But I thought I needed to make a comment.
Apparently, the Animal Rights Taliban has decided to campaign against me– because of this post.
Like all fanatics, these sorts of people are incapable of tolerating views that contrary to them. You’ll note that I’ve not commented on their pages, but they’ll not had the same good manners to leave this blog alone.
But let’s leave all this alone for the sake of this post.
One of the hysterical comments I received, which I did not approve because it did not fit comment guidelines, provided a link to the Facebook Group defaming Melissa Bachman.
The comment I didn’t approve got listed on the page because I’m a mean old Stalinist who doesn’t believe in free speech.
I actually do believe in free speech, but this is my blog. Every comment I choose to approve is a reflection of editorial decision. Anyone is perfectly free to start his or her own blog. You can even start one called “Retrieverman Sucks” or “Retrieveman Touches Little Boys.” (WordPress blogs are free!)
But you’re not getting a free space to deny science and act like a bunch of hysterical thugs on this blog.
Now, I noticed that the anti-Bachman page suggested that I was biasing the information somehow. In the comments I do quote Valerius Geist, a world-renowned expert on deer and wildlife management. I also provide a link to abstracts to links from wildlife management specialists, including some research scientists, who contend that trophy hunting can be a major positive for wildlife and for their ecosystems.
These scientists come to these conclusions through scientific inquiry, not rank emotionalism and a sort inverted (or perhaps perverted) kind of emotionalist class warfare. One comment goes like this:
He is also biasing the information, the emeritus proffessor that he is quoting is also a hunter, and they are arguing that hunters help the balance of the ecosystem by keeping herbivores numbers controlled, but how do they justify the killings of all the bears and that horrifying photo of her with around 8 wolves! which poor community eats wolf meat!?
Now, I do have some issues with wolf controls as they are currently promoted in the United States.
However, wolves will eventually have to be controlled at some point.
Wolves will conflict with people, and the best way to ensure that wolves and people have fewer conflicts is to make sure that wolves fear people.
The best way to do this is to have a limited and controlled wolf hunt.
Whether wolf numbers have recovered enough in order to have those controls is a good question.
And about that we can have an honest debate. I don’t necessarily agree with Geist on this issue.
But I don’t assume that Geist is an idiot or doesn’t know what he’s talking about or is somehow horribly biased because he is a hunter.
But our dear anti-Bachmanists think this is a reliable source:
The Animal Liberation Front!
What’s the Animal Liberation Front?
Well, the Southern Poverty Law Center considers them as a terrorist group. The SPLC has been instrumental in monitoring and, yes, shutting down extremist groups, including the Klan. It’s hardly a conservative group at all.
The US Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and ATF considers ALF to be a dangerous terrorist group.
An ALF member famously burned down a sheepskin factory in Colorado a few years ago.
These people are not nice little hippies that want to have discussions.
They are so fanatical that they will destroy property and put people’s lives at risk to achieve their aims.
It turns out that my decision to call this particular round of trolls the AR Taliban was not inaccurate.
This group of Taliban actually supports the AR version of Al Qaeda! Or at least, they consider them to be a more reliable source than tenured, published scientists.
And I will not take lectures on my morality from people who think like this.
I simply won’t.
I’m not about to let the fanatics win.
Like all fanatics who support terrorism, you cannot be nice to them.
They only understand strength.
I hope that all of my readers will help me stand up to these bullies.
They don’t want us to have a free society.
They want all of society to accept their morality.
And if they don’t, they support violence until we do.
We cannot allow that.
I did not intend to blog this weekend, but when I saw that these people were quoting ALF (not Gordon Shumway) on their Facebook page, I soon realized that I needed to say something.
These people are not interested in discussion.
They are interested in forcing others to agree with them.
So to hell with you AR shitheads and your support of terrorists!
I am not afraid of you.
I will write and control my blog as I see fit.
And if you don’t like that, you can kiss my ass.
This is what I think of that Facebook group:
Ummmmmm, shitheads? AR Taliban? Now who is incapable of civil conversation??
Is ALF not listed as a “reliable source” on that page?
If it is, you’ve proved my case.
You people need to get lives, and worry about human rights.
But animal rights isn’t about treating animals well. It’s about degrading humanity.
Bravo! Now you have learned that you cannot have a battle of wits with anyone who is unarmed. Let’s not waste our time and talents on this hateful blog!
I’m so hateful. I write lots of bad things about other races and religions.
And I want to know where Obama’s birth certificate is.
LOL
You don’t know me.
And that you presume to do so from a single blog post says volumes about you people.
If I’m the hateful one, why is that I’ve never used a known terrorist group as a supposed reliable source for information?
You are not alone wanting to see Obama’s birth certificate. Maybe some should have read his first book…”Dreams of My Father”.
LOL.
I’m sorry if you misunderstood, but I was being sarcastic.
The truth is I am a huge Obama supporter. I’ve always been a Democrat.
Well, Kudos to you to for not relinquiching Constitutional rights for freedom of speech. I see all this mind boggling embarrassement of division being created in American culture and society possibly on a larger scale. However, when I pass a local sheltr with a sign stating they have saved 85 lives ..( a new addition) my reasoning powers say something quite different. General public is waking up to their practices. They must change their image as all those donations ae affecting their pension plans and salaries. Know you are effective on your Blog. You are a threat to their questionable purposes. They protest to much would be a key focus in my opinion. Some of the best talk show host are hated only because they are successful. Divisions are being made with classses in many venues of American lives through a sad developement in American government. Retrieverman is a success IMO and a simple but correct evaluation of your current events.
I don`t believe in animal rights.
I believe we have a duty to animals, which is different.
As for the ALF, they are truly dangerous nutters. Even given to grave robbing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/may/11/animalwelfare.world
Note the length of the sentences that lot were given .
Elizabeth
Hear! Hear!
Well, I beleve we were given domain over animals but likewise to be good stewards of this domain. However, the infomation provided here hardly coveres the insane and their insanity. The discussions are hardly coming from rational people. Hunters being hunted by hunters seems to be taken quite literally. Robbing grave yards of dead bodies? Stalking and destroying people’s lives? How can any Animal Rights individual call themselves civilized human beings?
Most of us endorse the notions of dominion and stewardship, at least in principle, even if we are not religious. I believe those are biblical ideas. (Probably Qur’anic as well.) Man is morally responsible; animals are not.
The ARs, however, believe that man is morally equal to animals. It’s a direct rejection of religious ideas. Some think these ideas come to us from the Nazis. I don’t know whether that’s true, but the Nazis rejected religion and also championed the cause of animals.
If you believe man and animals are morally equal, then if it’s ok to kill animals it’s equally ok to kill people. Or it’s not ok to kill either people or animals. I think the ARs argue it both ways, but they never argue with each other, which they could do.
I think they’ve been so unsuccessful at putting over their idea that they’ve given up talk and redefined the situation such that it amounts to war. No holds barred. No Geneva Conventions. If that’s the case, then they are terrorists. Actually it was about them that the sabotage of farms was defined as terrorism under federal law. That’s our food supply they are threatening.
They are not civilized. They are like the anti-abortion fanatics. Not the folks with an argument. I mean the guys with guns.
This is just an example of why categorizing folks leads to a lot of misunderstandings. I reject religion AND Naziism.
