'wtf' tag added.

THAT WAS MY REACTION!

Dude not only shot a camel the size of a birthday party pony, he fucking POSED with it.

Seriously, mother-fucker? Seriously?

Why not? Camels aren't endangered, they smell bad, and they're assholes. The only thing "wrong" with shooting a camel is that here in the West we've got a squick factor, owing to our cultural perception of camels as being exotic zoo animals. That's it! We have less reason to get mad over the killing of a camel, then we do to get mad at ourselves for eating bacon and grilled chicken.

Honestly, there is a difference between having a principled stance against the over-hunting of endangered species, and just being a wimp.

Would you shoot a cow or sheep with a high-powered rifle and pose with it for a picture?

EH, your camel description also fit every poster here, but I wouldn't shoot any of you (or at least wouldn't _boast_ about shooting any of you).

Well spotted, TeenerTot. When I wrote, that I hoped it would not cause undue offense to the PoE community... but the facts are what they are. Camels, like us, are foul-smelling, belligerent assholes. They are not nice creatures.

We do not shoot PoEsters for two reasons: one, we are humans, and thus entitled to a higher standard of treatment than animals are. And two, we tend not to dox ourselves, which makes it difficult for our online enemies to hunt us down.

Thing is, people don't have a problem with taking a photo and posing with a fish they caught.. just sayin' yo.

This is bullshit, camels are cuddly, awesome creatures. The opposite of poesters.

Are they? I always thought they were cute but I remember going on a camel ride at the zoo when I was a kid and the camel kicked me off. I know that's one example of one particular camel in a zoo setting; I think goats are cuddly as fuck but you don't know goats if you just go to the petting zoo.

Years ago I read this TC Boyle short story about remote big game hunting, I think it was through a camera equipped with a rifle; I hope he wasn't predicting the future and folks just start using drones like it was playing Big Buck Hunter..

As for what I said about fish, I like fish as much as I like goats and chickens and gerbils but it's a bit of a double standard to say that legally killing one thing, taking a picture and posting it on your fishing wall or in your Long John Silvers is totally acceptable and legally killing another thing, posting it online and getting a lot of hate for it is kind of a double standard.. but yeah killing things is fucked up. Go vegan!

Fish are dumb as shit and there's like a zillion of them and also you can catch a fish, take a corny-ass picture with it, and throw it back. That's what my uncle does after he smokes a ton of weed.

Fishing or hunting anything for sport is dumb.

It depends on your definition of "dumb" but it's definitely a different kind of intelligence for sure, and yeah I know a lot of people who get high and go fishing and throw them back. Personally I wouldn't like to get pulled around by a metal hook in my mouth but from what little I know about fishing it's painless compared to doing it to and land creature.

But by that logic, would it be fine to go out with a tranquilizer gun, shoot a lion so until it passed out and take a selfie with it and leave? Because I could see people having a problem with that too. I dunno. As far as I know these are all legal kills unlike our dentist friend, so I guess what you do with it is your business. Like, let's say I go to a restaurant and order some really expensive veal and just toss it in the garbage can. As long as I paid for it I didn't do anything illegal, people would just think I was a douche for doing it in the first place.

So wait, you're all filthy camel sympathizers?

Camels are the master race. Yosemite Sam rode one once, they are holy, blameless creatures. This is why the sacred sex of the progenitor gender is named after their toes. Where they step, life emerges.

I *think* the camel-hunter may be in Australia, where camels are an invasive species.

I have nothing against hunters who eat what they kill, but trophy hunting just rubs me the wrong way--especially predator hunting. I hope the meat was at least donated to locals or something. Ugh.

Wait...nevermind. This is all African game hunting.

Cows are grown and killed for food

Lions are wild and killed for a trophy and golf course bragging rights

I think the short answer is: they don't. People have a tendency to react with feelings first, and think only later, if at all. "Cognitive dissonance" only really arises when one is cognitive of said dissonance, if that makes any sense - if you don't realize that there are any contradictions between your stated reaction and your own behavior or moral compass, then it's not going to bother you. By the time people settle down enough to take a sober, objective look at Cecilgate, the news will have moved on and there'll be another pressing issue for us to re-Tweet to our Facebook friends about.

