I never pulled legs off arthropods, nor did I ever use magnifying glasses to burn them. I did witness other children doing these things, and it always upset me intensely.
I'm probably an outlier. My mother tells me that from the time I could walk I captured bugs in the house and carried them outside to prevent them being killed.
I've continued the habit of rescuing animals from bad situations into adulthood and rapidly-oncoming old age. Once I caught a hummingbird in an Apple building in Cupertino and let it go outside. It was a beautiful iridescent green and so light that I couldn't feel its weight in my hand.
You’re not alone. I never tortured any insects or animals as a child and it weirds me the fuck out that that is apparently considered normal behavior. I haven’t seen signs of this in my own kids but then again I’ve taught them explicitly that harming sentient beings is wrong.
I think it's possible that we might be the weird ones. In the environment that our distant ancestors inhabited, squeamishness about harming animals might have been a significant disadvantage.
Or maybe not. Joseph Campbell claimed that a common feature of tribal mythology is ceremonial apologies and restitutions to animal spirits to make restitution for the need to kill them.
I think it all depends on the adults in your life. Maybe if we'd had a leader who said don't do that instead of "well they can't feel pain and they're pests" things would have gone differently.
I'm probably an outlier. My mother tells me that from the time I could walk I captured bugs in the house and carried them outside to prevent them being killed.
I've continued the habit of rescuing animals from bad situations into adulthood and rapidly-oncoming old age. Once I caught a hummingbird in an Apple building in Cupertino and let it go outside. It was a beautiful iridescent green and so light that I couldn't feel its weight in my hand.