Religious nuts and Nazis have both committed atrocities against humans that don’t exactly gel with my idea of good morals.
I think the AR movement is populated by people of entirely unsound mind. Why? Because any biological entity that engages in such undermining of the self as to hate your own species is engaging in a strategy that is directly detrimental to survival and continuation of that self, the ultimate point in life for any individual.
I’m pretty sure that means they’re mentally broken.
I wonder how they get that way.
We have to do what we do to protect animals because they have no voice…they are living creatures deserving of respect and compassion. Oh my, how unsound of mind is that????
The AR movement is not about treating animals as being aware, living creatures deserving of respect and compassion. It’s about undermining functions of civilization that rely upon using animals in any capacity, whether as food sources or symbiotes in the case of pets. Your caring for Toby and Dizzy would mean that you are exploiting them and harming them in the eyes of Animal Rights activists.
It is about the absolute logical fallacy that animals are pure and innocent, and thus superior to nasty mean human beings. It is a pseudoreligious movement that wants to present humans as sinful and innately undeserving, and ultimately would prefer if humans simply did not exist as a blight on the face of the Earth.
That is why they are mentally ill.
Animal Rights DOES NOT EQUAL Animal Welfare.
Look it up.
I have yet to see an Animal Rights activist advocate for the trees. No one I know of who is a member of PeTA or HSUS and other like organizations ever bothered to protect the marshland or even donated to a conservation project.
You know what happen to the forests when hunters and anglers are no longer using them? The rights of the land gets sold to forestry, oil and mining companies since the government still need to create a tax revenue to maintain healthcare, road and many other essentials. So, when the average Joe is no longer bring in money on public land, then animals find themselves homeless at the expense of profits generated from environmental destruction.
So, how is it really being a champion of animals when they are without food or habitats?
If you say that deer can never be hunted, then you can’t advocate for the trees.
You mean something like this? ;D
Don’t’cha just LOVE it? Oh my!
http://indians.org/articles/native-american-culture.html
Hey, if you comment to Retrieverman schmuck’s hateful blech-log and he doesn’t like it, he deletes it.
Boy, that’s a clever retort!
Tell me where you learned how to argue and write so well!
Of course, I delete comments. I get a bazillion comments a day. I am editor-and-chief here, and I choose what it is discussed.
This is how publications work.
The owners get to decide what gets published.
That’s not an infringement on free speech rights.
At all.
It’s simple property rights.
Scotty; you may as well be pissing into the wind. You’re trying to use reason and logic with people who are operating outside of the intellectual realm. their’s is a gut-level emotional reaction. They feel about the issues rather than think about them.
So to all you emotive, self-flagellating, hair-shirt wearing, misanthropists out there: The facts are this. We are animals within a wide spectrum of animals which include herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. We fall into this last category, and as such it a natural part of who and what we are to pursue, slay and eat other animals. It is not a sin, it is not unnatural, its not cruel or inhuman (and it doesn’t have to be particularly painful.) As self-aware beings it behooves us to follow this natural inclination with compassion and a degree of respect, perhaps even reverence, for the animals we kill and/or use. But always remember that a healthy ecosystem cannot survive w/o predators. We are predators–our dentition and digestive systems provide sound physiological and evolutionary evidence to that effect. We stand as part of the environment not apart from it.
Well said, Massugu.
I have an honest inquiry regarding man’s dentition and I’m trying to find good anthropological evidence for this. We do have varied tooth types and “eye teeth” but these teeth are so tiny and pathetic I can’t see them tearing into firm, wild hard flesh, hide, muscle. Have you ever tried it? So I’m wondering how this fits into our meat – eating and hunting history.
Not saying we never hunted. Just wondering about the pathetic teeth. Carnivores are characterised by carnassials and we really don’t have those to speak of.
Dentition can be quite misleading.
Giant pandas are derived from a carnivoran lineage and have really big canine teeth.
They eat almost no meat or anything else derived from animal matter.
Gorillas have bigger canine teeth than people do, but their canine teeth have more to do with fighting other males.
Ours may be smaller, but we’ve generally been an hunting ape species– for at least 200,000 years or so.
Right. See? I’m well aware of all that which is WHY I’m wondering about the reference to the dentition. Okay, small eye teeth may not mean everything so why the reference to it to prove we ate/eat meat? Because man, those things cannot penetrate hide to save a life!
Canines do not define carnivora. Carnassials do. But being part of carnivora does not make one a carnivore, hence the Panda and gorilla. I would think Pandas have carniassials and yet again, they are not meat eaters. Gorillas do not have carnassials are are not carnivores NOR are they defined as in carnivora.
Now, chimps are more closely related to us and have no carnassials but do hunt from time to time. But it’s not their chief source of food, if I am not mistaken.
As to tools, the body does not surely know you are making tools so there must have been adaptations to eating more meat, and I suppose that came after the tools were made and not before.
I’ve heard of the theory of the added protein contributing to bigger brain size but if that were true, why brain specifically and not other parts?
Okay, lets turn it around. How long do you suppose we would survive as grazers or browsers? We have neither the hard enamel and large grinding teeth of grazers, nor the the scissoring teeth of browsers. We also lack the the large and/or multiple stomach chambers (and the the bacterial colonies) of pure herbivores.
Our dentition is general purpose; & our digestive tracts are intermediate between pure carnivory and pure herbivory. If we had evolved to be herbivores, our dentition, our digestive tracts, and our jaw muscles would almost certainly resemble those of a gorilla (not to mention the need for a pronounced sagittal crest to anchor those muscles.). We don’t. Why? Because we’re omnivores and to be omnivores we have to predate or at the least, scavenge meat. Also, If we were herbivores by nature, we would likely have less brainpower since our big brains require a lot of calories–calories provided by meat and animal fats such as marrow, suet and blubber! (Say maybe that’s what’s wrong w/ those AR types–their brains are starved!)
One does not have to be a browser or grazer to be vegetarian, or have multiple chambered stomachs and for the most part the foods described in the link below are also foods our teeth can handle in their present form.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/02/how-to-eat-like-a-chimpanzee/
So yes they, and we, are omnivores. I don’t dispute that. I simply pointed out that our eye teeth as-is don’t seem to be good evidence for our meat eating capability as part of that omnivory, given their limitations. Eye teeth are just tiny canines, and again, canines in dentition, don’t define carnivores in the sense that they are not used to slice and tear meat. However, they CAN be used as weaponry in a variety of situations, or just to bluff, as is theorized as the purpose of the huge canines in gorillas. This particular study though, suggests that the teeth have nothing to do with it. Check the paragraph “Chimpanzee hunting behavior and hominid evolution.”
http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~stanford/chimphunt.html
As to protein creating our big brains, I have heard that theory and I used to have a couple of studies on it. It’s definitely a good one. There are huge creatures that graze and yet somehow get enough protein to manage their large bodies but as you say, they are modified to get the most out of grasses and so on. We could never absorb that much protein from grass if we ate it all day, every day.
Sidebar: Rman once blogged about the comparison of wolves, chimps and so on in terms of comparing DNA of close or identical species, and in that post I believe he mentioned something about the dog of today as compared to a wild wolf being the equivalent of a far less robust homo sapiens compared to the ones that existed hundreds of thousands of years ago. I think of that when thinking of us scavenging meat. We must have been damned tough back then considering all the fear, illness and death surrounding raw meat and I certainly would be loathe to recommend roadkill as an entree to most people today.
