*Any Reason to Preserve Other Animals?*

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Whoever started this thread must not be able to see something unless it's right in front of their face. This is black & white thinking combined with extreme myopia. OP, whoever you are, I bet you're American.

Who knows how nature works?

Web of Life, anyone?

Yes, I am often like that. I lack what is known as "imagination", about consequences particularly, ( except the exaggerated/unrealistic kind ). Which is why I am soooo "slow/stupid" about things that I have not had time to think through in depth. I think it is one of those AS sort of things.

And this is a subject I haven't thought through yet, at least not for about 16 years.


You lost your bet. I am almost certainly Aspergers though.

I think it is interesting that ( serious and effective ) action to save other animals, something that looks like altruism, is probably mostly self-interest on the part of the human species. The result of understanding what's good for us.

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any reason not to?

more space for us you say- well, personally I'd rather see more space for Bengal Tigers than the Bengals themselves. I'd prefer more space for the Asian and African elephants than for the Asians and the Africans. all in all, I don't see any benefit for anyone and anything in there being more homo sapiens.

I see nothing but obvious benefits of there being less homo sapiens and more animals- if just for the sake of the stability of this planet.

I'd rather see the Tasmanian Tiger brought back to life by cloning than Africa becoming a rich Westernised continent.

I say stop the speciesism. why should be wipe them all out, just because we can?

idiotic.

At the moment it is indeed Africans and Asians who are most suffering from large mammal presence in their countries.

In India people still show astonishing tolerance towards large mammal predation/activity on their land, which involves crop destruction, livestock killed and eaten, and the spread of disease. In Africa people are beginning to demand that elephants be prevented from demolishing living accomodation and essential vegetable plots in their passage across land.

Wherever people still live on the land in large numbers, ( mostly in developing countries ), large mammals and humans tend to come into conflict. Even in Europe sheep and goat farmers have been up in arms over the conservation laws forbidding them to shoot wolves, because their stocks are suffering.

The western attitude promoting more space and protection for endangered wildlife species, particularly the large mammals they are so fond of, often looks like racism, because it simply doesn't apply to most developed countries; the USA etc. And white people love to go on expensive safaris in the nature reserves which cut parts of many african countries in pieces.

But there is a movement/project to reintroduce large mammals into Northern America over the next decade, and perhaps then people in industrialised countries will begin to wonder if such animals should actually be saved.

When they have mountain lions eating their pets and elk destroying their gardens they might wonder if it is really necessary. At the moment it is easy for people in USA, Europe, and Australia to say "Save the Animals" because they do not come into daily conflict with them/the "large mammals" which constitute "umbrella" species for numerous others in the ecosystem.

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Other.

Because human beings do not understand the purpose of life, animal or otherwise. The best our (non religious) experts can say when asked is a shrug and a "don't really know, mate". "It just kinda happened from nothing, that's all".

We should not be making any such judgements until we have a clue, because it's common sense not to tamper with complex systems that you have limited understanding of. This same system got us here. Got us so far and there's a long, long way to go. We do not know what we may need. Not that human need is the sole criteria for judging value of anything.

And what if we applied the same criteria of "prove your value" to the humans on the planet? Humans are quite funny and do some interesting tricks, but why on earth do we need 6 billion of them?

You sound a little like a doctor from 1800 writing,
'Is there any reason why we should preserve other organs apart from those which contribute directly to human survival/activities?

ie; Keep genetaila for the reproductive aspect. Keep bones and muscles for movement. Stomach and gut for food processing, and heart and lungs because they seem to be necessary even though we do not understand why.

But not bother to protect any others. After all, what use are they? We can keep their DNA, etc in our own body, and a few individual specimens preserved in alcohol, etc. Liver, spleen, pancreas - they serve no useful function, and should be gotten rid of.

Stop taking up body space and resources and charitable energy on "saving" the others. '

I love life and I think animals have as much right to this planet as man, who is also an animal.