Now, in Cecil's case, he was a member of an endangered species - and, as the ranking male within a highly patriarchal lion community, his death will have serious repercussions for the long-term survival prospects of his family, far more than the death of any other given lion would. For this reason, Cecil and a cow are not analogous. Conservationists have perfectly rational grounds for objecting to the murder of Cecil.

However, Mr Gmol, if you are talking about hunting in general, even trophy hunting specifically, then yes, the outrage being encouraged here is both hypocritical and silly. Worse, the American public is seemingly unaware of a very large elephant in the room: namely, Zimbabwe's abysmal human rights record. Mobs calling for blood is always a little worrying, but mobs calling for the extradition of an American citizen to a corrupt, brutal police state that's been repeatedly condemned by NGOs such as Amnesty International since the rise of the ultranationalist ZANU-PF in the 1970s? That's downright depressing.

How about, instead of hating on a nobody dentist who shot an allegedly famous lion, we focus our outrage on Robert Mugabe, a man who tortures pro-democracy activists, utilizes Maoist-style child soldiers, and ***eats baby elephants***?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/02/z imbabwes-mugabe-condemns-white-safaris-eats-baby-elephant-at-lavis h-birthday-bash/

you don't kill without an express purpose. if you're not using it for food, essential materials, or to combat herd overpopulation you're an ass

hunting isn't supposed to be a dick measuring contest for sad, doughy professionals. I know it is for a lot of people, but that's not the way I and a lot of other people were raised to hunt

"I get it and all, but how do all of the outraged people who eat meat deal with the cognitive dissonance? I am serious."

There is no cognitive dissonance. What a stupid thing for you to say.

Cows aren't about to be extinct. This isn't about saving animals in general from suffering, it's making sure we don't wipe out entire species in our idiocy.

Not really cognitive dissonance, as the issue is about motives. Most people have no problem with sustenance hunting. In fact, hunting of native animals is a more ecologically sound activity than commercial farming, which destroys habitats. As the hypothetical argument goes, rich assholes like this are the lesser of all the other evils, since their paying big bucks for the privilege of hunting big game brings money into the local economies (the alternatives, presumably, being agriculture and industrialization, which would also result in the destruction of wildlife, plus their habitats). Furthermore, if it’s an animal past its prime, a bullet is usually a more merciful death than the fate that it usually succumbs to in the wild.

So I’d say think the thing that riles people up here has more to do with the idea that somebody is deriving enjoyment from killing something for ego's sake rather than sustenance... (Plus many of these “hunts” take place on private fenced-in reserves, which is about as “sporting” as shooting an animal in a corral.)

And yes, the species do matter, especially if they’re endangered. To most people (thanks to wildlife documentaries and tourism), these species have more value and interest when they’re alive than when they’re dead…so this is a bit like vandalism, in a way.

P.S. but agreed that the social media hate-on directed at that dentist is way out of line, considering that trophy hunting for threatened/endangered species has been going on for years and years and decades and centuries.

And big game hunters have been the target of hate and outrage for a long time, too.

The point is that most of us *don't need* to hunt for food; the fact that you want to waste a bunch of water and burn a bunch of energy for a hamburger that your tongue likes doesn't make any more sense than killing a lion.

Gmork,
What does extinction have to do with anything? SO it won't exist anymore, 99% of species that ever existed are already extinct. Why does extinction bother you so much (I ask sincerely)?

Rich white guys are the go-to villians these days. They're like the zombies of 2011. You can basically do anything you want to them and you don't feel bad.

Gmol, because life is beautiful, baby. Even if we're a grain of sand floating in an indifferent void, destined to be forgotten, we still love the things that make life feel special: weird big cats, stupid horses with stripes, elephants with big piano keys, animals with extremely ridiculous necks ect. Almost all the joy I get out of life is illogical. When I feel like dying, I'm usually wallowing in tenured [hack] professor levels of logic and practicality, without the money...

What's the big deal about causing a species' extinction? 99% of species that ever existed have gone extinct, so it's perfectly natural!

What's the big deal about murdering another person? 99% of all humans who have ever lived are dead, so it's perfectly natural!

It's not just rich white guys. It's also their wives who also like to kill things. You know, giraffes, hippos, the poor. Not to mention all the black African poachers who help them, and they can go die in a forest fire for all I care.