Are you daft?
There is plethora of evidences that early homins wielded fire to cook meat and starch. If you cook food, it is much malleable to consume and wastes less calories. In addition to that, our ancestors developed cutting tools.
Why would we need large canines or carnassials when we can cook it or slice it?
Our brain size is evidence enough that we are meant to eat meat. After all, if we look at the agricultural revolution, we see a significant reduction in body size and skull between pre-agricultural societies and after the revolution until the development of the beef cattle in the last 150 years.
Dave of course I’m not daft. If you read my response you can see that I did NOT go against the theory of protein and large brains. Also I was speaking strictly about dentition at the get-go, and how it’s not the right evidence for our meat-eating. Essentially you are only backing that up by mentioning use of fire, weaponry, etc. Not to mention one chimp link I provided mentions to, that the teeth are not the weapon for killing for our closest modern relatives.
So where am I daft? Nothing you write is contrary to my statements.
Having said that, I honestly want to be directed to the studies that show when we first started using fire, because I took bio, not anthro, and so my anthro-info is lacking, most admittedly. I have been looking for scientific studies that suggest when we first started using fire, why we needed to or what compelled us to – since we were clearly eating raw meat first – and how that affected our evolution, and our ability today to deal with bacteria associated with raw meat.
And it is not protein that made our brains big. It is the calorie-dense fats from the meat.
There’s an old Russian proverb something to the effect that better is the enemy of good enough. I think that’s a pretty good paradigm for evolution. If we hadn’t had the ability to develop tools that served as well as or better than canines, carnassials and talons, we would have had to develop same to survive as ground-based primate omnivores. Because we could make and use surrogates, development of these features was not selected for. That is not to say that primates don’t have the potential to develop same, as witness baboon dentition, only that what we had–our tool making skills–were sufficient to the task.
At the same time, we didn’t didn’t develop special adaptions for eating grains, grass, or browse (shrubs, twigs and forbs.) However, our brains and manual dexterity came to the rescue again as we cooked, pounded, macerated, riced and strained these hard-to-digest foods to the point where they became digestible. If I had to pick a a niche to which our dentition is best adapted, I would have to say fructivores.
As for vegetarianism, even chimps eat meat, some of them eat quite a lot of it. How well do you think you personally would survive solely on uncooked, unprocessed vegetable matter? Even the most vegetarian of human cultures cook and process their food stuffs, thereby releasing otherwise unattainable nutrition and destroying harmful toxins in the process, and many (most?) of those also include dairy products in their diets–once again high protein/high fat/high calorie foods dependent upon the husbandry of animals. Maybe you could get by on a diet in which all proteins were derived from pulses and grains, but I, and many others, quite literally couldn’t. My digestion would (and does) rebel. The problem here is not the carnivory but the percentage of meat in our diet.
Well again, baboon dentition has large canines but not carnassials, but they do also hunt and eat meat. I do get what you say though and my original point was that our eye teeth were not the right evidence for our meat eating history. But the tools are.
I was vegetarian for 17 years but it’s much easier to do that today than thousands of years ago, when folks were just concerned about survival naturally, and not with animal suffering, esp in special interest format. That’s why some folks do very well with veganism, but I would not presume to say everyone should go that route. I never did. And now I’m back to meat eating anyway.
One of the links I provided above points out how much fruit chimps eat and I think that matches our dentition as well as insects, eggs, honey, etc. But as was stated by our blogger, dentition is misleading.
I don’t think you’re daft, you’re just trying to maintain a dialogue. I’m no expert in anthropology either but I do have 40 years as a professional researcher/ analyst behind me. So I just did a little research and found the following, which I hope will answer some of your questions:
Evolution, Diet and Health
by S. Boyd Eaton, MD and Stanley B. Eaton III
http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/sboydeaton/eaton.htm
“About 2.5 million years ago…there is evidence that animal foods began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in our ancestor’s subsistence. Decreased molar size, less mandibular and cranial robusticity, and alterations in incisor shape all suggest greater emphasis on foods requiring less grinding and more tearing, such as meat.”
An Evolving Dentition: Human Teeth from an Evolutionary Perspective
Review by Jeffrey P. Bigham
http://www.manticmoo.com/articles/jeff/scholarly/an-evolving-human-dentition.php
“The dentition of modern humans has experienced considerable evolutionary change, some up to the present day. The general trend in these changes is for both the jaw and dentition to have become smaller. In fact, studies have shown that from about 35,000 years ago until 10,000 years ago, tooth size has decreased on average by about one percent every 2000 years. From then until the present the rate has doubled to a one percent decrease every 1000 years (Recent Human Dentition Evolution). Various evolutionary, environmental, and cultural factors are responsible for this change.”
Some other sites of interest:
http://www.health101.org/art_diet2.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/uotw-eha080812.php
http://www.philly.com/philly/health/HealthDay666146_20120627_Fossilized_Teeth_Hold_Clues_to_Early_Human_Species__Diet.html
http://mediarelations.gwu.edu/researchers-debunk-theory-neandertals%E2%80%99-extinction-was-caused-dietary-deficiencies
http://www.livescience.com/17127-wisdom-teeth-human-ancestors-diet.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/50/19622.full
http://hells-ditch.com/2012/08/archaeologists-officially-declare-collective-sigh-over-paleo-diet/
PDF: Dental enamel as a dietary indicator in mammals
http://www.gwu.edu/~hogwash/BW_PDFs/RP160.pdf
Thank you very much! All I can do is google, as so many of us do, or hit a university library and go through their collections of journal work, or ask a law library friend of mine to help, if I were so bold as to expect her to put her work aside for my personal interests. :)
Since I am reading your quoted text this second and not the individual links, which will take a few minutes, I will be interested to see if there is anything on when fire and cooking came into the picture.
Expert opinions vary (don’t they always) as to when man/hominids first started cooking. Richard Wrangham of Harvard beleives the fossil evidence points to Homo Erectus (1.6-1.9 mya) using fire and cooking. However, most believe it started w/ archaic H. sap some 100 to 500k ya. Below are two more studies which may be of interest:
As for dentition being misleading, the Panda is indeed a case in point, but its dentition (along w/ an enlarged gut and reduced metabolism*) is “good enough” for survival. Big-brained, intermediate gutted, H. sap could never have developed as an herbivore. Our teeth are just not fit for it and biologists who have attempted to eat a chimp’s diet have found that even it is too fibrous as well as being distastetul to the human palate and low in sugars (aka calories). (*see Giant Pandas Balance Energy Budgets with Metabolic Depression: Insights from Radar Detection of Heart Rates, by Tommy Gene Finley, U.of Arkansas, 2007, ISBN: 0549321470, 9780549321477)
The Great Leaps Forward, by Anthony Stigliani
http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/astigli1/greatleapsforward.html
Cooking may have had the largest impact on human evolution because cooked meat requires significantly less energy to digest it than raw meat, thus freeing up even more energy in the diet that could be routed for brain development (Nixon. 2008). Cooked food does not need to be heated to body temperature, is easier to chew and digest, and less prone to carry harmful bacteria. While archaeologists generally agree that cooking was one of our ancestors’ early uses of fire, there is disagreement as to when this began. Barnicott (2005), for one, suggests that humans began to cook their food around 500,000 years ago.
