From an evolutionary standpoint, the absolute best thing that can happen to an animal is for it to become a domesticated pet or livestock.
By being domestic, it means that the animal no longer has to worry about its own survival. Humans will do that for it. It no longer needs to struggle for food or resources, or battle it out with others of its own species. Everything is taken care of. No wonder cows are so chill.
By becoming a pet or livestock, humans will go out of their way to make sure that species survives, thrives, improves, and multiplies. There are billions upon billions of livestock animals alive today that could never exist in a natural setting. Evolution has selected for animals that know how to get along with people -- and Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has made chickens, pigs, and cows as tasty as hell, thereby ensuring that these species will continue to exist for as long as humans do. If Nature did not want us to eat cows, pigs, and chickens, she would have made them all taste like vegan farts. I've never known any bacon that tasted like a vegan fart, have you?
So they win, and we win. What's wrong with that?
That's what a lot of these militant, overzealous vegans (including PETA) don't seem to grasp.
Look, nature, despite what some people love to tell you, is not kind and benevolent. It's beautiful and powerful, but it gives zero fucks. Only the strong and adaptable survive Mother Nature; the others die out because again, Mother Nature could not give less of a shit over who makes it. Nature will throw everything at you to kill you- tornadoes, poisonous plants/bugs/animals, droughts and floods, food shortages, earthquakes... even up to radically changing the climate itself. Humans are the
only species that are capable of actually
changing their environment to suit them so nature isn't capable of fucking them over.
Humans actually care for (and in many cases actually
love) animals. Nature will go out of its way to ensure that they die so it can weed out the strongest of the bunch.
I'm saying this as an environmentalist, by the way. I love nature. I want to protect it. But I don't delude myself into thinking that it's like fucking Pandora or something, where we can just plug ourselves into it and become one with it or whatever.
And, like Sage said, the absolute
best path for an animal is to become domesticated or at least tamed. All of their needs are taken care of; they don't need to worry about finding food and water, they're protected from predators and environmental hazards, and they don't need to battle over scant resources. Hell, all I have to do to be reminded of how great pets have it is to look at my dog. She's probably even luckier than
me. She doesn't have to worry about a thing in the world, all she does is just lounge around all day and soak up the love everyone in my family showers on her. And livestock, while not as pampered as pets are, still have a pretty great deal. Yeah, animals that are used exclusively for food often have their lives cut short, but again, it's preferable to trying to hack it in the wild where everything is trying to kill them.
