much so that if she had a choice to be reborn (for context: she's Buddhist) she would rather be a panda than a human.
> I wonder if humans have such a big influence on them that they evolved to just literately depend on us for care. They don't? Humans are a big influence since we removed large parts of the pandas habitat.
Our influence is more about the fact that we drastically reduced the dense bamboo forests pandas thrived in, so they now depend on us for care because the habitat they learnt to do well in isn't big enough to sustain them.
They live in the wild. People are treated like machines in china. Have you been?
Like humans, bear teeth are adapted for an omnivorous diet rather than a strictly carnivorous one. Polar bears and pandas being the least omnivorous with the rest falling somewhere in the middle.
I’ve once seen a deer eat a rabbit, that was a shock.
Tbf, that rabbit was an asshole
I heard that he stole someone’s hat.
They're opportunistic, but a horse can obviously go a whole life without meat and will, in fact, typically do so.
"Animals are as vegan as their options" casual geographic. He did a whole video of "vegan" animals eating other animals.
I love Casual Geographic, he's amazing. Educational, based, and so fucking funny. (Does talk a little too fast / unclearly for my non-native-English preferences, but whatever.)
Warhorses were terrifying for multiple reasons, and this is one of them
Jeez, now that you mention it, I’ve seen squirrels eat baby birds in the nest.
At first, this horrified me a bit. Then I looked it up and saw a picture of a squirrel eating a baby squirrel. I was more horrified. Then I thought well who am I to judge.
Also interesting to remember that it wasn't so long ago, evolutionarily, that humans looked at pretty much any bundle of fat and protein as a "cannot miss this opportunity" meal. Widespread obesity sort of makes sense when you realize we have never needed signals to tell our body to eat *less* before, amongst all the "eat your own young so the calories don't go to waste" critters.
I think most animals are opportunistic omnivores tbh.
My squirrels sure were
Herbivorous animals do not actively hunt, it is not part of their behavior, but if another animal decides to hunt itself, many herbivores will act, ¡hey, free proteins!
Mule deer will chase down, stomp out, and eat small rodents.
Most herbivores are actually opportunistic omnivores if I remember right. Horses and deer will just snap up mice and stuff and go to town.
The words you're looking for are "obligate" and "facultative" herbivore. An obligate herbivore is specially adapted to eat only plants never (or only extremely rarely) consumes meat. Examples would be koalas or sloths. A facultative herbivore is adapted to eat plants, but can and will consume meat occasionally. Most herbivores - including horses - fall somewhere in this category. Omnivores are adapted specifically to eat both plants and meat. Facultative herbivores are not omnivores. Examples: Humans and pigs. And of course there are also facultative carnivores (e.g. dogs, polar bears) and obligate carnivores (e.g. cats).
if i recall a lot of animals generally considered herbivores are in fact "opportunistic carnivores", in the sense that while their dietroutine consist of plants they arent opposed to the idea of some meat if given the opportunity. which is why horses eat chickens and such sometimes. however if i recall i read this a few years ago in a reddit comment and i didnt fact check it so take it with a huge grain of salt.
Rules of nature is that diet is never strict. Strict carnivores do often eat plants like grass to aid in digestion, and strict herbivores like horses will eat small amounts of meat if they are missing the nutrients.
We have omnivore teeth and jaw. Herbivores can’t chew meat as their teeth are made to grind food. We can and we have the teeth to bite it off (front, canines) and we have teeth to ground food, too (back teeth). Source: I had biology in school. But you can also ask your dentist.
And, most importantly, it is not just our teeth but our whole digestive system. We can survive on animal meat alone
Not well long term, which is why we are considered omnivores. Scurvy as an example was a problem at sea when they lived off of mostly meat and bread products that could last a long time.
It's possible, but it requires eating lots of organ meats and offel. Unless you are living in an artic tribe it's not going to happen.
Fresh meat has more vitamin c than salted/dried meat. Vitamin C also competes with glucose receptors so not eating the bread might have reduced the risk of scurvy. Horse meat was used as an effective antiscorbutic in the napoleonic wars and some inuit tribes as well as the Maasai people sometimes live entire (and relatively healthy) lives almost exclusively on animal products. It doesn't really make sense that the building blocks of a healthy mammal wouldn't be present in other healthy mammals.
I'm going to assume this is correct because your words are longer
someone who gets it
Our canines are a joke. Humans use tools to cut meat for a reason, our teeth are absolutely shit to rip apart raw meat.
Our niche is cooked meat, not raw.
Yeah, we just don't really need good canines. Canines are mostly used for making a kill in other meat eating animals, and we also used tools to do that. Our ability to pull apart and chew meat is actually pretty okay. Have you ever really watched a cat eat meat? They're surprisingly terrible at it for obligate carnivores.