BeyondVegetarianism
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-4b.shtml
(Comparative Anatomy and Physiology Brought Up to Date–continued, Part 4B) The Relationship of Dietary Quality and Gut Efficiency to Brain Size : The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis of Aiello and Wheeler
“Advent of cooking may have promoted further encephalization by reducing digestive energy required. Finally, in what will be controversial to raw-fooders, Aiello and Wheeler, after arguing that the first major increase in encephalization was due to increased consumption of animal foods, next propose that the second major increase in brain size (with the appearance of archaic Homo sapiens) was due to the appearance of cooking practices. (Archaic Homo sapiens coincides with a timeframe of roughly 100,000 to 400,000 years ago.)”
We’re actually omnivores, rather than carnivores; we’re not obligate carnivores like, say, cats or wolves, but I doubt we would have evolved the large brain and social structures that define our humanity if our ancestors had not consumed meat on a regular basis. Our kind did not need large canine teeth nor carnassials because we developed substitutes (tools such as knives), and fire (cooking meat allows the body to use its nutrients very efficiently).
I’m actually slightly afraid of them. I reference a friend of mine (someone I really like as a person) who gladly told me that she would be happy to never have a pet again in order to prevent the suffering of ONE animal. She was having a lot of trouble conceiving, and I wanted to say to her, so, would you be happy never to have a child if it prevented the suffering of one child? I didn’t but I wish I had.
Referring to massugu’s argument, yes we are omnivores but we are no longer hunter gatherers since that kind of culture could not be sustained in a world overpopulated, as it is, by so many humans. Therefore we farm.
Hunting the world’s diminishing population of wild animals with evermore sophisticated equipment has become a hobby. If some of you are telling me that the natural environment could not exist without ‘blood money’ from hobby hunters then I would then argue there must surely be a better system of conservation than that. Actually it is too simplistic to suggest that hunting is the only way to preserve the natural environment because there are plenty of examples around the world of large natural areas where that is where hunting is not allowed. May there be more of them is all I wish for.
In the the majority of those cases you speak of, Dawson, the system only work because they were developed under dictator rule where the needs of the people is routinely oppressed.
For some reason, when a country becomes independent and democratic without hunting as a model for conservation, the nature reserves lose their protection status in order to bring jobs for the common-people.
We are seeing this in former Soviet blocs and many African countries.
http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/incite/incite0507.html
This is a good article.
In it, there is a weird case of Pennsylvania, where the deer hunters wanted lower limits on deer so they would have lots of targets.
However, the wildlife managers knew they needed to have higher quotas or they were doomed.
Poor old Gary Alt, in the end, got driven from Pennsylvania and out of wildlife management altogether.
Peter, your sense of empathy is laudatory, but you’re missing the forest for the trees! Individual animals (including humans) die–that’s a fact. AR types get so hung up in the survival of the individual, that they miss the fact that the species and its habitat is what counts. Yes, hunters have caused extinctions, such as that of the passenger pigeon, in the past. But habitat loss has caused many more and habitat loss is something that hunters oppose–for admittedly selfish reasons–with their wallets and their votes. All the hand-wringing in the world will not stem the loss of habitat one iota, but enlightened self-interest does and will. Hunters are among those whose enlightened self interest has the most impact.
actually, you have it backward. The farming came before the overpopulation. However, yep, hunting is MOSTLY a hobby (there are plenty of people who actually do still hunt for a living. Most may live outside the US and the UK, but they are nevertheless there). Hunting is a hobby. So are camera-safari trips and preserving places like Yellowstone. NONE of that is REQUIRED for most people to survive. Hunting, camera-safari, farming and even conservation all “exploit” animals — darting elephants to transport them to some other preserve is certainly interfering with their lives, as is the breeding of California Condors. Plenty of AR would object to all of it. IMO, if what you do overall does not harm (and hunting pays for plenty of conservation — far more than necessary to just offset hunting) taken as a whole, then if you don’t like it, don’t do it, but there’s no reason to prevent others from doing so. AR are a lot like the Inquisition — they are so convinced of their particular beliefs that they are perfectly willing to destroy others (including the innocent) in order to impose them on everyone. I don’t always agree with Scotty (for one, I’m NOT an Obama fan) and I sometimes think the tone could be less “one for your horse” — but it’s hard not to get that way when presented with fanatics.
Hi Peg. Not trying to play a “gotcha” here but wondering what farming you refer to. I’m guessing the first pastoralists and agriculturists, as in other blog topics here you said “factory” farming was a response TO overpopulation.
That alone, I have to wonder about. FF has not solved the world hunger crisis or even the USA-hunger crisis, but it sure has caused a lot more cardiac arrest.
i was referring to the original farming, not “factory farming” with the “farming came first”. I will note historically that through the middle ages farming and raising of livestock was inefficient and probably did a lot more injury to the animals and ecosystem in their area than modern “factory farms” (either for plants or for animals) do (as an example, the practice of letting pigs run loose in a town to scavenge what they could — there are historical records of them eating people and corpses. I’d rather have the factory farm product, thanks) . The problem with modern “factory farms” is that there have to be so many of them to accommodate the population. They haven’t “solved” the hunger crisis simply because there are even more people born every day and because of distribution issues, not because they are “factory farms”. As for cardiac arrest — no factory farm does that per se. Cardiac problems due to overeating are caused regardless of the origin of what one eats. And it can be caused by eating too much vegan food every bit as much as eating too much “meat” (ff or “free range”). Whole swaths of the Amazon are cut down for both ranches AND plant farms. OTOH, if there were no large scale commercial farms (either those for animals or those growing plants), the starvation numbers would skyrocket within months.
This is a really interesting outlook Peggy and I’m the first to say that having been vegetarian for a long time until recently, there are some outlooks that I have to research more to gain a new balance of mind, which I am more than happy to do. Some of what you say is a great lead into that for me. I work for the USDA but I am not a farming historian. If you could point me in the direction of some of your resources that you refer to showing middle age farming ineffeciencies, I’d be more than happy to take a look. At this point my outlook is that this wildness has been replaced with the problems of disease in food that comes with containment. Again, I’m open to new info to consider. That’s the only way people learn.
I do note that many types of pastoral activities meant letting animals loose and my gut does tell me old hogs were probably not as easily kept together by the shepherds and their dogs of the day, as sheep or goats; the behaviors are too different.
Regarding distribution problems, lots of truth to that. You mention more and more people being born all the time, and I often say human overpopulation is at the root of most, if not all, of our problems in humanity. Feeding poor people IS assisted with WIC in the USA, and our private citizens give generously to soup kitchens; a pastor in NYC I had to speak to while working told me that anyone in the city can get food if they want it, and that it’s actually tougher in other areas but it’s still out there. However, once you get into world hunger, there is the politics of gov’t-to-gov’t dealings, etc. Some countries wouldn’t let us give meat to their people even if we could.
Having said that, FFs are businesses, not charities. There are quite a lot of ads always pushing folks to eat more meat, more eggs, thus the overeating you mention. There is a beef council, a dairy council, all in response to medical advice that lots of folks are eating too much of these foods, so it’s not as if those running the FFs or any other part of the meat production link around them are saying “Hey, wait a sec. Too many people are getting too much of our product while others are starving for it.” Whomever buys it, buys it.
