Of course they do. You just argued that the art pieces were fine because the behaviours were natural and wouldn’t harm the animals.
Leaving out the insects being eaten.
I could make a whole spiel about how that’s always what people do when talking about how their chosen activity really does no harm - except for the harm it does, but that doesn’t count for some reason or another.
But in some cases a bug is just a bug.
Leaving aside the question of whether PETA are rabid psycho animal lovers/killers (which is it? I get confused), I think there are legitimate points to be made about whether art of this sort is something that should be made or displayed once it is made.
Even if you leave aside the ‘is it cruel’ debates, for me it’s a question of whether we as human beings should intervene in other creatures’ lives in this way.
At bottom, these animals have absolutely no say in whether they are involved in this or not. We as human beings put them in those situations. Whether that is cruel or not, it is a capricious and arbitrary exercise of the power we have over animals.
Effectively, the artist is God messing with Job or telling Moses that he’s not going to get to the Promised Land without even the scanty justification of “I was just testing you for a bet with my buddy” or “You done wrong, so no Promised Land for you”.
