alockwood1 wrote:One thing might be, how do Predators live with themselves after taking a life?
If they were a Protective Predator that took the life of a Prey that was a serious danger to other Prey - let' say that a Cat was on good terms with a group of Mice, only for a Rat to go around doing things that would get you the Death Sentence in most places, only for said Cat to catch the Rat in the Act and Eat them - they might sleep easy.
Or, again, Cat on good terms with Mice, one is fatally injured, or sick, and doesn't want to suffer, or wants Cat to eat them, again, Cat might sleep easy.
Of course, if Cat was a Serial Killer - that is filling the role as one, and not that of a protective predator - they'd probably sleep easy.
Still, maybe a Predator that's new to the whole Eating Other People thing might have issues.
I feel that our perceptions of how a predator would feel are probably quite shaped by our current society, where things like murder are bad, dehumanizing groups of people is bad, watching people die is bad (these are good things!) But throughout much of our history, humans doing horrible things was quite common in society. Armies would murder civilians as they pleased, people would watch public executions for entertainment, people would be tortured, or forced to fight to the death for entertainment. Millions of people have been dehumanized for a variety of horrible reasons.
What I'm saying is, historically, I feel that capability of cruelty without batting an eye was the norm for much of the world's history.
Given humanity's historical capacity for cruelty towards other people of the same species, I feel it's not much of a stretch to imagine in a world where there are predators and prey, that some sort of dehumanization of prey, or just plain cruelty, allows predators to not feel much guilt regarding their actions.
I think in a world like this, predators would be able to live with themselves quite easily. If, say, vore didn't exist, and you took our world and suddenly vore now did exist, then you'd run into those problems. If it's existed for a long time, society will have adjusted to where predators don't see it as a bad/evil thing, one way or another.