That’s what I mean when I stop at the statement that more FFs are needed to accomodate the population. Ultimately some folks, but not all, are getting the meat. They don’t want to lose business. I don’t see too many fruit councils around and fruit is loaded with calories, vitamins, minerals and fiber. Granted growing fruit needs it’s resources too but why is the mass production of one so much more popular than the other? When I see the eating habits of a lot of folks it seems like people find produce a punishment and meat a reward. Reminds me of kids that never grew up.
I don’t like raw carrots for example. I told someone this that I worked with once, as I held my nose and drank raw carrot juice. The lady said “Then why do you drink it?” I said “Because it’s for my own good.”
This girl had a job and could buy decent food, but chose all fast food fried chicken, hamburgers and Snapple. This was an adult, actually intelligent but raised in a poor neighborhood on fast food. Lots of these poor nabes don’t even HAVE supermarkets with decent stuff to choose from. I’ve seen it for myself, and from there one can cite distribution, but you only have to go one town over to get real food. I asked supermarket managers why some poor places don’t have stores and the answer is “no demand.”
Vicious cycle: No demand because someone never had good food growing up and finds it distasteful in adulthood. It’s found distasteful in adulthood by those who never had access to it growing up.
I’ll get back later today with the more serious references regarding historical farming (if Retrieverman allows the digression). There’s a couple of archaeological finds (including one in S.America) showing the general method was simply to wall up an area to pen captured animals in — including using caves. it was pretty common to have housing where the people lived on one side, the animal lived in the other (or people in the “loft” and the animals below). there’s an interesting BBC article in today’s news referencing introduced mammals into Europe http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19474287
which includes “For example, wild boar were introduced into Sicily in the Neolithic age, while humans took lesser and greater white-toothed shrews to Cyprus, and Sardinia and the Balearics respectively, around 9000 to 8000BC.”
I agree FF are “for profit” (or at least the vast majority are) — so are small farms. If you aren’t trying to make it “pay” you are engaged in a “hobby” (even research is ultimately with a goal in mind) — and this applies both to large (FF) scale livestock AND large scale plant production as well as to your small scale farms. You don’t generally engage in an endeavor to LOSE money unless it’s a hobby (ie, you do it for pleasure or as a “social gift” to others). Even co-ops operate on an “equal exchange” basis — the intent is everyone does “their fair share” and benefits from any excess (ie, profit) produced.
Yes, you don’t NEED teeth as a carnivore (hawks don’t have teeth, for example) if you have SOMETHING else to substitute for it. Birds of prey have bills and claws. Some fish just gulp. and some animals use tools (humans and chimps — twigs to get termites for example). The hand with the rock or spear substitutes quite nicely for slashing teeth. Note that all whales are carnivores — it’s just that their prey is very small for the baleen whales.
If Rman allows I will be grateful for his graciousness. If not, I genuinely would love to have them sent to me. Not sure when I will get into chat.
I hear you on the profits. All true.
Also while you can overeat ANYTHING into bad health, I think some things make it easier than others to do harm. Below is just an abstract, but it’s just one example of discoveries being made:
“Extensive Analysis of Long-Chain Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids, CLA, trans-18:1 Isomers, and Plasmalogenic Lipids in Different Retail Beef Types
Kraft, Jana, John K.G. Kramer, Friedrich Schoene, Jim R. Chambers, and Gerhard Jahreis.
The objective of this investigation was to provide a comprehensive analysis of the total lipid composition of present-day retail beef meat available at the consumer level and to evaluate the total lipid composition with special emphasis on the nutritional value. For this purpose, 40 beef cuts were
obtained from four cattle farms based on either a natural grazing system (NGS) or an intensive production system (IPS). The total lipid composition was analyzed using complementary chemical and chromatographic procedures. The content of n-3 LC-PUFA, CLA, total trans-18:1, and branchedchain fatty acids was significantly higher in NGS beef than in IPS beef. The trans-18:1 and CLA profiles were affected by the different production systems, whereby they can be utilized empirically to differentiate between feeding regimen and production management. Fatty acid ratios that have health implications (n-6/n-3, LA/RLNA, and AA/EPA) were remarkably beneficial for NGS beef compared with IPS beef. In conclusion, from the human health perspective, beef raised on NGS is
clearly superior with regard to a more favorable fatty acid profile in comparison to IPS beef.
Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, June 2008, 56:4775-4782.”
Thanks Peggy!
In re grass-fed vs. corn-fed beef. Cows didn’t evolve to subsist on grain and thus have problems digesting it in large quantities. They are grazers by nature. Since their bacterial communities and enzymes deal best with high cellulose foods such as grass and since grass grows in places where you can’t grow corn and requires much less in the way of TLC, it makes sense to feed them grass. Save the corn for other uses.
That has been the premise for the grass fed and finished meats being healthier for us than grain fed.
regarding studies on “free range cattle” vice “ff” cattle — it of course entirely depends on what they are fed. In CA, for example, the confined cattle are still usually fed hay, not grains since that’s what’s available. In areas where beet pulp is available, that often is used as livestock feed.
regarding damage done by farming pre “ff” era — here’s some references: Borderland farming: possibilities and limitations of farming in the Roman period and early Middle Ages between the Rhine and Meuse –LI Kooistra – 1996 – books.google.com — see page 10 “The soil may have been exhausted as a result of overcropping, causing a drop in yields”
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/caycedo/files/historical%20ecology/Historical%20ecology%20Burgundy.pdf . see page 6 :” A history of the demise of the forests that completely covered western Europe is in itself a history of human settlement and land use-“the triumph of land over forest” (Grenier 1929:28). …. In general, however, it can be said that the distribution of vegetation in Europe began to be markedly altered by humans in the Neolithic ….The New Stone Age of pierre polie (polished stone) signaled an attack by agriculturalists on the forests, initially those growing in light soils easily tilled by hand, and later, with the introduction of the plow, those that grew on heavier soils….. With mixed results, humans selected certain species of vegetation for extensive manipulation, altering the species range, changing-by manuring, burning, erosion, etc.-the constituents of the soil, and culling cohabitant species…Medieval clearing more closely resembled that of the Neolithic in that upland forests were replaced permanently by fields, and vegetation characteristic of the region was not allowed to return. ”
Agriculture: A History of British Livestock Husbandry, to 1700 –Robert Trow-Smith Routledge and Paul, 1957 ISBN-10: 041538270X ISBN-13: 978-0415382700 ;
Land Use and Soil Erosion in Prehistoric and Historical Greece
Authors: van Andel, Tjeerd H.; Zangger, Eberhard; Demitrack, Anne
Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Volume 17, Number 4, 1990 , pp. 379-396(18)
Five Thousands Years of Land Use and Abuse in the Southern Argolid, Greece –TH Van Andel, CN Runnels, KO Pope – Hesperia, 1986 – JSTOR
The management of animals pre industrial age is noted by the fact that the Act regarding cruelty is dated 1835. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty_to_Animals_Act_1835
— part of the belief was that baiting a bovine made the meat more tender. The discussion on training a herding dog in V. Stephanitz’s book “the German Shepherd in Word and Picture” clearly accepts the practice of knocking out teeth, filing them, using an iron muzzle, etc to manage a dog that grips inappropriately. Although there is no documentation on it, my guess would be that one of the easiest ways to keep a captured animal (say auroch calf) from running off would be to hamstring it. People were very often very pragmatical about what worked for them without concern if it made the animal “happy” or not.
