Spain to recognise great ape rights

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The way you are talking about rights for the large apes, I thought it would help to show that they are anamals after all and not some warm fuzzy play thing, they are wild and they are dangerious, and they have no moral compunction on killing, so to give them rights as humans is totally absurd, as they are not human, and do not think in human terms.

: Folia Primatol (Basel). 1977;28(4):259-89. Related Articles, Links

 

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Mother nature has done a lot extinction her self, I've read that something like 95% of all life became extinct before man even walk upright, and a lot of it was because the speices couldn't compete with other spieces. The other problem is when a species numbers become to small the inbreeding genitics takes care of the rest.

 

I have not read yet all your post but want to note, that although I have never shot a deer and do not think I would feel good about doing so, I am very much in favor of deer hunting, if properly regulated. Deer are very abundant on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a very agricultural area. - Flat low land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay.

The deer do some destruction of the crops, but I doubt if that is economically significant, especially if compared to what insects do. Insecticides are used to kill the insects by the trillions and no one complains about that, (except for the fact the insecticide is released into the environment etc.) The deer do so well during most of the year, that their population expands beyond the "carrying capacity" of the remaining forests during the winter. If some are not killed, all will starve. There are deer registration stations and most kills are reported. (I think that if you have a dead deer tied on your car, you may be stopped and asked for the registration certificate etc. Perhaps if it is still warm, you have no problem if saying you are on your way to register it.)

I know that there is a "doe-only" season of a few days and a couple of weeks before it opens the archers get to safely* hunt, but doubt if they get more than 20 deer. The registration data is used to control the kill. If it is not high enough in the initial period, as is the usual case, after a few days delay 2 to 5 days more will be open. No one likes to see deer so weak that they can not jump over fences. I once saw one impaled on a fence post while driving.

I once went to a "hunter’s ball" at fancy country club (as guest of my date, not member)**. Most there did not keep to eat any of the deer or other animals they killed but gave them way (via the local volunteer fire station, I think) to hospitals, old folks homes etc. so the meat would be used. I do not know, but think about 50% of the kill goes this route and other half is eaten by the hunter's family and friends. Deer are a natural meat resource available in some areas that should feed humans in need of protein, not buzzard picking it off their bones in some harvested corn or soybean field, after starvation has killed them.

by edit: read more ofyour post now. You say:
"Hunting is certainly detrimental to animal society. But then, that is irrelevant to you."
But as shown above, that is not necessarily true.

2nd edit: you give Funkstar a hard time, asking "I'm interested in just how you draw your arbitrary lines." etc. I will do the same to you:
You also say:
"I do not think there is any difference between a human and a chimpanzee such as to justify the human having a right not to be shot, while denying the chimp the same right. Do you see any important difference?"

While I agree that unusual circumstances are required to justfy killing a Chimp, where do you "draw the line?" Ok for my rat killing above? - It did reduce rat population, and that is generally public supported, especially when one has knawed the ear off a sleeping slum baby etc. If rats have a right to life, what about those "trillions of insects" annually killed on the Eastern Shore? They only die to make food production more economical. - No insecticide methods are well know, using nature means. (Some other plants in alternate rows, Lady bugs, etc.) Are you very careful when walking (not to step on ant)? Where and how do YOU draw the line?
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*They must be hard to detect, very slow and quitely moving while trying to stay "down wind" while getting close enough for a clean shot, etc.

**I sat next to young man who hunted alligators at night, (in another state, I think) just for the sport. I think they became food for some fish or crayfish in the bottom of the swamp. I have a pump air rifle, which did not make much noise when fired. As graduate student, a couple of times each month, I went in the alley behind the near by A&P food store and tried to kill rats. I am sure I must have hit several, but they are so tough that never did I see a dead body. - Some how they crawled away into a hole. He was not impressed with my hunting skills.

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We're omnivores. Meats are beneficial nutrition sources. The fact that it's possible to survive without eating animals does not in itself justify not eating animals. There's an argument to be made that not eating meat (at least occationally) leads to lower overall fitness in evolutionary terms. That's not an option for the species as a whole: So, yes, I do need to eat animals to live.

Besides, bears are pretty much omnivorous, too: Do you consider it wrong for a bear to eat salmon seeing as it can survive on non-animal nutrition sources? Why are humans special?

Only a double-standard by your morals.

