Social construct.

[paulpablo]

What is a pet is subjective in the sense an animal can be a pet, food, or pest depending on what the people around it consider it to be.

A snails exist like humans exist but in terms of evolution there's no clear marker of when human became human and not the great ape humans previously evolved from.

There's not a perfect record of every single minute evolutionary change, we call ourselves human homosapiens because it works as a general description and we don't have to describe every hominid that ever existed.

If we did have a perfect record of every evolutionary change it would still be socially agreed upon labels placed on chosen points within the entire period of evolution.

Humans -are- great apes.  We never stopped being that (and we never will).  We're not homo sapiens, btw, we're homo sapiens sapiens.  "Doubly wise"...we like to call ourselves.  It remains the case that pets are genetically divergent from wild populations..and, yes, even with a fucking spider or a snail, a geneticist could show you the difference.  Pets are not subjective - the coyotes on my ridgeline are not my pets, even -if- some dipshit.... somewhere.... keeps coyotes. We're pretty interesting there, we do sometimes keep wild animals in cages - like tigers. End of.

-but get to the moneyshot for christs sake? What is the point of pretending that this very simple distinction is somehow incomprehensible? Would you prefer to argue over whether or not the tarantulas in americans glass boxes are genetically distinct from those in the wild (they are)

There are wild caught tarantulas people keep as pets. I have never researched tarantulas admittedly but I can't see how it's possible for it's genetics to change instantaneously as soon as its been captured.

And the genetics of the animal don't really make a difference in this case anyway. Someone could have a room dedicated to pet spiders, if that person abandons the spiders and someone else comes into the house who doesn't see them as pets they aren't pets anymore. The spiders with whatever genetics they have transform from being pets to pests depending on the outlook of who is in the house with them.