Compared to death by mountain lion, hyenna, wolf, etc, death at the hands of a human hunter is remarkably swift and painless. It’s better than death by starvation, septic injury and probably most illnesses as well.
People tend to view ff with livestock more harshly than ff with corn simply because the “ahh” factor of “sad eyed” sheep (cattle, etc) vice looking at corn. It’s easy to empathize and visualize the possible harm to livestock. It takes a bit more contemplation to recognize the injury to the ecology & animals done by plant farms.
This is wonderful Peggy! Much appreciated, not least of which for the reference to the Von Stephanitz statements, since I do own the book but have not read it all. But here is something I can skip to for the moment.
There are far worse deaths for a wild animal than by a human hunter, which is why I am into game meat over FF meat. Actually my old thought back in the day, was that nature should take the course even if it meant suffering, since that was what was intended for animals anyway, and that nature was the best chooser historically of which animals would be fit to survive anything including overpopulation. Man caused the overpop by altering the environment in various ways, including eliminating most of the large predators, so why would more of man’s interference help? It seemed like just more of the same.
But I’ve been opening myself up to other thoughts these days. I’ve even considered taking up hunting for myself; thusly being curious about the hunting lines of goldens Rman knows of, and Louter Hunting poodles! I think using the poodle for it’s old original purpose would be rather cool!
Before anyone hits me with a wet noodle for being honest about my background in theories, please note that Rman doesn’t strictly forbid the mention of AR thoughts and….I think he was a religious person until when? Just a few years ago? Anyone can change! :)
May I just add that I know it is not as simple as I may seem to imply, for example when species are threatened with exrinction then if we can ‘interfere’ to help them survive then of course we should. On tv last night, for example, there was a heart warming scene of people wading into the surf desperately trying to save a disorientated pod of pilot whales beached off a Scottish coast. It looked as if maybe half of them have a chance to make it. Contrast that with the picture on here of that triumphant smiling lady standing over the magnificent stag she had apparently just shot. Just tiny examples having little significance in the big scheme of things.
You may not realize this, but in the United States, if those deer are not hunted, I can tell you with absolutely certainty what will happen.
There are tons of studies on white-tailed deer, and if they aren’t hunted, they will overpopulate, and just like cattle or sheep, they will denude the forested habitat in which they live.
I’ve actually seen this first hand.
When I live, there were very strict limits on how many deer people could kill. Because the deer weren’t necessarily trophy size, there weren’t a lot of hunting tourists coming in to shoot them.
Then we had about a decade of relatively mild winters and good mast crops, and over time, the deer population exploded. They ate down the woods all around them.
And then we had two winters where it snowed and snowed and snowed, and by about the middle of February, the deer began starving to death. They dropped like flies everywhere. It was like the deer equivalent of the Holodomor in the Ukraine.
Now, is it more cruel to let the deer build up in such high numbers and have a mass starvation event or to let hunters take a certain number of them?
Remember that the vast majority of hunter (indeed, all the ones I know) don’t want to hurt deer. They don’t want to torture them. They want a clean and fast kill, and they target practice in order to get those clean shots.
So in the end, you aren’t choosing to be less cruel by opposing hunting. It just means that you’ve personified what you perceive as more cruel.
But any rational person, who has seen deer starving to death in a bad winter, knows that having hunters manage deer populations is a far less cruel fate.
I don’t know why this is so hard for people to understand.
It’s almost as if people have been brain-washed.
There are brain-dead animal rights people, and brain dead gun advocates. Maintaining healthy, balanced ecosystems in times of increasing pressure from growing economies and human populations will require active participation by those of us who think, read, research, and care. Categorical thinking isn’t good enough. One region may be very different from the next. Hunting one specie is not the same as hunting another.
In my area, deer populations tend to stay in balance. I think because we have a healthy population of top predators.
Hunting deer or rabbits or squirrels — ie., the r-strategists at the bottom of the food chain — is one thing. Hunting bear, wolves, or cougar is another. This picture is oversimplified. For example, as you have pointed out, disturbing the balance between top and middle level predators can be a disaster for some small herbivores and allow others to hit plague numbers; migratory wild fowl (low on food chain) may be threatened by the combination of habitat modification and excess hunting.
If you want an ecosystem that’s good for deer hunting, hunt cougars and wolves . . . this will result in more deer to harvest. No question, the cougars like sheep, goats and calves, and ranchers don’t like them. But if the alliance of ranchers and hunters is allowed to call the shots, top predators will go extinct in the wild.
That’s why you have to have predator hunters in the mix, as well.
And not do what California has done.
Rman, I am guessing your take on sport hunting creating more human-shy predators which will leave sheep alone, is that the wolves that got away have genes they can pass down making them innately more likely to leave ranched animals alone?
It has to be, because as my grandfather used to say, a dead man cannot learn a lesson. So it would go with the shot and killed wolves.
If so my Q is, how many generations will it take, given the few wolves that are in the USA? And also, if this does work, how did man manage to make wolves pretty much exctinct in the USA way back in “frontier” days? Even without Fish and Wildlife laws or what have you, there weren’t nearly as many humans back then, and they sure didn’t have the wheels and other modern technology of the today, and there were many more wolves.
I’m open to answsers.
I’m nowhere near as eloquent as Rman, but I’d like to take a stab at answering.
(Q1) How many generations will it take, given the few wolves that are in the USA?
(A1) It’s not a matter of a few wolves escaping & eventually passing down genes that make them more likely to leave ranched animals alone. The answer lies in wolf culture. Animals have culture, especially socially adept animals such as wolves. Here’s how that works: wolves are intelligent and they see other wolves get killed when those wolves are shot for raiding livestock. The wolves who have witnessed the shooting become wary, and they in turn teach other wolves in their pack, and their pups, to be wary of people, livestock, and guns, as well. That’s also why livestock guardian dogs are great deterrents to predators: the predators learn to avoid herds guarded by LGDs and “pass the word”, so to speak. The communication of cultural knowledge from individual to individual, and from generation to generation, is well documented, even among animals not commonly thought of as social, like tigers.
(Q2) How did man manage to make wolves pretty much exctinct in the USA way back in “frontier” days?
(A2) There was an outright war on predators across much of the North American continent from the time the first Europeans explorers and settlers arrived, right up until the mid-twentieth century. There was no idea of conservation, or of the predators’ vital role in the ecology; predators were killed wherever and whenever they were found. Thousands, maybe millions, of carcasses were laced with poison and left to attract and kill predators indiscriminately. Bounties on predators were paid by the head (usually by the ears, in fact), with no limits imposed. At the same time, the large animals that predators need to hunt to survive, such as deer and bison, were being slaughtered by the millions, too. The pressure from so many fronts was the coup de grace for large predators & their populations fell below sustainable breeding levels over much of the country.
Yes, this is a strategy similar to that practiced w/ Karelian Bear Dogs, but in the case of wolves its the survivors who learn from the aversion therapy.
