Snakes are intelligent. Very, very intelligent. Parselmouths talk to them. And they talk back. The boa constrictor Harry talked to in the zoo had a personality. Hopes. Dreams. It was homesick for it's native land, which it had never actually been to. That's not even 'talking to a stupid animal' talking to an animal. That's talking to another sentient, intelligent being on par with a human.

The explicit implication here is that anyone could 'talk' to a snake, but that the Parselmouths are the only ones who can actually speak the language and understand what it means. Ergo, all snakes are roughly on par with humans in the intelligence department, and the only thing that separates the two is a language barrier that can only be surmounted by a specific, rare kind of magic.

Seeing how there is nothing that makes snakes any more special than other animals, this has incredibly disturbing implications.

 

You are one silly woman.

 

Or, alternatively; magic.

i.e. not intelligence

 

Disturbing implications? Where exactly? This doesn't apply to the real world y'know... and in Harry Potter, I can think of a few things worse than some animals being able to talk.

 

Fucking vegans want to take over the world.

 

HARRY POTTER IS REAL.

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!

Get back in the kitchen and cook me some higher-thinking lifeforms.

 

We're not eating snakes, ho.

And beef would still taste the same even if it was intelligent.

 

Like their entire currency and banking system being under the control of a nation of greedy creatures that have been at war with wizards off-and-on for centuries. Or the fact that they possess at least four spells and multiple potions that would make rapists very happy. Or that there are creatures 'controlled' by the government that can suck out your soul.

So... yeah.

This. I'm enjoying my chicken wings, thank you very much. And I will enjoy my steak all the more later tonight

 

So, you're implying that the ability to speak to any animal exists in the Wizarding World?

Mootongue: You look delicious.
Cow: What?!?
Mootongue: I'm going to skin you and eat you.

 

Unfortunate implications? Like the satifaction of eating something as intelligent as (or, in your case, more intelligent than) you?

I say, bring it on, cowface.

 

Being able to talk clearly does not an intelligence make, in the Harry Potter world. There are many non-intelligent (or at least, non-sentient) things that can talk due to magic, such as portraits.

What Harry hears when he hears the Basilisk seems to be a much more accurate representation of how a snake thinks without interference.

 

One thing I always found trippy about the whole Parseltongue bit, was from the incident with Harry at the zoo:

They speak another language - in another language. That's like speaking fluent French - in Russian.

Conclusion: other than concluding that they most likely drink Dos Equis, and knowing which ones kill people, nobody cares about some motherfuckin' talkin' snakes, or the motherfuckin' extent of their motherfuckin' sentience.

 

@Lord Raine: What's your sig from? Methods of Rationality? You really should cite that shit.

 

All this means is there is absolutely no reason why cannibalism is immoral.

Let's figure this out together shall we?

Snakes can talk

Snakes are sentient

Snakes are animals

This means that

Animals can talk

Animals are sentient

This is where it gets trippy

Humans can talk

Humans are sentient

And according to Darwin

Humans are basically animals

Ahh but

Humans eat animals

Therefore

Humans eat humans

 

O.O Wow. Let's go through this shall we...

I'm going to assume you're talking within the HP world here...

Begging the question. For this to be true, you'd need the premise "Animals possess all traits which snakes possess".

The ridiculousness of your inference can be seen thus: Snakes have no legs. Snakes are animals. Therefore animals have no legs.

Clearly false.

Basically, snakes are animals, but not all animals are snakes.

This is pretty much the same problem as above. It seems you're confusing yourself with the word "are". In this case, it's a membership relation, not an identity. Humans are a subset of the set of animals, not identical to the set of animals.

"Humans are animals, humans eat animals, therefore animals eat animals." is a correct inference. Yours is not, because it fails to recognise that there are animals that aren't human, due to the above confusion about "are".

 

I think there must be a reason zombies go after us, first.

Honestly, If you want to save the snakes and all other 'intelligent' life on earth, you'll need to set off a zombie apocalypse.

 

Big fucking deal. You're talking about a book here, snakes can't actually talk. And the last time I checked, people don't eat snakes. Ipso facto, it doesn't matter whether snakes can talk in a piece of fiction because I'm going to enjoy my roast beef anyway.