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Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

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Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#81

Post by James_K »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #70
James_K wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we could do that, but what would be the benefit? I'm saying that whether we want nature conserved and whether we want them to be in cages for us to look at are entirely separate issues that should be evaluated separately. The best argument in favour of zoos is assuming that the people who want to look at dancing bears would be sufficiently enraged by their absence that they would decide to condemn the whole of n…

I suggest to you that if you try to make that happen, you'll find that in fact you can't. Not everything you can imagine people doing is something that it's actually possible to make them do.

> We can't do it because people won't do it.

This logic is at the root of almost everyone who has been complicit in evil through history. It would once have been said about the abolition of slavery, gay rights, etc. It is a lazy attitude that's entirely self-justifying. Change is often opposed primarily by the great mass of people who use this same logic, in spite of them recognising that the change would be good.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#82

Post by EliRivers »

HenryBemis wrote: post #65
i_love_retros wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other animals are really cool it's a shame we eat them and treat them so cruelly.

We don't eat them because they are uncool, we eat them because we can farm them 'en masse' in a cost effective manner and they cannot escape. I've had moose, horse, and a few more non-typical farmed animals. I like horse steak the best. But, a beef steak costs X and a horse steak costs 5x. It's a complicated multi-threaded discussion. I saw a vid recently from (I assume the UK) that people were protesting on the meat…

Perhaps they feel that tobacco farming and harvesting causes significantly less distress to the tobacco plants than animal farming and slaughter does to the animals.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#83

Post by HenryBemis »

melagonster wrote: post #69
HenryBemis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't eat them because they are uncool, we eat them because we can farm them 'en masse' in a cost effective manner and they cannot escape. I've had moose, horse, and a few more non-typical farmed animals. I like horse steak the best. But, a beef steak costs X and a horse steak costs 5x. It's a complicated multi-threaded discussion. I saw a vid recently from (I assume the UK) that people were protesting on the meat…

Sorry, most of fish we eat were not farmed by human.

My point was about "we eat what does not resist" also "cost". If it would cost us $1m to eat 1kg of fish, we wouldn't be eating fish (the 99.999% of the population). If hunting cows would end up costing us $200k per 1kg of beef.. same.

It is about "how obedient/simple/easy/effortless" is the thing we eat.

I probably did not explain that well in my initial message.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#84

Post by HenryBemis »

lxgr wrote: post #66
HenryBemis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't eat them because they are uncool, we eat them because we can farm them 'en masse' in a cost effective manner and they cannot escape. I've had moose, horse, and a few more non-typical farmed animals. I like horse steak the best. But, a beef steak costs X and a horse steak costs 5x. It's a complicated multi-threaded discussion. I saw a vid recently from (I assume the UK) that people were protesting on the meat…

That’s a textbook example of whataboutism if I’ve ever seen one, but it’s also a category error: Selling cigarettes harms the buyers, but selling factory-farmed meat harms the animals being factory farmed, and they don’t have any agency in this at all.

> Selling cigarettes harms the buyers, but selling factory-farmed meat harms the animals being factory farmed,...

Yes, it is exactly as you write it! Did you just realize that? (pardon the irony but come on.. idealism = ideas, realism = reality)

> and they don’t have any agency in this at all.

Correct again! No they don't. We cut down trees that are very much alive because we want new/more/better chairs. We take a fish from the water, kill it, skin it, eat it. We don't care for its life. We care for our lives and comfort more. Yes. It has been decided, humans are the dominant species on this planet. We rule. Now, I wished we ruled with more wisdom (e.g. avoid over-fishing and other unsustainable practices). But that's not how greed works. And our species is greedy. Perhaps you and I are not, but 'we' are. And perhaps it will ruin us.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#85

Post by HenryBemis »

EliRivers wrote: post #82
HenryBemis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't eat them because they are uncool, we eat them because we can farm them 'en masse' in a cost effective manner and they cannot escape. I've had moose, horse, and a few more non-typical farmed animals. I like horse steak the best. But, a beef steak costs X and a horse steak costs 5x. It's a complicated multi-threaded discussion. I saw a vid recently from (I assume the UK) that people were protesting on the meat…

Perhaps they feel that tobacco farming and harvesting causes significantly less distress to the tobacco plants than animal farming and slaughter does to the animals.

The plant stays alive once its 'fruit' is remove, true (although I've never picked cotton or tobacco leaves - I assume the process doesn't injure the plant).

But we don't care. We only keep the plant alive so we can make more of the 'good stuff' (cigarettes, jeans, etc.)