Well, historically we would have killed for food first, and then realized the potential of the fur later. I don't particularly have a problem with either as a current phenomenon. The "just for the fun of it" is a bit different: I don't like bull-fighting, for instance. But on the other hand, the hunters I know certainly do it for excitement as well, and I don't consider that immoral. And there's plenty of precendence in nature: Cats "toying" with weak prey probably releases all kinds of nice pleasure hormones in their brains. The fact that it trains them for survival apparently doesn't matter to you - you didn't accept that I eat meat for nourishment but only considered the gratification it gave me. Are cats evil? Why are humans special?

And, by the way, my lines are no more arbitrarily drawn than yours.

You seem adamant in misunderstanding my argument: Human rights aren't there because they are right; the ethics you're so preoccupied with aren't there because they are right. They are there for human benefit. That's why I don't consider it at all strange to argue ethics in terms of human benefit.

Think this one out for yourself. It shouldn't be difficult. (Hint: Yes, they have rights.)

Not from my point of view, it isn't. Not anymore than we treat everything else in the world (including other humans) as objects. You keep bringing up this objectification and "economic resource" etc. as if those terms are somehow evil, and that this somehow supports your argument. It doesn't.

It should be clear from the discussion we're having that, yes, I do. And besides, you are denying the chimpanzee that right in general: You're limiting it to human interaction with chimpanzees. Your rights are, to use your term, a sham, and not really rights at all.

Again, you seem to think the rights have some justification in themselves. They don't: They're for human benefit, and are based on human social interaction. As such, I think it's a non sequitur to extend them to apes.

Ethics aren't like science. There's not necessarily convergence, nor are you likely to find two people agreeing on anything more than the basics, if that.

Why draw an arbitrary line at sentience? Isn't it just because you, yourself, are sentient? Why it the sentient suffering of an orangutan any more "evil" than the non-sentient suffering of say, a beetle?

How convenient for you to ignore the interests of the non-sentient. Unsurprising, I might say.

I hope not. That would be falling directly into the trap that we are somehow "above" or "excempt" from nature/evolution. Of course, we're not.

What makes you think you even can?

Don't be silly.

What about bears, then? Or the chimpanzees? Is it evil for them to eat meat? Why are humans special?

This is exactly what I'm talking about: You really aren't concerned with the interest of the chimpanzee (which in any case seems to be based on an anthropomorphism). You're only interested in forcing your personal morality on the rest of humanity.

Your personal morality isn't any higher on the "steps to enlightenment" than mine. I don't consider your morality to better, or even coherent. So don't give me that master/apprentice you-have-much-to-learn-bullshit.

Not necessarily. Do you understand that my stance is a little more nuanced than what you make out, yet?

Just because your personal (romantic and wrong) idea of what is and isn't nature isn't shared by me does not mean that you have the right to patronize me. Please don't do it again.

Why?

Exactly the same that gives every other species the right to fight for survival and reproduction. Nothing. But we'll damn well do it anyway.

Yes, it matters. If you do know a lot about evolution you obviously didn't see fit to consider your viewpoint in light of it. Otherwise the origin of ethics and altruism in human society; predator/prey relationships; the Red Queen effect; etc. should all have popped into your mind as relevant. It seems they didn't. That's why I ask.

No. We really don't. We might be able to postpone it for (probably) a very short time in geological terms, but that doesn't mean they won't go extinct.

In any case, doesn't the interest of the tiger to stay alive conflict rather heavily with the interest of it's prey to not be eaten? Why does one weigh heavier than the other (especially considering the large amount of victims the tiger needs to stay alive)?

You also say you care, but you really don't either.

 

Nature doesn't function morals and ethics. It functions on balance and survival. If humans were supposed to be herbivores, we wouldn't have evolved to be omnivores, and we would've evolved to be able to digest grasses completely.

The difference is, human slavery is humans mistreating other humans. You know, of the same species.
Eating other animals is something entirely different.

 

And we're done. You seem unable to want to even try to understand my arguments which in itself makes discussion futile. Coupled with your self-righteous moralism and misplaced feelings of superioty, I'm not interested in continuing this.

 

The most common way, I think, to kill rat is a posion that produces death in a several days of internal hemorage. That can not be very plesant. How would you suggest?

(1) Can you define "sentient" for me? I think it must mean more than sensing your evironment and clearly exhibiting "likes and dislikes" as it changes in various ways (for example cock roaches like dark and many insects like the light and warmth of the sun)
(2) Humans have short lives compared to some turtles. What does "short life" have to do with the the subject? If anything the arguement might go: Every life form is entitled to one year, after that .....
(3) Certainly as I noted in prior post, we know how to raise food without pesticides, and probably would be better off in the long run if we did so. It might be a little more expensive, but the main way to reduce the cost of food people eat is to allow free trade in food items. US annually pays 20billion dollars in farm support - part of it for not growing crops!

