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Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

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Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#21

Post by vasco »

rixed wrote: post #8

I find the final question about human intervention fascinating. The scientists aren’t recommending intervention, even if the perpetrators tend to be the same few individuals. “We don’t know how natural it is,” says Ursula Siebert, a veterinary pathologist specializing in wildlife population health at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover who was not involved with the work. “It can definitely be hard to watch…

So strange when you look at our total interaction with the environment. We kill millions of animals, many just for literal sport, but to save an animal from another is 'too much intervention'

And I bet the moral scientists sat there feeling sorry for themselves and for the seal. Meanwhile other people are destroying full ecosystems.

If you feel like saving an animal from another, do it, what a ridiculous horse to decide to sit on. This to me makes as much sense as me walking my dog, another dog attacking it and me throwing my hands up "nothing I can do, nature is doing its thing".

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#22

Post by dlcarrier »

vasco wrote: post #21
rixed wrote: post #8

I find the final question about human intervention fascinating. The scientists aren’t recommending intervention, even if the perpetrators tend to be the same few individuals. “We don’t know how natural it is,” says Ursula Siebert, a veterinary pathologist specializing in wildlife population health at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover who was not involved with the work. “It can definitely be hard to watch…

So strange when you look at our total interaction with the environment. We kill millions of animals, many just for literal sport, but to save an animal from another is 'too much intervention' And I bet the moral scientists sat there feeling sorry for themselves and for the seal. Meanwhile other people are destroying full ecosystems. If you feel like saving an animal from another, do it, what a ridiculous horse to dec…

There's a species where each individual literally eats a billion animals over its lifetime. If saving animals from an early death is important, then we should do everything we can to make blue whales go extinct.

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#23

Post by tsimionescu »

rixed wrote: post #8

I find the final question about human intervention fascinating. The scientists aren’t recommending intervention, even if the perpetrators tend to be the same few individuals. “We don’t know how natural it is,” says Ursula Siebert, a veterinary pathologist specializing in wildlife population health at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover who was not involved with the work. “It can definitely be hard to watch…

I think the idea is simple, and clear.

First, we value human life above animal life, so we always prioritize humans and their pleasures above animals (with the limits being either another human's property, or when the human is showing signs of excessive brutality, such as intentionally torturing animals instead of simply killing them).

Then, when a human is not directly involved, what matters is the potential impact of any intervention. Nature is extraordinarily brutal by itself, and we can't hope to change that overall, regardless of what we might prefer. Even at a basic emotional & moral level, we can't protect every baby animal that gets killed by a predator or a parasite, regardless of the suffering we see in it, or we would be causing the death of the predator's babies to starvation. And then, at a more rational higher scale, we know that this type of intervention would typically end up destroying the entire ecosystem if we actually tried to do it consistently.

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#24

Post by somenameforme »

rixed wrote: post #8

I find the final question about human intervention fascinating. The scientists aren’t recommending intervention, even if the perpetrators tend to be the same few individuals. “We don’t know how natural it is,” says Ursula Siebert, a veterinary pathologist specializing in wildlife population health at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover who was not involved with the work. “It can definitely be hard to watch…

I think the main point is that nature is in a dynamic equilibrium that's built up over eons. We disrupt that equilibrium unintentionally by things like development, but well intended disruptions can have just as negative effects. The typical example would be something like removing a predator (or even a disease) from an area which results in a population explosion of its former prey which results in increased pressures on what that prey eat and so on all the way down the food chain.

And it's not just hypothetical - for instance gray wolves were largely eliminated from many areas with catastrophic consequences. They're now being reintroduced in many places and you get interesting effects like it turning out that gray wolves were effectively helping keeping a healthy beaver population, which is particularly interesting given that beavers are prey for wolves! [1] It's just a really interesting interbalance, and changing one thing can have consequences that are practically impossible to predict.

This is the reason I'm not a fan of the idea of eliminating even mosquitoes at large. Unforeseen consequences are very much a thing, and those consequences don't inherently become 'seen' because of a study or two.

