In response to Andrew - full post here
I think that it's interesting that you brought up the ethics of killing spiders. As Avery mentioned above, sentience is on a sliding scale, and we have to weight various sentience levels against our understanding of morality. As he also hinted at, there are people who are against the killing of mosquitoes or even blades of grass; the Jains are an example of such a group. Some people that I have talked to have suggested that the ethics of killing plants is the same as the ethics of killing animals, so they choose to kill both. Now, back to spiders; I think that killing spiders, based on your conclusions about the disease carrying mosquitoes, is certainly less ethically correct than killing mosquitoes.
As a note, I do not kill insects when I can avoid doing so. I think that people are well within their right to kill mosquitoes, ticks, and other harmful insects. However, I think that the killing of other harmless insects is unnecessary; beetles, like lady bugs for instance, cause no harm, so why kill them? Also, some spiders like those within the Portia genus have exhibited an ability to learn and problem solve. I think that, unless the insect is a inconvenience to you, it may be morally wrong to go out of your way to kill one.
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