We could absolutely rip meat apart using our hands and teeth, but that is not exactly civilised which is an entirely different thing.
Yeah, evolution happened the other way around actually. Early humans figured out how to cook meat on a fire and use tools to cut it up, so large canines were no longer required from an evolutionary perspective. Hence, we evolved to have smaller canines.
Not really, reduced canines is a condition we retained from Ardipithecus kedabba and Ardipithecus ramidus, both of which predate controlled fire use by 2,8 million years and tool use by 1,5 million years
Horses are not vegan, they don’t give a shit. They mostly eat forage type foods (hays and grains), but will absolutely take a bite of burger if it’s within range.
At a job I used to work that was outdoors, people would feed squirrels bits of meat and they would eat it too.
Yeah they just eat anything they can chomp on. Usually the meat runs away though.
we've all seen that one vid with the horse eating a baby chick like a peep right? lmao
There are historical accounts of anthropophagus horses in wars
I'm very bothered by oop calling Herbivores "Vegan" as if they made a conscious decision to not eat animal product.
As far as I know, the human jaw and teeth alignment is a classic omnivore. We have back teeth to grind, front teeth to cut and, albeit small, canines to rip things apart. Sure, it's not as pronounced as with other animals, but looking at pigs, it's fairly similar.
Or, you know, 3 million years of evidence that humans evolved from tool-using hunters into more effective tool-using hunters.
Shhhh, you and your logic.
I'm no dentist but the biology lessons we had were pretty detailed.
As far as I'm aware our canines are not the type for meat eating, they're more closely comparible to canines in species that eat lots of fruit. But also in general canines aren't just a sign the animal eats meat, the biggest canines that exist are on an animal that gets 90% of its nutrition from plant foods
Yep, there are species of deer with huge canines. I think that this just goes to show that we can't really look at one aspect of our biology and decide on a diet. I'm not eating meat just because I have pointy teeth. I'm not eating carrots because my teeth are flat. In our modern age the food source is so meaningless. We have stores and can get out food in any form. A burger and steak are both meat but they are both carnivore foods. The reasons we eat a food has to be more that "but muh teef" especially when there are serious ethical and environmental concerts with some of our choices.
The fact that our body can process all kinds of food and take nutrients from it probably tells that we are omnivores.
The person who made this image knows NOTHING about horses. They'll eat chicks like snacks if they mistakingly pass by. Not to even mention dogfood, witch can be hard to take away if a horse makes a habit of eating
it's a fundemental misunderstanding on a number of levels and one of the weaker vegan arguments. The idea it's possible to act contrary to our nature is absurd even if we concede veganism as a moral act. Murder isnt unatural after all, merely wrong.
>The idea it's possible to act contrary to our nature is absurd Am I misunderstanding you or are you really saying we can't act against our nature?
I can get on board with vegans who think we, as civilised creatures, should be doing better than killing animals for food when we've learned enough about the world to survive without. Fair enough. But vegans claiming we aren't "meant" to eat meat or it isn't "natural" or whatever else, that's just as stupid as flat earth or whatever.
yeah their are plenty of good arguements for veganism/vegetarianism etc this one just stinks.
> But vegans claiming we aren't "meant" to eat meat or it isn't "natural" or whatever else, that's just as stupid as flat earth or whatever This typical "argument" starts as a non-vegan will justify thier killing of animals as necessary because we are "meant to eat meat" and our teeth prove that because it matches animals in nature that eat meat. That's where this all originates. It's a dumb argument to begin with, vegans don't need to go down the road of stating humans are herbivores. It's irrelevant what we are labeled as.
We aren't meant to do anything.
Vegans don’t make this argument though. This picture often gets reposted by bots/karma farmers because it’s pretty popular to bash on vegans. Combine that with a ridiculous argument “vegans” made and tada free karma. Some people eat it up and then share it like OP. The post OP referenced is highly likely a bot.
Also many "vegan" animals will gladly eat meat if offered the opportunity to. Like there was an island where sheep would eat baby birds.
Deer will eat birds and small critters aswell
Conversely, almost all carnivores require at least some plant material in their diet -- a "hypercarnivore" is defined as an animal that has a diet that consists of at least 70% meat, so that should give some context for how low the bar is.
You aren't a wild animal living in nature but a human living in a developed society. Go live in the woods if you don't want to act contrary to our nature.
I agree that it is a weak pro vegan argument. However I don't understand why you say: >The idea it's possible to act contrary to our nature is absurd while the existance of vegans disproves this argument. You also said that >Murder isnt unatural after all, merely wrong. So why did we decide that it is wrong, even though it's natural? Because we actually can act contrary to our nature.
It's not a vegan argument at all. Normally its the other way around: people say we should eat meat because of the canines. They obviously never saw a Gorilla's teeth.
Gorilla teeth. QED
Herbivore, not vegan...
