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Frankly, I don't think your average animal has a capacity for 'evil'. Matters of soul aside, in order to be evil, they'd also have to have a concept of 'good'. Animals simply aren't complex enough in terms of culture to have that sense of right and wrong. Even in OUR society, such issues aren't clear cut; several hundred years ago, killing someone was 'murder', but slaughtering entire towns in the Crusades (or in other conflicts throughout history) was seen as as holy act! The definition of good and evil are so hotly debated in our own society, and we expect animals to have a capacity for it? Impossible, I say.
I WILL say though, that animals that are unintelligent cannot, under any circumstances, produce an evil act. However, intelligence gives creatures the mental capacity to be bored, and that gives them the capacity to be cruel. For example; sharks and dolphins. Sharks are relatively unintelligent, in comparison to the mammalian dolphins. They're practically robotic; they see a fish or seal that's moving slower than the rest, they eat it. There's no internal evil laughter, there's no conflict, there's no cruel intent- it's a nigh-automated response. As a result, while cases of mistaken identity with human beings can end in bloodshed and tragedy, it's not really the shark's fault- it was just doing what instinct told it to. It wasn't doing it to hurt a person, it did it because that's what millions of years of biological programming set it on that path. There's no more malicious intent than a roomba running over your foot. However, that also means that sharks don't produce waste- they kill something, they eat it. They don't kill for fun, or just to watch things die.
Dolphins, on the other hand, are a different manner. We've all heard the tales of dolphins saving sailors, playing with people, or guiding ships. They're intelligent creatures, capable of making decisions. Unlike sharks, they don't run on a 'script' as much, and as a result are capable of coming up with games. Unfortunately, this also means they have the ability to be BORED. And their 'games' aren't always fun ones. There's reports of male dolphins assaulting swimmers in a.... naughty way. Also unlike sharks, they kill for the sake of killing as well; slaughtering entire pods of porpoises because they were there and easily killable, even though dolphins don't EAT porpoises.
But even then, I can't say they're evil. There's no culture there, there's no society. There's no dolphin cops going to drag them away for murder. Dolphin moms don't put their kids in time out when they hit somebody. If a toddler burns a house down, is it an act of malicious arson, or just an accident because someone wasn't watching the matches closely enough? Usually, we'd assume the latter, and I think it's the same with even the most intelligent animals. They know how to do mean things for no good reason, but don't have the ability to step back and calculate the moral consequence of actions like people do, and as a result, cannot commit a truly evil act.
....wow i wrote a lot more than i intended. Huh.
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