Yes, because we are animals and we can do both. But as for non-human animals, the answer depends on whether they're like us in relevant respects. In the case of anticipation, the answer at least seems to be yes. Think of a dog getting visibly excited as you get the can of food from the cupboard, for example.

Hope is more complicated because to hope, the animal would have to represent something as possible, want it, and also represent the possibility that it might not be forthcoming. Whether there are non-human animals with that kind of cognitive sophistication is not clear, and it's also not clear for animals without language what sorts of experiments or observations would help us figure it out. However, it's an interesting question, and psychologists are generally much cleverer at designing experiments than philosophers are. So perhaps some day we'll know.

Well, if someone is struck by lightning is it murder? A necessary condition for the commission of a crime is that the candidate criminal be an agent. Arguably, non-human animals are not. So, just as they can't consent to sex, they are incapable of rape or murder. Concepts of moral or criminal propriety just don't apply to non-human sex. One reason one is tempted to think otherwise is that non-human animals have moral standing. That is, they are the proper objects of moral consideration, and one can act morally or immorally towards them. But not everything with moral standing is a moral agent. Now, having said that, I do think there are other reasons for your justly wondering about this question. The sexual congress of plants and microbes doesn't raise this question. You aren't likely to wonder whether bees rape flowers. But the sexual activity of animals more closely related to humans seems strikingly similar to our own conduct, as do many non-human ways of eating. Moreover, non-humans close to us can be trained to behave in all sorts of ways in conformity with our own rules of conduct--e.g. dogs can be trained not to defecate in the house. Plus the sexual activity of other primates seems to involve something like rules of propriety as well as violations of those rules (e.g. deceptions and infidelities). And, perhaps most of all, as anyone who's spent a lot of time with non-humans will know, a good deal of sexual activity engaged by non-humans close to us resembles rape, as it commonly involves the violent subduing of females by males. But still the question must be asked whether non-humans can come to grasp and self-regulate using norms of sexual conduct that would include prohibitions against rape. Dogs can be trained not to hump the legs of humans. Can they be trained to gain consent before engaging in sexual conduct? My guess is that the concept of consent or anything approximating the concept of consent is beyond them. Non-humans that live among humans and possess a sufficient level of intelligence and tractability may be capable of acquiring less violent forms of sexual activity, but without consent (both given and understood) the concept of rape just won't apply.

You've got it right. If one believes meat-eating is wrong and has reasons and arguments for that view, then one should offer those reasons and arguments to others to try to convince them to stop doing something wrong. The reason meat-eaters respond this way is presumably that they do not think they are doing anything wrong or they think that vegetarians' reasons for avoiding meat are subjective (e.g., they don't like the taste or feel they don't need it) or, more likely, they are trying to avoid confronting reasons, facts, and arguments that would make them have to give up something they like doing. Conversely, some vegetarians might not want to confront meat-eaters because they don't take their position for ethical reasons or because they think the harm involved in meat-eating is minimal enough that they don't need to try to change the world, even if they do think it's wrong enough that they don't want to engage in that practice. The latter view seems difficult to pull off consistently.

I say all this as a half-hearted vegetarian, one who simply makes efforts to avoid buying or consuming factory-farmed meat (especially chickens and pigs) and who makes little effort to convert others to this position. Hence, I am likely failing to consider or internalize some good reasons to adopt a more consistent and stringent vegetarianism (or veganism), and I am not doing what I should to convince others to change their behavior. It's hard to do the right thing. It's at least as hard to argue against the majority. I'm very interesting in the "moral psychology" of all this--how can we get ourselves and others to do what we believe is right.

A man points a gun and pulls the trigger. The gun fires, and the bullet strikes another man in the head, killing him instantly. Was it murder? Anyone who thinks they can answer the question based on what's been said so far doesn't understand the word "murder." Did the man who pulled the trigger do something wrong? Anyone who thinks they can answer the question based on what's been said so far doesn't understand what it means for something to be wrong. Whether what happened was a murder, and whether anyone did anything wrong depends on a lot that's been left out, not least a lot about who intended to do what and who knew or believed what.

Scenario #1. The man who pulled the trigger is a hit man. The person shot was an otherwise innocent witness to a crime. The person who hired the hit man wants to be sure the witness can't testify. This murder and the man who pulled the trigger (as well as the one who hired him) did something deeply wrong.

Scenario #2: The man who pulled the trigger is a police officer, and his job is to protect a witness from being killed to keep him from testifying. The man who was shot is the hit man, and had the officer not fired his weapon, the witness would almost certainly be dead. That's not murder and it would take considerable arguing to make the case that the officer did anything wrong.

Scenario #3: the man who pulled the trigger is an actor. The gun was supposed to be loaded with blanks and has been on every one of the many previous performances of the play. But someone who wanted the victim dead tampered with the gun. This is a murder. But the murderer isn't the man who pulled the trigger, and that man is not to be blamed for what happened.