[1] - https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#25

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

rixed wrote: post #8

I find the final question about human intervention fascinating. The scientists aren’t recommending intervention, even if the perpetrators tend to be the same few individuals. “We don’t know how natural it is,” says Ursula Siebert, a veterinary pathologist specializing in wildlife population health at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover who was not involved with the work. “It can definitely be hard to watch…

I’m not sure there’s a philosophical understanding yet, but the learned flinch response from how badly the last X interventions went is real

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#26

Post by rob74 »

delichon wrote: post #3

I once lived in an apartment in Colorado with a balcony overlooking a pond. Once a grebe was paddling around in it followed by four chicks. It was a great image for the Colorado Tourism Office. Then mamma grebe swam back and swallowed the fourth chick whole, and the smaller family paddled away. Brood reduction isn't common in grebes, but I saw it anyway, and thought maybe I didn't get the straight dope from Disney mo…

There's also siblicide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siblicide#In_birds):

> In these three booby species, hatching order indicates chick hierarchy in the nest. The A-chick is dominant to the B-chick, which in turn is dominant to the C chick, etc. (when there are more than two chicks per brood). Masked booby and Nazca booby dominant A-chicks always begin pecking their younger sibling(s) as soon as they hatch; moreover, assuming it is healthy, the A-chick usually pecks its younger sibling to death or pushes it out of the nest scrape within the first two days that the junior chick is alive. Blue-footed booby A-chicks also express their dominance by pecking their younger sibling. However, unlike the obligately siblicidal masked and Nazca booby chicks, their behavior is not always lethal. A study by Lougheed and Anderson (1999) reveals that blue-footed booby senior chicks only kill their siblings in times of food shortage.

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#27

Post by no-name-here »

zabzonk wrote: post #5

Perhaps this is somewhat like male lions killing cubs that are not immediately theirs? Do the seals kill their own pups? Difficult to study, I guess.

Unlikely based on diffuse paternity per claude https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48176321

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#28

Post by Modified3019 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #6
delichon wrote: post #3

I once lived in an apartment in Colorado with a balcony overlooking a pond. Once a grebe was paddling around in it followed by four chicks. It was a great image for the Colorado Tourism Office. Then mamma grebe swam back and swallowed the fourth chick whole, and the smaller family paddled away. Brood reduction isn't common in grebes, but I saw it anyway, and thought maybe I didn't get the straight dope from Disney mo…

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worl... Same energy as this short story.

That was a fun read, thanks.

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#29

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

somenameforme wrote: post #24
rixed wrote: post #8

I find the final question about human intervention fascinating. The scientists aren’t recommending intervention, even if the perpetrators tend to be the same few individuals. “We don’t know how natural it is,” says Ursula Siebert, a veterinary pathologist specializing in wildlife population health at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover who was not involved with the work. “It can definitely be hard to watch…

I think the main point is that nature is in a dynamic equilibrium that's built up over eons. We disrupt that equilibrium unintentionally by things like development, but well intended disruptions can have just as negative effects. The typical example would be something like removing a predator (or even a disease) from an area which results in a population explosion of its former prey which results in increased pressur…

I want the bill for damages caused with reintroduction- to be sent to the local GREEN party and its voters, thank you very much. Reintroduction of the beaver in europe has caused millions in damages

Re: Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

#30

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

TimByte wrote: post #16
rixed wrote: post #8

I find the final question about human intervention fascinating. The scientists aren’t recommending intervention, even if the perpetrators tend to be the same few individuals. “We don’t know how natural it is,” says Ursula Siebert, a veterinary pathologist specializing in wildlife population health at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover who was not involved with the work. “It can definitely be hard to watch…

I think it's less "nature knows better" and more "we usually don't know enough"

It's also a inability to accept the cthullian horror built into nature.

Sentient eating sentient, everything being at constant warfare with everything else- the Grass wars the trees for the light. Add to that, the likelihood that nature will adapt new defenses in our lifetime, by for example having animals propagate hyper-allergenic plant-species - and you can begin to grasp why humanity does not want to look at the real, rather at the idyllic paintings we made ourselves.

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