Again, low effort and low cost from our side. If it would be cheaper to kill the tobacco plant (I don't know much about tobacco plants, perhaps that at some point/age of the plant it becomes sterile, so we kill the old one and plant a new one?) If this is the case, then kill the old cotton plant, get a new one, start harvesting. We decided that we rule the earth. Until something very dramatic happens (ruin ecosystems, aliens invade, etc.) then we run the show.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#86

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bitwize wrote: post #78
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predators tend to have a thinner margin. Even a slight injury to a predator can mean a slow death by starvation. That's why videogame predators are so ridiculous. They keep coming after you, even when half their ass is blown away. A real predator will bugger off, as soon as it figures out that there might be a cost to attacking you. That's a big reason that many herbivore defenses seem kind of ridiculous, but work. T…

Certain prey animals, especially gazelles, engage in dramatic leaps known as stotting. This behavior makes them highly visible to predators. One theory for why they do this is as a fitness signal to predators, who generally want to go for the easy pickin's, not the ones who present a challenge, and represent taking on more effort and risk of injury or just wasted energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting Most li…

Huh. TIL.

I knew about the stotting, but figured it was for mating. The predator thing makes sense.

Hippos also hang out around humans a lot, which increases the chances of unfortunate misunderstandings (almost always resolving in favor of the hippo).

I remember visiting a village in Uganda, on the banks of the Nile.

They had a couple of jettys, going out into the river, and between them, a series of poles and whatnot. It looked like a fish hatchery.

Didn't matter. It was a hippo sofa. There was this hippo, just lying in the water, right in the middle of one of the busiest areas of the village. We were told that it was a regular. Everyone just ignored it.

The jury is still out, as to whether it is worse to be in front of an angry hippo, or behind an incontinent one.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#87

Post by ysavir »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #39
ysavir wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. The older I get, the less and less tolerant I become of the concept of zoos and aquariums.

The better ones take really good care of the animals within. And I think they serve an important and not-irreplaceable purpose - exposure. They help show ordinary people, many of whom live in cities with no exposure to real nature, just what out there is worth protecting. I think it helps build public support for things like reducing waste, better fishing and hunting practices, the importance of parks and preserves,…

So it's okay to have some animals live in terrible circumstances in order for people to not have to put effort into being empathetic?

They might take "really good care" of the animals, feed them well, give them the best veterinary care, etc, but that's not a good life for an animal. When they have so little space to roam, so little engagement or interaction with other groups of the same species, no agency over their food or other aspect of their life, and all the while having humans gawk at them whenever they aren't hiding away. It's just a pitiful existence for the benefit of tourists. I can't buy into that.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#88

Post by Night_Thastus »

ysavir wrote: post #87
Night_Thastus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better ones take really good care of the animals within. And I think they serve an important and not-irreplaceable purpose - exposure. They help show ordinary people, many of whom live in cities with no exposure to real nature, just what out there is worth protecting. I think it helps build public support for things like reducing waste, better fishing and hunting practices, the importance of parks and preserves,…

So it's okay to have some animals live in terrible circumstances in order for people to not have to put effort into being empathetic? They might take "really good care" of the animals, feed them well, give them the best veterinary care, etc, but that's not a good life for an animal. When they have so little space to roam, so little engagement or interaction with other groups of the same species, no agency over their…

Animal behavior and stress is a little more complicated than that. Not having to worry about predators, be low on food, or get sick/injured also significantly reduces stress.

Some animals need a lot of territory to roam and don't do well in captivity, some don't really care.

I'm not saying zoos are perfect, but well-run ones are far from evil either. Calling it 'terrible circumstances' is too broad. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#89

Post by ahazred8ta »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #42
sandworm101 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, they famously carry a huge number of parasites. This just seems normal for the species, similar to how sloth fur supports a variety of organisms.

It's normal for all species, humans included. We generally aren't carrying large loads of parasites, but that's not because not doing so is normal. It's because we put tremendous effort into getting rid of them. This is one of the theories for why human body temperature seems to have lowered since the measurement was standardized at 37 C. There was a poem written about the phenomenon: Big fleas have little fleas upon…

Turbulence: Great whirls have lesser whirls, that feed on their velocity / and lesser whirls have lesser still, and so on to viscosity.

Re: Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends

#90

Post by calf »

dwaltrip wrote: post #17
calf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoos are a lesser evil argument, locally they are not the best for the animals but they provide globally long-term benefits for humans and nature as well.

What’s the alternative? The implied greater evil? A world with no zoos and less appreciation and consideration for nature as well as the long term necessity of caring for it? I’m wondering about creating more nature parks instead of zoos. Of course not as accessible for people in cities, but could be a much better compromise. In general, we should avoid putting animals in small cages as much as possible.

Nature park is still basically a zoo, and yes the lesser evil is the sacrifice of animal wellbeing to ensure that the masses of urbanized humans get to physically see these animals. It is an inevitable tradeoff and there is no way around it, no euphemism for zoos or general appeals about animal wellbeing can paper over that.

If the benefit of putting wild animals in small zoos is some sliver of human cultural contact with the wilds, then that calculus is worth it, however paradoxical and politically incorrect it may appear to be. That's the argument.

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