FR said:

>>It also does not know that a kingsnake from another colony is the same. What matters is the understanding of THE SAME...

... If its prey, they eat it, there is no thought process as to our difintion of what is cannibilism.



But we're humans here discussing an issue, so "snake language" is irrelevant. Bacteria don't understand the concept of infection, but they infect us nontheless. It doesn't matter what a snake's thinking, or what its motivation is, or what its consciousness is, when it eats another snake. Doesn't matter.



The second definition of "cannibalism", in the first online dictionary i turned to, is "the eating of the flesh of an animal by another animal of its own kind." A snake eating a snake is an act of predation, is an act of feeding, and the snake may not have consciously evaluated that the food item has everything in common with itself: It's still cannibalism.



FR said: "a king snake...also does not know that a kingsnake from another colony is the same".

Not so. One reason releasing snakes in an area other than their own is that they'll breed with the snakes of their species in that new area, and pollute the gene pool. Of course they know another king snake when they encounter one. Do they say "Oh, another king snake!" ? Of course not. But reducing this to that argument would be an absurdity.



FR said "All in all, kingsnakes are not cannibils because they do not consume their mates. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm "

Audible sigh or not, whether or not they consume their mates is irrelevant to whether they're cannibals. (If a murder kills strangers but not family members, is he not a murderer?)



It frustrates me you jumped the shark here, because I've learned a lot from you on the forum and find much you say to agree with. Don't take your arguments to such extremes.

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