Massugu, has the KBD practice been going on long enough for folks to have documented whether bears scared away are raising cubs that avoid man simply by the scent or sound of man approaching? If predators are going to learn culturally how to avoid people, I would expect they would have to observe parents detecting humans and avoiding them in response.
UCC, I can’t speak to the cub’s aversion but the offending bears definitely learn. If the cubs follow their dam’s habits (which they generally do), the aversion should extend beyond this generation.
It’s not categorical thinking, it’s a working paradigm. I’ve yet to meet an AR person yet who wasn’t mentally unbalanced. When I do, don’t worry, I’ll alter my opinion gladly.
Scottie well said and properly recorded of events that I have witnessed of starving and disease deer. Having supported and worked in conservation issues in my comuntiies. The trophy hunters are generally not the local hunters but City dude tht is clad in expensive gear, and very expensive guns who over-hunts and kills needlessly. Hisorically how did the Indian Nations eventually be starved into the Reservations. ? Mass killings and slaughter of the Buffalo. Sorry but if your check the hunter’s back …his license to hunt is attached to his jacket.
i heard these radicals even suggest that humans should all be spay/neutered as not to produce any more human beings?
The only reproductive controls I ever hear about in mainstream human life really have nothing to do with practical matters, at least not in the USA. Quite a number of folks would love to see birth control gone; something we DON’T need to happen.
In many poor nabes, or countries, having as many offspring as possible happens for lots of reasons: it might be religious, it might be lack of reproductive education, it might be old laws of machismo even, or it might be practical, as in, have 10 kids so that maybe 3 will survive and bring us money.
That last one seems more insect-like than human-like and really just another part of the no-education reassoning, and adds suffering in an over-populated, over competitive world
Due to the lack of wild predators, this certainly would happen. ANd if there are a certain amount of wolves, cougars, etc, there will be more conflicts with people. You can control all you want, but the more expanse there is of human homes, the more conflict with wildlife there will be, including predators.
Human overpopulation is at the basis of all these problems; population control of wildlife, habitat threat, and human health issues ( famine, disease, etc).
I am very much for human welfare and many basic rights. I don’t consider myself some militant AR person in the sense that I hate PETA, HSUS, do not completely oppose hunting, went back to eating meat, and other things.I do not support the ALF or any group that seeks to do real harm to persons or property ( and if that property is a shelter/house, you can easily do incidental harm to persons).
I do look to objective science for answers but acknowledge it may be hard in this day and age to find a source you can trust as objective, given how the funding source can play a hand in altering what gets published or printed ( just talking to the American Medical Writers Assoc members and their thoughts on pharmaceutical studies and labels gave me some insight into that).
However I’ve never thought of animals “rights” as anything so inane as the right to vote, to speak from a podium, and so on. To me it’s always been a right to live life as one was meant to, either free or living life as intended, or at relative peace until slaughter time. Deer don’t live a stress free life by any means; no prey animal does. It’s extremely stressful being looked at as food all the time in life. So I’ll put it this way. Deer that are hunted are living more of a proper life than a veal calf that cannot move from birth, or a Spanish fighting bull speared slowly to death and tormented mentally, for extended times, for entertainment, or an APBT being shredded to bits in an illegal dogfight even though one COULD argue that he was bred to want to fight, etc. These and other items, opposed to the deer, are not part of any normal part of life that is beneficial except in the most contrived, abstract manner ( and certainly creative) that only humans can come up with.
Humans do just as badly by their own kind; quite often worse.
We could all do well to be fair to all forms of life, both our own and others.
The difference between animal rights and animal welfare (reposted from the NCRAOA):
“Animal Welfare supports humane treatment and use of animals and believes that humans have a responsibility for their care. Animal Welfare includes responsible care of animals used by humans for service, research, food, education, those kept in zoos or sanctuaries, and especially those animals kept by pet owners. Animal welfare is based on a principle of ownership of animals, a common sense approach that animals should be treated well and that animal cruelty is wrong. Animal welfare sets standards and guidelines for animal use and management based on sound veterinary and animal husbandry research and practices.
Animal Rights (AR) is a radical ideology that attempts to elevate species of animals to equality with humans by applying human interpretations of morality. A core tenet of animal rights philosophy is that no species on this planet is better than another; therefore, humans have no right to dominate over, use, breed, or eat nonhuman species.
Basic principles of animal rights philosophy are:
– The ability of animals to feel pain and pleasure puts them on a plane of moral equivalence with humans. This moral significance of animals necessitates that we reject the use and treatment of animals as resources or as property. Use of animals for food, research, and entertainment must be abolished and not merely regulated. (Peter Singer)
– Animals have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us; therefore, logic implies that animals have the same right as humans to pursue their life without human interference.
– The line between human and non-human animals is an artificial construct designed to facilitate and justify the exploitation of non-human animals.
http://www.ncraoa.com/AR_AW_WhatYouShouldKnow.html
You are speaking of animal welfare, NOT ANIMAL RIGHTS.
I know Scottie, and I, and probably everybody else who has ever commented on the blog support animal welfare.
Animal rights is a totally different matter. And this website fails to acknowledge (because it is not often blatantly stated) that AR adherents believe not only that animals are EQUAL to humans, but indeed, superior as they are without human sin.
It’s a common sentiment in AR circles that the planet would be much better off if all humans were dead.
And that’s pretty scary.
This is one of those areas where I say again, categorization can lead to misunderstanding. Those differences between staunch AR and AW mindsets are accurate. However, for myself only, I can extrapolate a few things from AR and say, I see the point. Before you react, at least read on and then decide if you want to crucify me.
I get torn. I see chimps and how they have suffered from a lifetime in a laboratory, for example. Only humans can do this to animals and that sense, sure, I wish they could live life as they had evolved to, without this bizarre interference. I do believe animals have a life of their own of importance to them, but only as far as their instincts take them. Humans are more aware of what can and does happen to them, so this is a different case. Some primates and cetaceans are said to come very close to us ( hence the anger a lot of folks feel when seeing the pilot whale harvests) but I don’t say it’s exactly the same thing and at any rate, we will never know since we cannot get into the head of another species; we don’t always even get into the heads of others of our own kind.
What do I prioritize more? I have often joked: “If an old lady and a puppy were on the train tracks and the train was coming and I only had time to save one, I’d save the old lady. If Ted Bundy and a puppy were on the tracks and I only had time to save one, welllllllll.”
But I acknowledge that if i had a kid and someone told me research on that chimp may save my child, well, naturally I would want to save my child. Naturally I am going to save my child, friend, mother, before a chimpanzee.
In real life this is an instant, emotional response that makes perfect sense. But to be truly objective, I have to put humans under the scope as well as the other species on the planet. And in doing so, I have to acknowledge that this response is natural, emotional, instinctual. This is “better you than me” and it is in fact, at it’s heart, very ANIMAL. It’s not like people sat around rating all the creatures of the world and said “After many studies we conclude that humans are the BEST creatures and most deserving, scientifically or morally, to endure and prosper.” THis is about freaking surivival!
As different as humans are from the rest of the animal kingdom, we evolved to be as we are and as such, are in fact, another animal. We are the dominant species on the planet ( if you don’t consider the impacts of insects, viruses, bacteria, etc, as being just as powerful in a different way), because of our opposable thumbs and incredible cognitive abilties.Though it seems unlikely, you never know. Environments may change such that surivival is easier for another species than ourselves, rendering us the inferior model.