You can't conceive of altruism? That's interesting.

Ever hear of compassion?

On the smaller scale, when animals about to be destroyed they are -not often enough- adopted by individuals who want to give them a home & care for them.

Your understanding of human nature is lacking in a way which I find most unpleasant.

The title of this thread is " ... Other Animals" precisely because I am aware that we are animals. Why do you think other animals have as much right as us to the planet?

What/who gives them them this "right", if not us? I am asking whether there is any reason to do so except when their existence is of some use to us. And so far the only reason seems to be for our own good, in that "large mammals" act as umbrella species supporting a myriad of other species below them in the food chain/ecosystem.

And the probability is that such ecosystems will only be sustained, or renewed, ( as in the plans for N. America ), in specific, small and intensively managed reserves, or in places with extreme climates such as Siberia, because large ( wild ) mammal presence near human agriculture/development almost always causes conflict.

In other words, large mammals may end up being restricted to "enlightened zoos", maintained deliberately for the bio-diversity they provide, which humans now appreciate. They would in fact be "kept" animals, "wild" only in name. In the same way as cows, sheep, horses, pigs, hens, etc, are "kept" for meat.

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Last edited by ouinon on 22 Dec 2008, 9:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

We have been tampering since the Neolithic, if not before. I am not proposing that we decide to kill all the animals off that we currently see no use for, just that we only protect those that we consider useful, ... which the biodiversity argument suggests is all of them that we can manage to provide homes for, and as I said above that looks like being in the form of carefully managed reserves, etc.


Maybe it is.


Well, apparently someone did, which is why they are there. Equally a lot of people did not see the need for large mammals that were difficult to domesticate, and so they are close to extinction.

Since people became aware of human "over"population the growth rate has slowed, and if this trend continues the population by the end of the century will have shrunk significantly.
Need does seem to be a powerful criteria for judging value. "Big-game/biodiversity" reserves may become as valued as livestock farms.

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Well there you go, the whole mess is all our ancestors fault. They should've let things be. They messed up and we've had to keep inventing new things ever since. And now we have to invent an oil substitute otherwise we doomed yet again.

Whilst we're wondering which native species to keep, isn't it odd that we are the ones who are *least* at home here? Every other creature can find somewhere in it's habitat to curl up and sleep when it's tired. Not us. We get too cold, too damp, or too hot. Bitten by something. Uncomfortable. We need to make beds, blankets, roofs, walls to hold the roofs on etc etc. Something to entertain us when *forced* to stay in as it's raining outside. Are we not waterproof?

We inhabit most of the land, but devote huge amounts of resources (physical and psychological) to never coming into genuine contact with any of it. It could be progress. It could equally be the mass insanity of a species that, if it disappears in the next few thousands years, will leave next to nothing in the fossil record.

The only real question to ask is "How best to preserve animals?"

Freeze-drying?

Salting?

Smoking?

Honey-Glazing?

We rely on our local ecosystems as much as we rely on animal life. All life on this planet relies on other kinds of life. Flora and fauna. Web of life. For a bunch of brainiacs, this should be obvious to you guys.

LOL Fnord, thanks for providing some entertainment in this thread, it was starting to get disturbing.

what surprises me is that despite the cultural revolution that humanity has went through since the last century, when it was considered inappropriate for a upper-class white gentelman to come back from a trip to Africa without a few lion rugs and ivory skulls as trophies, when people shamelessly wiped out so many amazing species for "entertainment", people still make such ridiculous claims.

why not bring back the Third Reich and just kill each other for more Lebensraum ("living space")?

Maybe they have more right than us, after all, many existed way before humans did, therefore humans eventually became the invaders in nature, putting it in that perspective, it is alleged that humans are destroying the environment of the planet, and very likely, they would be considered a pest and menace from another animal perspective, if they had the mind to make that judgement.

Another question is, is there a good reason to preserve humans?

Alive & well.