15th I guess that's the asymmetry then, you see beauty in weird animals but industrial animal agriculture doesn't give you any sadness.

Humans are animals. I eat meat. Therefore, I must have no opinion of murdering humans. You know, I say that, but I know most of the people here are pro-human murder, so I'm pretty much insulting myself here.

Why would I assume you think "murdering humans is ok" follows from "murdering non-human animals for non-essential food is ok"?

There is no distinction in nature between humans and other animals. To favor preserving humans over lions is the same hypocrisy as favoring lions and eating cows.

so, gmol, i'm assuming you lead a life where you only use what's essential for your survival?

Like, you live in a small ramshackle shed, eat only vegetables you personally grow, and drink only rain water that you collect? Because with that lifestyle, i'm not sure how a computer fits into your "essentials-only" philosophy.

can you girls untangle yourselves from that false "killing lions is just as bad as killing cows" argument?

no one is arguing that a lion suffers more*, or has more feelings. this is a conservation issue.




*actually, in this case, it suffered more...it got shot with an arrow by a cross-eyed fuckwit, and ran for many hours while bleeding, in pain, and scared for its life because it was being chased by a bunch of poachers, before it was finally shot to death...a cows death is humane by those stands

SolRo, you can obviously refine the argument down to self annihilation; but few of us want to annihilate ourselves.

But we can categorize things into discrete chunks. An animal has been shot and killed, people are disgusted and outraged. This is hard to reconcile with the fact that > 9million comparably sized animals (this is just cattle) are killed every year for food we don't need (and water/energy costs that are about 5x-10x greater per calorie/protein/fat). If you can't acknowledge the categorically different costs here, there can't be much of a discussion.

I already acknowledged the fuzzy line with flour, but it is a fuzzy line, not a giant meaningless smear that wraps around the earth.

In as much as industrial meat eaters can rationalize their acceptance of meat, why is it impossible to rationalize the killing of one animal? Meat eaters going to like the taste of meat, hunters gonna hunt.

So this is about "conserving" something for some reason.

Ok, there appear to be over 30,000 African lions...they are not an endangered species. How is this a conservation issue?

gmol, I'm guessing you’re not in the appraisal business. The fact is that we assign relative and ‘asymmetrical' values to virtually everything else. Otherwise, diamonds would be equal to zirconium; the Mona Lisa would be equal to all other portraits of women, the Grand Canyon would be just another piece of real estate, and so on. Why should animal species be exempt? What if these hunters were posing with gorillas or chimpanzees instead?

Again, I reiterate, it’s about motives (and personal character). “I’m hungry” is not the equivalent of “look at me! I killed this!” In the case of Cecil the Lion, the hunter selfishly took away something that brought enjoyment to many others. I'd imagine the outrage would be similar if graffiti artists started "tagging" El Capitan in Yosemite.

s/"I'm hungry"/"I like the taste of meat" is really more honest, don't you think?

I think we do have to rank order animals to some extent (insect parts are somehow not as bad as cow parts). But you really put lion and cow and different buckets? They are the sameish size, I doubt that we can meaningfully differentiate them in terms of externally observable cognition.

Given that Africa's wildlife brings in so much tourism money to impoverished countries, it could be argued that over a lions lifespan, it is more valuable than several hundred or thousand cows.

actually gmol, answer the question we should have asked right away;

Are you being such a bleeding heart "all animals are equal" preacher because you're trying to bang a PETA chick?

SolRo,
Ah so monetary equivalence is the key to the moral outrage. Now I understand.

also lions are big cats.

cows are not in any way cats.

QED

There are at least 6,000 differences between farming cows for meat and luring a protected animal out of its habitat and then stalking it for two days. Unless we're just talking about trophy hunting and not the Walter Palmer case, in which case there are only 5,000 differences. Utility is the biggest one. Farming a cow for food feeds multiple people (whether meat is a necessity or not, it feeds people) while hunting a lion or a bear or whatever for a trophy means one person ends up with a tacky decoration in their office. This all seems pretty obvious though, right?

spikes,
It isn't obvious there isn't a quandary between trophy food vs a trophy decoration; that's the whole point here. Because you subjectively consider a decoration tacky, it is morally wrong but an industry that slaughters forty million cattle per year (for non-essential food) is morally tenable?

