What do you think about cooperative hunting between humans and dogs? Not the same as modern domestication, but some have theorized dogs may have domesticated themselves by eating scraps and/or leaving scraps progressing into sharing, hunting and training with humans. These relationships could have slowly progressed to human ownership of dogs. If we gloss over the hunting ethics, where would you draw the line for when this ethical cooperation between unequal partners turns unethical? Or do you reject the premise?

They didn't consent to nature either.

And that's why we don't use "but Nature did it first" as a justification in moral discussions.

I think that's too simplistic.

Here's an animal. The options are: - Owned/managed by a human - Living in nature - Not existing

The animal has consented to exactly none of those. But living in nature is not a bed of roses. Is it moral to subject an animal to that?

In that analysis, human ownership (if humane) seems like the most moral option. And "nature did it first" has nothing to do with the analysis.

I disagree it's too simplistic. It's a logical fallacy that we wouldn't be advocating for in any other context than our treatment of non-human animals.

It's also just a disingenuous argument. If our actual concern were the welfare and lives of animals in the wild, we would be capturing and caring for those individuals - not breeding new ones into existence.

Even humane ownership generally implies reproductive restrictions. I don't see how that could be considered the most moral option.

Neither did a child being born

Nor do any of us have the real option to consent or withdraw consent to living in the society we are born into (assuming emmigration is not an option, or that the alternatives are no better)