Robocop wrote:Maddog wrote:Lions were first fingered as being particularly tough on Africa’s cheetahs in 1994. A researcher documented the big cats attacking and killing up to 57% of cheetah cubs in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. (They rarely ate the cubs, although the cheetah mothers often consumed the remains of their offspring after the lions had left.)
Things seemed almost as bad for African wild dogs, long-legged canines that are not related to domestic dogs. They have colorful, patchy coats and hunt ungulates such as wildebeest and gazelle. In the park, researchers documented that as the lion’s population surged (it nearly tripled from less than 50 to nearly 200 between 1966 and 1998 because of increasing numbers of prey, particularly wildebeest), the wild dogs, which had once numbered about 50, declined. Eventually, in 1992, the animals vanished from Serengeti National Park altogether, although small numbers persisted in lion-free areas outside the park’s boundary. Biologists have estimated that lions kill up to 32% of the canines.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/04/ ... xist-lions
Come on now Madders, you're not trying to say the, erm, 'evil serial killer' animals you describe above somehow justify hunting in any way surely?
We know that animals kill other animals. Sometimes they don't do it for food but for a variety of other reasons be it eliminating the competition for prey or even maybe for what us humans might perceive in our minds as 'fun'.
None of that is relevant here IMO. Animals are not 'evil' of course, they do what they do because they're.. well.. animals. I've never really understood those who think a fox is 'evil' or 'bad' because it might enter a chicken coop and kill not just one bird for food but every chicken he sees. This is what they do, he's a damn fox, and when we subscribe human emotions to them on a like for like basis, we're treading down a rather rocky road.
The only exception I might make is where perhaps an alien species is introduced and it decimates a local ecosystem and threatens to cause permanent damage, but even if those animals were to be culled, I'd hope the people doing the killing saw it as a job as opposed to an opportunity to post a selfie of them with a great big shit eating grin on their face next to a pile of severed heads.
Another excellent post!
As I am a bit busy atm you have very eloquently said most of what I wanted to in this thread recently and saved me the bother.
Good for you.
