Sorry for splitting your post like this, hope you don't think I'm treating the parts out of context.

Quote Originally Posted by adamanteus View Post
I can't agree with any of that Stefan. I feel no "convincing psychological need" to kill for pleasure.
You don't, other people do. You can't assume that everybody functions the same way.

Compulsive needs are compulsive needs. They aren't truly controllable even in our own case. If we are supposed to assume that we aren't superior, then we need assume that our ability to control ourselves might not be either.

Dogs and cats don't kill for fun. They kill through instinct, they are driven by that instinct to take food when they can, because in the wild they would never be sure of when their next meal might be.
Eating meat because you like the taste, is killing for fun, strictly speaking. Like I said, we too are killing out of instinct and like any animal with the opportunity, we kill more than necessary. What can't be directly justified by survival or reproduction, we simply write off as "fun". "Fun" is a blanket term that covers a lot of needs.

We keep them well fed as pets, but their instinct to hunt remains in tact. But it is an instinct to hunt, not to kill for pleasure. They lack the ability to reason that their next meal will be in a bowl on the kitchen floor at a given time.
Killing to satisfy a need (any need) is an instinct.

They kill because they believe they must. We do not lack this reason, we understand and yet we still kill, even species which are not a prey animal for us.
How is that different from people killing because they believe ("feel" might be more appropriate in both cases) they must? What we feel ourselves might not apply to all members of our species. The "I can, why can't everybody else?" line of reasoning doesn't apply.

All I'm saying is that the issue is much more complex than you seem to think.