Young Gorillas Observed Dismantling Poacher Snares

It is complicated. Rwanda is still undeveloped and there are a lot of people who do depend on the land for subsistence. Having said that, the bushmeat issue has gone beyond subsistence farming, there is a systematic plundering of Gorilla families going on (most probably with the connivance of government forces) where the gorilla mothers are taken for bushmeat and the young ones are taken to become pets.

> Well this one is tricky. I'm not trying to sound like an isolationist where we shouldn't interfere with anything. But there does seem to be something morally wrong in my mind if we interfere on behalf of nature to the detriment of the local people. Especially since we've already decimated most of our wildlife en route to our current living standards. Kind of hypocritical to then turn around and use that wealth to stop others from following in our footsteps.

Fair enough, you are entitled to your ethical standards. The reason I was pointing out that this is a false dichotomy is that it is not as if people are pouring all money into conservation at the cost of helping the local population. Money, believe me, is not the issue with Africa.

> Also just as an afterthought, it was my understanding that the war/genocide was largely manufactured by policies enacted by the retreating Belgians. Before we were there the two tribes got along for the most part.

I am rather unsympathetic to this viewpoint. Yes, admittedly regional issues 60 + years ago were exacerbated by colonial forces. I frankly think it is time to move on and start treating people like adults and expect them to grow up and solve their problems the mature way. We see the same issues in South Asia where people are engaging in Nuclear brinksmanship over a silly piece of scrap land.

> Yea, I know the track record on African Aid is not good. My comment was more that we should be at least thinking about their situation and empathizing with it. We should at least be understanding in our comments and behavior. But the tone in this article and likely also in the comments being sent to their facebook page makes the locals out to be the bad guy. I just don't think that's very helpful or deserved.

I think the "locals" are not a homogenous demographic. Sure there are starving people out there who are trying to get their next meal through hunting in forests. There also are several hungry armies using the forests as their pantry. We also have the "noble savage" (Pygmies) who spend most of the time in the forests and also get discriminated against (by fellow Africans, I might add). Another demographic is a group of poachers who systematically use sophisticated technology to hunt down endangered animals and transport the resultant products to markets in Asia. I think some of these groups definitely deserve sympathy, the others I could care zero fucks about. Also the discussion we are having is due to the complicated nature of the issue: It is extremely hard to try to get a macro perspective broadcast to the lowest common denominator (the Facebook commenter) in a way that easily understandable. Unfortunately, we kind of need to break it down so that conservationists can get money to fund their programs. The problem in doing such an approximation is that abstraction is rather leaky and leads to bike shedding.

> But to your point about giving aide, there have definitely been some mistakes made, mistakes that should probably have been avoided. It was stupid to ever assume dumping material goods or money into Africa would fix the situation. "Give a man a fish and the local fishermen are out of a job", that should be the proverb we learned from this. I don't really have great solutions other than the obvious ones: Education and stable just governance.

My personal opinion is that Africa would be fine if people didn't try to fix it every five years or so. Practically speaking, I know this to be a pipe dream considering the amount of weapons flowing in there and the next generation colonialism being perpetrated by China/India there.

Which is why behavioural biologists don't even go down that path of "humanizing" animals - all they do is link certain behaviour to certain actions (famous example: anal-sniffing as sexual behaviour in guinea-pigs or dogs). Looking at animals through the "human glass" can lead to some insights, but can certainly lead to terribly wrong results, too:

It's like overfitting a statistical model, you'll get noise where you expect results.

Also, tears are not necessary to cry. In your source, scientists prefer to conservatively talk about "distress vocalizations" instead of crying. But that's necessary because they are so similar in the first place! That's my point: they express their distress! In everyday life (not writing a paper), I'd just say that "this ape is crying because her baby died". Heck, even my dog, I'd say that he's crying. I don't care that there are no tears. They have a mammalian limbic system, and the rewards it contextualizes have to be evolutionarily sensible!

Btw, and I know that's not a strong argument, but my eyes don't produce tears (following some medication). Does it downgrade my crying into a distress vocalization? If not, is it because you think that you know how I am feeling? How I am thinking? really? How do you know that?

PS: as a_bonobo yourself, you know that what I say makes sense ;).