All of this is legal and moral common sense. It would be easy and might be instructive to add a bunch of other scenarios. But these few will do. Whether a bit of behavior is an act of murder depends on what was in the mind of the person whose behavior is at issue. It may not depend only on that, but it depends at least on that. The same goes for whether a bit of behavior amounts to moral and not just legal wrongdoing.

So now we come to the monkey. (Yes, I know: chimps aren't monkeys. But it sounds good.) For a monkey to commit murder would take a lot of understanding and intending that's quite likely beyond the capacity of a typical simian. We can agree that the death of the monkey is a bad thing, and that this is because of something about what it means for a creature to die. We can also agree that the death of the man in any of our other scenarios is a bad thing -- that it would have been better if no one had ended up dying. But both in the human case and the animal case, whether it's murder or whether it's a case of moral wrongdoing depends on knowledge, intent and in general what's going on inside one or more minds.

None of this gives us any reason to think that morality is mutable, shifty or culturally relative. Related points apply to behavior that doesn't raise moral issues at all. Whether a waving hand is a greeting or a signal to the waiter to bring the check or an involuntary spasm depends on what's going on in a mind or minds. If we focus on mere raw behavior and ignore what's going on in minds, we won't understand action at all, let alone actions like murder.

You seem to be assuming that the only bad thing about pain is that it will be remembered. But is this right? I think not. One way to argue against the assumption is by analogy: if the assumption were correct, then presumably the only bad thing about memories of pain would be that they will be remembered. And so on up. So long as all sentient beings die eventually, there would then be nothing bad (or good?) about their experiences because all memory of them would eventually disappear.

Rejecting what you assume, we would say that pain itself is also distressing and therefore bad. In fact, without that distress of pain itself it's hard to understand why memories of pain should be distressing.

If pain itself is distressing and bad, then it makes sense to avoid and alleviate pain. And this is in fact what we routinely do when we offer palliative care to a patient who would otherwise die in great pain. The case of the animals you describe is essentially similar. Just as it is less bad if the last few hours of a dying patient are pain-free rather than full of pain, so it is also less bad if an animal soon killed in some experiment is pain-free rather than in agony during its last hours.

But I think you have what philosophers call the "dialectic" of the argument here somewhat backwards. I take it that the argument for vegetarianism is suppose to be something like this: (i) The lives of animals are of moral significance, which is to say that one cannot permissibly kill an animal without good reason; (ii) The need to eat would constitute good reason, but (iii) as a matter of empirical fact, most of us, at least in developed countries, do not need to kill animals to eat, so we do not have such reason; (iv) Mere preference for animal flesh over plant-based foods does not amount to sufficient reason to kill an animal; (v) So we fortunate people living in developed countries ought not to kill animals for food. So the argument is not really that we do not need to eat animals to survive.

It should be clear that the argument does indeed grant that, if one has to kill other animals in order to survive, then that would be morally permissible. But even so, this does not mean that killing those animals has no moral significance under such circumstances. It is simply that other moral considerations are in play. And it does seem that how bad it is to kill an animal depends in some way upon one's reasons for doing so and, indeed, upon how one does so. But none of that seems to undermine the argument.

The claim that something "symbolically supports tyranny..." is not a claim about the act in itself, but a claim about the meaning of the act. Your vegan friend may see troublesome meanings in the act of eating artifical bacon flavored chips or wearing fake fur. But not everyone does, and there is much ambiguity and complexity about what things mean. To take another example, I have friends who will not marry because they think that "marrying symbolically supports an institution that oppresses women." I don't doubt that marriage has historically oppressed women, but I think marriage has multiple meanings (commitment, family, for example) and any decision whether to marry or not needs to take all these meanings into account. Back to the fake fur: Personally I prefer fake fur that looks fake, so that I don't make unnecessary enemies or set a bad example. Your friend is so passionate about veganism that he focuses on one set of meanings.

Once the premise is accepted that the treatment of animals that is required to make fur or leather goods is cruel, it does seem to follow that we should do everything we reasonably can to stop it, or failing that, we should not support it. I suspect that you are right to call your friend's view "extreme". For one thing, manufacturing fake fur and leather and vegetarian or vegan food that tastes a bit like meat, though it isn't, may actually help the campaign against the cruel treatment of our suffering evolutionary cousins. On the other hand, even if one was attracted to the idea, there is something very wrong with manufacturing handbags to look like human skin, or fake human meat for morally scrupulous cannibals. Why the double standard?

I think so, it is not as though the costs of looking after the animal are immense. If one can prevent harm to a sentient being then one ought to, other things being equal.

It seems to me that in order for an agent to act rightly or wrongly, morally or immorally, s/he must be capable of having the concepts of right and wrong, moral and immoral: consequently, it seems to me that if certain animals were discovered to have the ability to have such concepts, then and only then could it be said that those animals were capable of right or wrong, moral or immoral actions. This is, it seems to me, an empirical question--albeit one that we may be unable to answer. But the mere behavior of animals does not, it seems to me, manifest the possession of such concepts.