Nkuhuma Pride

[NLAL11]

@T_Ferguson Not to the level that humans are, no. A lion cannot weigh the probablity of things, like "If I stand and fight against these lions my cubs will have a better chance of escaping."

@Duco Ndona
"Conscience, if it exists at all, or rational thought is merely the product of instincts clashing with eachother requiring a decision between the two."

Really? So what 'insinct' caused J.R.R. Tolkien to write the Lord of the Rings? What 'instinct' allowed the Wright brothers to invent the airplane? What 'instinct' motivated NASA to send people to the moon? When a monk decides to live in silence and only eat one bowl of rice a day, what 'instinct' is making that decision for them?

"It, just like emotions is not something exclusive to humans and the idea that it is directly violates important scientific concepts such as evolution.
So it can be safe to say that lions can weigh options and make decisions. Otherwise we wouldnt be seeing the complex behavoirs we see in the wild."

Conscious thought is exclusive to humans. Lions, nor any other animal species, have the ability to think about why they do things. This is conscience, or sentience. Evolution is massively complicated for a number of reasons. But animals having conscience isn't one of them. Lions cannot weight options and make decisions based on them, not like a human at least. One instinct might override the other, like hunger or the opportunity to reproduce might override fear of death. When a lion that hasn't eaten for a week fights harder to bring down a buffalo than a lion that ate 12 hours ago, it's because the instinct to eat soon is more powerful than the fear of serious injury. The lion isn't thinking "Oh I haven't eaten in a week, better put a bit more effort into this hunt."

And emotion is not the same thing as conscience. Of course animals can feel fear, and anger, happiness. But most 'decisions' are actually made by instinct. Even in humans, the limbic system, aka the lizard brain, does over 70% of our decision making. And in this case, fleeing from other lions, she would have been in fight or flight mode. Which is all about instincts. Only through special training, for example military training, can most humans learn to overcome the very powerful fight or flight (or freeze) response in situations of extreme danger. Most humans, in a case like that, will not be able to make rational decisions. Their decision making will be determined by instinct.

So to say that a lioness, in a life or death situation, suppresses their limbic system and making a conscience decision to 'sacrifice herself' for her cubs, is ludicrous. And it is not the same as a human. When a human decides to sacrifice themselves, they are making a conscious decision to go against all their instincts, because they are able to rationalise that even though they will die, it will give other people the chance to live. Because that is what conscious thought is. The ability to go against your instinct. Reply