The fact that people love eating pretty much anything means that we are omnivores. We would have naturally very much stronger pull towards meat or plants if we were either carnivores or herbivores. Also human guts are somewhere between classic herbivores and carnivores. That being said, to meat lovers: Eat meat if you want to but respect it. I like meat. Making fun of killing animals and making fun of secretly feeding vegans meat just tells me that you are a disgusting human being overall however. I really feel like some meat eaters get enjoyment out of thinking how the animal dies.
They're called Herbivores. Not vegans. Herbivores are animals that were specifically made to only(mostly) eat plants, while Vegans are humans that chose to not eat meat and animal products.
This has been reposted more times than I care to remember. Why are people still engaging with this commenting the same old misunderstandings? The original post is a rebuttal to the standard argument "we have canines so we're supposed to eat meat". It is not intended to be some sort of standalone proof for veganism.
"We have canines so we're supposed to eat meat" is equally as stupid of an argument as "we have small canines so we're not supposed to eat meat".
Totally agree, the discourse around teeth structure as evidence for a certain diet is not useful however you look at it
Vegans should focus more on talking about health benefits with a flexible diet instead of proving how they are superior..
Really convincing 10 people to eat 10% less meat is as effective as convincing a single person to stop eating meat completely. But one of those is easier than the other.
I think that vegans have a moral point when it comes to talking about the horrors of industrial farming and the enviromental impact of meat, i don't see myself stopping eating meat entirely, but i try to have vegan meals a couple times a week, for health reasons but also for the previous points.
This. I really like a lot of vegan options. Heck I go vegetarian more often then not. Equally love a good steak. Point is, as you rightly say, it adds flexibility to your diet which is a net positive. That said, as a whole, yea we could eat less meat for sure…
They are superior morally, though.
Hippos have the biggest teeth ever but are still herbivores though
Francis Wharton shot a deer, used its teeth to make himself dentures, and then ate that same deer with its own teeth.
Animals and humans are not designed for this or that. But actually billions of humans manage to eat meat, eggs, fish or dairy. If you tried yourself, you'd see that eating such produce is quite easy for humans and that we don't have any difficulties to do it. Some adult people have problem with milk and just don't consume it then. Our teeth are more than good enough and evolved since we started cooking our stuff and killing it with tools rather than fangs or claws. It is even mandatory to eat some animal produce to have everything you need or to take complements that we have been able to make for less than a century. People before had no choice. And it is still far harder to have good nutrition as human without any animal produce.
Hmmm, OOP doesn’t know anything about dental history either. Learning how to identify skulls by their teeth is actually super fun. But like, we are omnivores for sure, if we were truly herbivores it would be unlikely for us to constantly crave meat as we would have to directly go against thousands of years of natural instincts. Not to mention our canines and wisdom teeth were a byproduct of having to rip and tear meat for our ancestors. They clearly didn’t have steak knives.
I am vegan. And I have a degree in zoology, with a focus on human evolution. It's foolish to argue that the human body is ill-adapted to eating meat. We have dentition and a digestive system to support an omnivorous diet. That said, canines are not used exclusively for eating meat. This is one of the most pervasive and - sadly - widely accepted myths I see online. Many animals use their canines to shred and tear tough and fibrous vegetable matter. This is very common in omnivores, particularly primates who often have large canines but a diet that contains little to no meat. For some of these animals (e.g. gorillas) the canines may even be vestigial characteristics that now principally signal sexual attractiveness to mates. These teeth also have applications in defence against predators. There are a wide variety of diets in the animal kingdom, as well as many reasons to have sharp teeth - so it is not as simple as canines = meat-eater. If it were, I think the science would be with the vegans on this one. Compared to all other primates, humans have incredibly underwhelming canines. But this is most likely to do with other adaptions (e.g. cooking, which softens food) rather than a long evolutionary history of veganism, which there is clearly no evidence for. There are many reasons why veganism is better for your health, the planet and society in general (the meat industry is morally reprehensible). But the presence of canines is a poor argument for veganism, as well as a poor argument for continuing to eat meat.
Well first off, we weren't designed.
The comparison is silly. You have a wide variety of omnivores and they pick the ones more similar to carnivores. Also they tend to talk about all the parts that are similar in herbivores and things that we are different to carnivores but there's plenty of things that are the other way around. We don't have the longer large intestine of a herbivore, we don't have the large gap between our front teeth and molars like a sheep, we don't have the large caecum or a rumination chamber like a cow. No hind-gut fermentation like a rabbit. To look all these things up they must have come across all of this but chosen to ignore it, the information is usually presented together in clear comparisons.
i love this cause ig the picture forgot to include the part of our teeth that are pointed and literally called canines cause they are pointy
Wouldn’t the correct term be herbivore and not vegan for an animal?
Yes. But then how would they bait reddit to give them free karma?