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Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

nytimes.com

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Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#201

Post by jvanderbot »

AnonHP wrote: post #153
jvanderbot wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently taken up hunting, mostly because my rural family prioritizes it. The natural world is full of unimaginable cruelty. Wolves will take down young deer and eat them alive while parents watch. Bears will pin down whatever they can catch and who cares if it is alive. On and on, the amount of bloodshed required to support an omnivore/carnivore is simply bananas. Killer whales are hyper-intelligent aquatic nig…

> But there is _no_ version of a carnivore or meat-eating omnivore that does not involve killing and savagery Absolute statements are not useful in this context. Vultures are obligate scavengers who eat the flesh of already dead animals as a practice. The dead animal could be due to death from natural causes (diseases, old age, injury, poisoning, starvation) or hunting by other animals. So there are some versions. Al…

Interpret my statement as a contrast to the disconnect the usual person has from bloodshed and killing, vs one who experiences it first hand or is aware of it.

Not to justify humans eating meat or killing, just to say "wow, there's a lot of it". That's the stage I'm at.

I thought that would be obvious when I went on to talk about how things are "better" because we kill them quickly vs wolves who disregard the feelings of their food, which I think is a good thing. Humans attempt (for the most part), to inflict minimal suffering when killing. We probably also drive off predators. We also try to abstain from killing young animals (at least before industrialized farming).

One can care about the anthropomorphized "feelings" of animals whether or not they are subject to any of our "morals".

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#202

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ornornor wrote: post #129
bamboozled wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are the cows taken away from the calves, especially dairy cows? Just curious.

That’s how we get all their milk, how we get meat (the calf isn’t kept around for more than a few weeks/months), and rennet to make cheese (it’s the digestion liquid that’s in their stomach while they eat milk, must kill the animal to extract it) Same with eggs, they don’t exist in a vacuum. To get eggs you have to have chickens, and to have chickens you must grind male chicks alive as they hatch because they don’t p…

> to have chickens you must grind male chicks alive as they hatch because they don’t produce eggs

Bit of a leap there.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#203

Post by freedomben »

addicted wrote: post #156
Daub wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked on farms i can verify that such things happen. I personally witnessed sheep behaving exactly as decided in The Silence of the Lambs. Our sheep were famously noisy and certainly were used to being moved around in lorries but when the abattoir lorry turned up you could almost smell their fear. I also witnessed a cow storm through four fences in order to be reunited with her calf. The irony: Th…

It’s ironic how accepted vegetarians, who have a dietary preference, are in society, and how hated vegans, who have an ethical argument against unnecessary killing of sentient animals, are in society. I only turned vegan a couple of years ago as something clicked and I was able to make the connection between the food I was eating and the animals who were being killed, almost certainly unnecessarily, for that food. Bu…

This is just from my personal experience, but as someone who is very sympathetic to the moral/ethical arguments from vegans but is not vegan themselves (though did try it out for a bit, lost a dangerous amount of weight and developed an intolerance to potatoes which further reduces available food to absurd levels sine potatoes are in tons of vegan food), is that it's the minority of vocal/aggressive vegans that have largely (though certainly not entirely) caused the poor reception.

My reasoning: People don't like to be judged (at all, but especially when the data behind the judgment is not so clear cut correct), and even just being in the presence of vegans can make some people feel judged. Even if the vegan says nothing, people can feel like they're being judged (to be clear, this is not the vegan's fault!). Now, add a small but vocal and aggressive minority of vegans who will explicitly judge/criticize, and you have a recipe for contention. It shouldn't be this way IMHO, but it's human nature.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#204

Post by s1artibartfast »

whimsicalism wrote: post #173
voisin wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And hens aren’t supposed make eggs year round but we make them anyway with artificial lights etc, which drastically shortens their lifespan. I kept a flock of 25-30 hens on my property for a few years. Other than moulting they produce eggs ease round. The production slows drastically in the dark winter months for the older hens (1 for 3 days, say) but some continue to produce nearly daily (I think the cycle is some…

the way eggs are industrially farmed is generally not like this

I think they are addressing the claim "hens aren’t supposed make eggs year round"

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#205

Post by ornornor »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #202
ornornor wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s how we get all their milk, how we get meat (the calf isn’t kept around for more than a few weeks/months), and rennet to make cheese (it’s the digestion liquid that’s in their stomach while they eat milk, must kill the animal to extract it) Same with eggs, they don’t exist in a vacuum. To get eggs you have to have chickens, and to have chickens you must grind male chicks alive as they hatch because they don’t p…

> to have chickens you must grind male chicks alive as they hatch because they don’t produce eggs Bit of a leap there.