But as things stand we are the IT creature of the eon. Our actions of animal use happen because we CAN, and because, like every other animal, we are doing what comes naturally; we are putting our own survival and well being, even pleasure, above that of the other animals Much of what we do to animals, and the way we do it, stems from a sense of self preservation of a highly evolved brain.
Most other forms of justification for our right to use creatures as we see fit, stem from the “And the lord said thou shalt have dominion over every animal..” biblical dogma. As an atheist, I can’t count that as good reasoning.
I think this is where a lot of the folks who would speak to me would mistake me for an AR person and jump down my throat.
Would the earth be better off w/o humans?
Well, if we weren’t here to begin with, that would be a moot point for our purposes.
Reminds me of pro lifers telling me “But if your mom aborted you you would not be here.” To which I reply “Then it would not matter to me would it, because I would have never known about anything to begin with.”
That response has blown a lot of people’s minds for me in the past and I’ve enjoyed it.
But that only refers to the idea of humans having never been here in the first place. The fact is we ARE here, and I am not in favor of killing off all humans. I DO think, as with so many other species, more population controls would benefit both our own kind and other species. We are rampant! But not FORCED controls. Voluntary education-based controls. I don’t think it’s such a hot idea for a couple to be having more than 2 kids or so. We have gone past 7 billion now and quanitity is making quality of life for each person harder to achieve. There will always be haves and have nots in some comparative sense, even if it was something like “He has 4 yachts and I only have 3.” but ah, if only that were the worst problems we faced.
I appreciate Rman’s blog because he IS very much for AW, and uses intelligent reasoning, logic and fairness. Much different from quite a number of folks I have run into who simply try to make people feel small for having sympathy for the deer about to be shot or the rabbit about to have eye caustics tested upon it ( if this really still happens).
In the words of G. Carlin, “The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked.”
see chimps and how they have suffered from a lifetime in a laboratory, for example. Only humans can do this to animals — well, not entirely. There are creatures which can essentially make a zombie out of their prey (http://www.scienceinseconds.com/blog/Zombie-Bugs), there are those that plant their eggs inside other animals and use them as “live incubators” while they are eaten from the inside out, many predatory animals will bring in a live (but often crippled) prey animal to use as an educational tool for their offspring. Dolphins will herd and murder other dolphins or porposes. Orcas will sometimes “play” with their food. Ants enslave other ants and some enslave bugs.
Yes, we are the only ones who keep other animals and inflict pain for the purposes of research — but then the intent (if not the result) is to REDUCE pain and suffering, eventually. Dogs were one of the research models for hip replacements — just the other day was a news article on a dog receiving prostetic limbs. Clearly one wants to avoid unnecessary pain & suffering, but the intent is to eventually reduce pain and suffering. We are also the only ones to TREAT other animals — from giving polio vaccine to chimps to creating refuges for elephants. Many an AR would object as much to the latter as to the former
Ah, you speak of parasitoids! I’m familiar. And all true about orcas, dolphins, etc. And a well fed cat will hunt and torment mice. Thankfully these moments don’t last lifetimes for the orca food, mice, etc, or even a day generally. And yes, we at least have it in us to reflect on what we do and also try to reduce the suffering. There are a lot of folks who don’t care either way and then there are those PETA morons who put shelter dogs to sleep thinking they’d be better off than risking being “let down” by another human home. Quite a bell curve of philosophies exists. Such is also the effects of our amazing human brain.
Perhaps the only positive spin on the extremes is that each extreme serves as a weight against the other, in the system of checks and balances.
I guess, massugu, that I look at it from my small and relatively heavily populated island perspective, where political interference with land use must play a part if uncontrolled overdevelopment is not to ruin a ‘green and pleasant land’. For example we have a ‘green belt’ around all large conurbations where devllopment is virtually disallowed.
Think what a dreadful place it would be if one city just merged with another. We also have hedges around the fields to ameliorate for loss of the ‘wild wood’.
We have in recent decades had a policy of ‘set aside’ where farmers are encouraged (with subsidies) to allow some of their land to go back to nature. And also the farmers are now being encouraged to leave natural strips around all their fields to assist regeneration of pollinating insects and wild flowers, plus all the songbirds etc that benefit and increase.
Finally the ‘is wild wood’ is being artificially recreated. It isn’t totalitarianism as some might suggest, it’s what we have to do under our conditions here to avoid a barren urban hell on earth. Wish us well.
The United States isn’t like Great Britain.
Here the forests have grown back after agriculture became more efficient and transportation costs became much lower.
As the forest have grown back, we have entire ecosystems that have returned in a somewhat modified area.
If you want forests on your land to continue to be productive, you’ve got to manage them.
The coyotes and bobcats don’t take enough deer control their numbers.
So human hunters have to be part of the mix.
I don’t know why this is so problematic.
Humans have to be part of the ecosystem, and our role in the ecosystem is that of predators.
Yes Peter, on my first trip to England, I remarked to my associate on the urban green belts there and the fact that that would never happen in the US. Here, as soon as a road is built or ‘improved’, developers rush in to McDonaldize the landscape, causing more congestion, thus more road-building in a recurring cycle– a perpetual self-licking ice cream cone if you will. (This practice is a result of having what was perceived as limitless space and resources–we haven’t gotten to the Easter Island mentality as of yet, but some would take us there if they could!)
However, we do have farm preservation in which farmers agree to leave their farms in agricultural use for long periods (like 99 years). They get paid up front as though another farmer were buying the land for agriculture, but can continue to farm it, rent it out for farming and gift small parcels to kin.
We also have a pastiche of national, state and local parks, preserves, wildlife management areas, etc. Here in the east, wherever hunting is forbidden, White-tailed deer quickly destroy the understory of same and then move out into the agricultural and residential areas nearby, which they also devastate in short order. It’d be nice if we could introduce apex predators like wolves or cougars to these areas, but that’s obviously impractical. Hunting–which raises sizeable habitat management revenues–and chemical birth control (paid for w/ tax $$) are the major tools used to curb their numbers. Coyotes help but are not sufficient to the need.
Coyotes are evolving to behave and look more like wolves, and wolves might start working their way south again. They might be here in 50 or 75 years.
Cougars are going to come back even sooner.
But the truth is this is no longer a pristine paradise of sorts of wildlife.
It wasn’t even when the indigenous people were the only ones here. They were managing lands and wildlife, just as we’re going to have.
There are more people in the United States right now than there were before Columbus.
We’ve destroyed a lot of it.
But we’ve also been able to preserve quite a bit over the last hundred years or so.
Peter do not remember where you live but the reasoning for such conservation acts here in the United States were implemented first by good American Farmers.
That should tell you a lot about that Facebook group. They had to put up this message:
See? They actually are catering to violent extremists.
Scottie what a continuing disgusting situation. They will just ignore violent threats and inappropriate statements against others? It does not matter in my principle and value system who or why…this unciviilized behavior needs serious check mating. IMO
Ron White sums up my feelings about hunting
” I don’t hunt. And it has nothing to do with how I think it might somehow be more holy to eat meat that’s been bludgeoned to death by someone else, that’s not it. It’s really early in the morning, it’s really cold outside, and… I don’t wanna go. “