Bread lowish salt. 681

I had cod in mind, actually. We've fished the buggers almost to rest yet people are still happily chowing it down with little objection. Yet if someone ate some whale they'd be social pariahs. That's hypocrisy IMO.

Let's buttume here that cetaceans aren't self-aware (cos that's a completely different spin on the argument), you're then saying that one animal (or family of animals) has more right to exist than another. It's placing the emphasis of which animals are treated with respect, and those that aren't, on subjective emotions.

Hunting species to extinction is unaccaptable for a variety of reasons, as are barbaric hunting practices so I'm not arguing that it's ok to just go around killing and eating anything in any way you like. But if the animals in question are both able to withstand the level of hunting I, for one, find it odd that people can justify killing one animal (eg a cow) while decrying the killing of another (eg a dolphin).

The same could be said of many things, because wow factor is entirely subjective. Personally I find a huge school of fish to be more visually stunning than a whale, yet we 'hunt' those by the thousands. buttuming both could sustain being hunted who says which is more beautiful than the other? The fish are almost certainly more *important* in the totality of life on this planet.

Not untenable if you consider some forms of life to be more important than others. It is that belief of one animal being more worthy of life than another that I would question. I too would find a whale more interesting to see than a pig, but I don't consider that a justification for killing one over the other. It has to be said that both positions are using the animals as a commodity: one is to be end for food, one is to be preserved for our enjoyment. If we didn't enjoy watching whales what would we do to them then? Would we care so much?

I don't understand why intelligence should be a factor in whether we kill and eat something. Does an ape being shot and end experience the pain and suffering in a different way to a cow, a wild boar or a fowl? Is an ape more important to its environment than, say, the birds or insects in the area it lives? Squid and Octopi are highly intelligent creatures, yet they too are readily eaten. Could it be that from our human point of view they're not as cute or as easy to empathise with as, say, a monkey?

We seem to place much emphasis on protecting the big animals, quite often at or near the top of food chains, while the vast bulk of life goes unnoticed, yet it is that bulk which is usually the most important when looking at the ecosystem as a whole.

As pointed out before self-awareness is a different issue, although some could argue that from a purely logical point of view even that doesn't matter, given that rest is ultimately going to occur to everything whether hunted or not. A quick bullet through the head might even be seen as preferrable to what could otherwise be a drawn out and painful rest in the wild (NB I'm not trying to start up a euthanasia argument here, even *I* won't touch that one ;0).

I think my objections stem from the belief that no life form (but not necessarily the conciousness within it) is more important in principle than another.1 This means I don't see it as wrong to kill and eat another animal (plenty would happily at least kill, and maybe eat, me) but also that it is wrong to place one animal in a more important and protected position than another as long as you're not wiping out the entire species. No one thing (or person) has more *right* to a life than any other, no matter how awe-inspiring or plain ugly it might be.

Disclaimer: I am a member of the RSPB and WWT, so it could be said I favour birds over other forms of life. But while I support their conservation I also support that of all life, these two do help life other than birds and I support them probably as much because it also helps with my hobbies as a naturalist and photographer, most reserves being good places for mammals, insects and plants as well as birds.

Frink

1 This isn't to say all organisms are equal, some could disappear with little consequence, some could disappear and whole ecosystems would collapse. The importance of a creature in sustaining life as a whole doesn't always correspond with which creatures we humans consider more important to conserve, or at least spotlight as needing conservation.

-- Doctor J. Frink : 'Rampant Ribald Ringtail' Annoy his mind here : pjf at cmp dot liv dot ack dot ook "No sir, I didn't like it!" - Mr Horse