The Doha trade round is dead. Clever the way this was done. First the US blaimed Europe as not offering big enough reductions and keeping special quotas etc for former collines while US was offering an immediate 34% "across the board" reduction, if Europe would go along and drop the specail deals etc. Now US is rejecting Europe's offer to cut its supports price raates slightly more than 50%. They take turns trying to appear the "good guys." No doubt the politicans on both sides of the pond will point out how how hard they worked to make Doha a success, citing the offers they made when they were the "good guys." The stupid voters will fall for it all again. See my thread "How DUMB can US voters be?" in the politics forum for more on this.

On your "I avoid steping on ants etc." That just shows what a consistent guy you are. I have heard Brazilians, mainly framers, say that there is war constantly going on in Brazil and some fields do look like the ants are winning. You raise a lot of beef "down under" and must also have these large clay mounds, made by ants, in the pastures. I think you may be opposed to beef production, so if there is a similar war in Austraila, whose side are your on?

I am with you here, 100%. NO KILLING FOR FUN. imho THAT IS NOT EVEN FUN - I think it more fun to carefully cut off the tip of one wing of a fly so then it can still live and can still fly, but in a downward spiral.

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This is an old trick I learned while doing same to tip feathers of a chicken's wing. - It unbalance them so the "clipped chicken" can not fly out of the fenced in yard. I do that too for the chickens own good - foxes in the near by woods etc. :bugeye: The clipped fly is not likely to get into a spider's web. It is for his own good that the tip of wing is clipped.

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PS - hope you know I like to joke here too.

 

Most interesting part of the thread may be over, so I will just add couple of remarks on comments that have appeared.

On cats hunting for fun:
I once was drinking a beer on back porch after cutting grass when I noticed a bird on ground eating bugs etc I had probably crippled etc and a cat about 30 meters away, looking at the bird. Cat advanced towards the bird one or two quick steps and then froze. This happens so frequently that I could confirm that the cat only moved when bird's head was turned well away from cat. In about half an hour, the cat was only about 30 cm from the dumb bird and then cat suddenly turned and walked away!

I probably took Hapsburg's "If humans were supposed to be herbivores, we wouldn't have evolved to be omnivores,..." too seriously as error instead of just a careless statement, but cannot let "supposed to be" pass without comment:
IMHO, no creature is "supposed to be" anything. In the human case, it is clear from our teeth that we became omnivores. (molars and canines), but this was not according to some plan. Just that with ability to process more diverse food sources our ancestors had better success than strictly the grass eating or meat eating only options. Eating meat is efficient for the eater but expensive for the food chain compared to eating the grains etc. that produced the meat. About 30 year ago, there was an English lady vegetarian who walked across the US one summer and her only food was grass she processed in some sort of hand crank grinder she carried. (I think she mainly drank the extracted juices) God bless the English - they are a principled but often crazy lot.

I read a little about Thoreau, author of Walden Pond. He walked to Concord from the pond and passed a farm on the way where he often stopped to chat with the farmer who was anti-vegetarian (a seller of meat). Once farmer was telling Thoreau how essential meat eating is: makes you strong and healthy etc. but he had to break off the discussion and return to his team of oxen (About 1200 pounds of solid muscle produced solely from eating grass, vegetarian Thoreau noted in his notebook later.)

 

How do you deal with a rat problem the same way you deal with teriost problem, you track them to their hole and destory them.

 

Does this mean that apes will have their own house instead of a cage in the zoo, and that not hiring an ape just because hes an ape is considered discrimination?

 

James R,

"It seems to me that the life of an insect which lives for two days is less valuable than the life of a cow which might live 30 years. But maybe you have a different view...(?)"

Why? A life is a life. What you're saying means that the life of a turtle who lives more than 200 years is more valuable than that of a human?

"You really can't consider this question in a non-moral framework. As soon as you start to ask whether a particular action is right or wrong, ethics steps in."

I don't think so. Nature doesn't function on ethics, it's invented by man.

Most food components that humen need can be artificially created. Does that mean that we should just stop eating animals and plants?

 

It seems that apes will finally have the right to life and freedom in Spain. Next they'll be in your neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces as your equals.

Buy why not, as they are genetically 99+% similar and have more in common with us than what is dissimilar? We can all live together in shared brotherhood, while society continues to pursue progress.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FBCFE1B1-1994-4EDE-95CF-AAD664F9CCA2.htm