How so? What do you think breeders who sell hens do with male chicks?

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#206

Post by s1artibartfast »

ornornor wrote: post #205
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to have chickens you must grind male chicks alive as they hatch because they don’t produce eggs Bit of a leap there.

How so? What do you think breeders who sell hens do with male chicks?

Some places sex the eggs. Germany, France, Switzerland and many other places completely do without so it is hardly mandatory.

Other places use male chickens for meat, despite them being sub-optimal.

I think the grinding of male chicks is an interesting case because it's actually pretty low on the suffering and distress spectrum, but high on the visceral reaction scale

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#207

Post by yesfitz »

aziaziazi wrote: post #179
y-curious wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have always had with veganism, as someone who has had stints of vegetarianism, is the absurdity of certain restrictions. Milk, I can agree, is bad because of how it's derived. Honey and eggs (sourced ethically) are a restriction I cannot stand behind. I think the dislike of self-labeled vegans is aligned with someone publicizing an extreme decision.

Actually there’s many people defining vegan that eat eggs (me) and honey (many vegans). Vegans aren’t as extremist as people see them or as common dictionaries define them. Most don’t define themselves by « I don’t consume any animal product whatsoever », of if they do it’s just a simplification. For the think you feel absurds: - honey is usually done by placing queen in a room she can’t escape. Also the honey is sto…

You are incorrect.

Vegans absolutely define themselves by not consuming any animal products, myself included.

"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."[1]

I don't know your individual circumstances, but based on your justifications in your post, you are not a vegan.

You can still be a vegetarian, an animal-lover, and a good person, but not vegan.

It is not extremist to have strongly-held ethical principles, and I hope this refutation is helpful to anyone reading both posts.

1: https://www.vegansociety.com/about-us/further-information/ke...

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#208

Post by yesfitz »

y-curious wrote: post #175
whimsicalism wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eggs could easily have multiple arguments for it, honey i’ve personally never met someone who was vegan who didn’t have honey

At the risk of this devolving into a typical online veganism argument: why are eggs bad? Say I keep 3 chickens in a coop in my backyard. They're going to produce unfertilized eggs that will just go to waste

To keep it from devolving, I invite you to search for existing arguments in a search engine of your choice.

However, in a show of good-faith, here are 2 answers to your question:

1. Male chicks of laying varieties are ground in a macerator shortly after hatching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling In your fantasy, you could get around this by getting a rooster and breeding your own hens for eggs, but then what will you do with the non-laying males? What about hens who stop laying? Keep in mind, their natural lifespan is 5-10 years.

2. Hens have been bred to produce exponentially more eggs than in the wild. Wild hens lay around 10-20 eggs per year. Domestic hens lay around 250. This development can lead to osteoporosis.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#209

Post by kbelder »

mrtksn wrote: post #123
andy_ppp wrote: post #4

Yes, it made me think about animals panicking so much before slaughter that they often have heart attacks. And dairy cows who have their babies slaughtered who cry for weeks. Maybe these are apocryphal stories, but we are very much trained to believe we shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals. I hope that we are able to grow meat in a way without suffering as soon as possible.

That's why I can't wait for lab grown meat becoming a thing. I love meat and my understanding is that its healthy and necessary product but i also have nothing but respect to vegetarians.

I've wondered why, instead of trying to lab grow meat (which I think is decades off, due to various problems), we just don't try to breed dumber, unfeeling, cows.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#210

Post by lotsofpulp »

tw04 wrote: post #141
cloverich wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always have mixed feelings about this. It's sad. But how is her pod supporting her exactly? Are they bringing her food? If so is that food the dead offspring of other animals? I feel these kinds of stories often have a kind of selective empathy for the focused animal. Ultimately nature is extraordinarily cruel absent humans; imo humans are the only hope for something better, if such a thing even makes sense.

And yet nature has historically found balance. Humans, on a large scale, seem incapable of doing the same. At this point humans have become a perpetual extinction event with no end in sight.

Humans might accelerate changes, but everything in nature is always in flux. Even without humans, there is no reason a cosmic or terrestrial event can’t change the way things are, or an insect plague, or a virus or bacteria, etc.
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