You can see the bogus arguments in this thread ("conservation", "hunger" and the fact that lions and cows look different but are both comparably sized mammals etc.).

Say that you aren't comfortable with the lion dying, but at least admit there is a moral quandary with meat eating.

Yeah, we like lions, so we want them around. Same with humans. There's no objective reason. Who requires this metaphysical utilitarian nonsense to argue for a preference one way or the other? Not lions.

The Internet is this magical place where every inclination must be justified in nine million words of loopti-bloop rhetoric. Fuck all that.

>.... you see beauty in weird animals but industrial animal agriculture doesn't give you any sadness.

Jeez, that's a bit presumptuous. What about your high horse? Is it tired? Does it need a break?

"slaughters forty million cattle per year (for non-essential food)"

there's also a number of byproducts and materials made from cattle - antibiotics, asphalt, fertilizer, insulation, antifreeze, airplane lubricants, hydraulic fluid, glass, instrument strings, drum heads, etc. So - there is quite a bit more utility pulled out of that carcass than the photo and eventual rug that dr. micropenis will turn that lion into. and if you're trying to wash the blood of thousands of years of civilization from your hands you'll probably have to do a bit more than just quit eating meat

Talk to your local Farm Bureau asshole, Dairy Council, or FFA chapter for more information!

Oh come on. You are justifying the slaughter of cattle by the byproducts of beef production? I don't think you even know where those things come from or what "byproduct" means.

Which antibiotic do we make from cattle slaughter? Fertilizer? You are counting the fertilizer that *you already paid for to make the feed*, it doesn't come from thin air.

We render a lot of the byproducts into lubricants soaps etc. we could make those from the primary sources of triglycerides.

We could use more resource friendly plant/synthetic sources for *every single animal by product* (perhaps with just a few small exception like FCS for cell culture). We don't grow animals for byproducts, byproducts reflect us trying to recover the cost of growing the animals for stuff we can't eat.

Your moral masturbation over animal farming still has nothing to do with poaching an endangered animal for selfish egotism.

You keep coming up with bogus arguments in an attempt to obscure the dissonance between industrial animal agriculture and the hunting of a lion.

See your earlier "conservation" argument which isn't based on reality. See the above "byproduct" argument, which reflects a fundamental lack of understanding about what the word "byproduct" means. See the "hunger" argument which makes no sense, as people eat meat because they like the taste not because they need to kill the animal for food. Finally you suggest there is something different about lions and cows. Ok, but what is the difference that some how makes 30 (don't know why I said 40 earlier) million cattle last year ok and one lion not?

Selfish egotism x 1 is surely not greater than tasty meat X 30 million in terms of moral outrage.

Funny thing is, humans need complete proteins to survive...we will literally die without them.

Vegan diets depend on nuts for those proteins...nuts take a hell of a lot of water to grow...almost as much as cattle feed.

so how can you justify your wasteful vegan diet?!?!?!? (angry face!!!)

SolRo, come back when you understand the basics of proteins and amino acids.

Nuts are not very water efficient sources of protein, but neither are apples, potatoes or many other things we eat. Oil seeds and legumes are exceedingly efficient sources of protein (which is what we feed to cattle). Wheat + oilseeds provide "complete" protein (I doubt you really know what that means).

Here is a link to help get you started:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3887888

Factory farming is awful, no arguments there. It's also really bad for us, since all that corn we force-feed cows makes them sick as hell, they didn't evolve to eat corn and soy. It poisons the ruminant digestive system.

Not to mention that all that corn and soy is often grown on land that was once native prairie and wetland.

I still really like animal products and buy grass-fed humanely-raised meat/eggs whenever possible.

Whoever is in charge over there claims that Jericho is fine.

Yeah, I saw a debunker of the story yesterday.

yeah...

The problem as I see it is anyone can say it's keeping the herds at sustainable levels, which is a scientifically backed idea, but if they're lying, and there are a lot of poachers who are saying they represent parks, then who is to say there aren't a whole lot of illegal kills going on posing as "keeping herds at healthy numbers"?

Well, that's not the argument I'm referring to. The argument is that the thousands of dollars paid by legal hunters for permits go to support wildlife sanctuaries.

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=136280

I'm assuming that these are legal hunts, but that may be assuming too much.