Hunting

that is definitely part of why I am upset about this story, but I'm also upset about the unthinking internet moralizing and mob justice aspect. People are entitled to arbitrarily prefer one animal over another, but not to arbitrarily ruin the life of one douchey guy for doing something that, while gross, was borderline legal and not actually of very significant impact. Also I think there's a difference between arbitrarily preferring your companion animal and arbitrarily preferring the animal you like to watch on Animal Planet, but w/e, people can have their stupid lion-fetishizing bullshit.

i think there's an issue in terms of the endangeredness of the species and biodiversity, but i don't believe animals have natural rights tbh

I also think it's reasonable to take a stand against sport lion hunting, tbc, I just find the focus on *this one asshole* and *this one lion* absurd.

is the fact that nearly everyone values dolphin lives more than barnacle lives arbitrary & should we care

Some people like lions, and all animal preferences are arbitrary, therefore vigilanteism is ok

Factors:

1) Charismatic megafauna: Many people get upset about certain photogenic animals (e.g., dolphins, pandas, and the big cats). Of those people, few of them think in similar terms about battery chickens or farmed fish.

2) "Slacktivism": Signing online petitions and defacing a Yelp page is a lot easier than doing something more concrete. Besides, talking trash about so acceptable a target as Walter Palmer offers immediate gratification.

In addition, those harder efforts will sooner or later boil down to "give money to wildlife protection organizations." Given these organizations' seeming ineffectiveness in the face of ongoing poaching, I'd like to know what those groups are doing, and should they be getting more money?

one of the takeaways here for me is that if I ever become a meme, i am taking a one month vacation and not checking the internet

http://i57.tinypic.com/v8mq1l.jpg

thanks, you old bag

Well, I'll take a stab at it, but I'm biased as a lion lover.

Per the BBC:

• A major tourist attraction in Hwange National Park - Zimbabwe's largest game reserve

• The 13-year-old animal was renowned for being friendly towards visitors

• Recognisable because of his large size and distinctive black mane

• Led two prides containing six lionesses and 12 cubs along with another lion, Jericho

• Was being monitored as part of an Oxford University study into lion conservation

Plus there are problems when an alpha male lion gets killed. His entire pride is vulnerable now to predation.

absolutely otm post.

I heard a wildlife expert on R4 saying the chance of predation is quite high as well.

oh ok, fine. I'll get off my grumpbox now.

who's gonna prey on them? more fucking lions probably, these creatures are amoral killers

The African megafauna are the sort of the lucky ones because they evolved with + learned to stay the fuck away from dangerous little apes, as we spread to the other continents their extinct Eurasion/American cousins didn't stand much of a chance.

a weird artifact of a pre-cecil time way back in july 14; I imagine now they'd be run off the web for different reasons:
http://www.wired.com/2014/07/hacking-google-maps

WASHINGTON DC-AREA RESIDENTS with a hankering for lion meat lost a valuable source of the (yes, legal) delicacy last year when a restaurant called the Serbian Crown closed its doors after nearly 40 years in the same location. The northern Virginia eatery served French and Russian cuisine in a richly appointed dining room thick with old world charm. It was best known for its selection of exotic meats—one of the few places in the U.S. where an adventurous diner could order up a plate of horse or kangaroo.

For his part, Bertangna says he hopes to reopen his restaurant some day and begin serving lion again. “It’s like a veal. We served it with a white mushroom, sauce and vegetables.”

Someone on my wall over the weekend saying we should make shooting animals in Africa a capital offence like "kiddy fiddling".

He's a keen fisherman btw.

The African megafauna are the sort of the lucky ones because they evolved with + learned to stay the fuck away from dangerous little apes,

i'm pretty sure lions were doing pretty well for themselves for most of the timeline here

I was just quoting the African megafauna = evolved with humans + risk assessed them as dangerous, extinct Eurasion/American megafauna = didn't learn quickly enough how dangerous humans are hypothesis that was in Kolbert's 6th Extinction, it works for me. It applies more to the larger megafauna than lions I guess, but don't lions mostly flee when they see humans? Unless they are famished or in protection mode or at least that was what someone told me once, I wouldn't put it to the test.

eurasian lions didn't do so well with humans. I think it depends on which megafauna yr talking about but a lot of the giant ice age creatures' demises were as much climate-related as due to hunting

I'd guess that climate change would also have made humans completely reliant on hunting and in such extreme conditions probably more formidable hunters than they would be in easier conditions with more dietary options.

I imagine the ice age was peak hunting time, we know they tracked the mammoth migrations across eurasia but the total number of humans would still have been tiny. when the ice started to thaw you had a big increase in precipitation which was bad news for woolly rhinos and such who were used to tundra rather than snow. humans then followed the trees north & something resembling agriculture started kick in but i think by that point humans are just another part of the changing climate. bears/lions/wolves/boars get gradually squeezed out rather than wiped out entirely

there is something in Guns Germs and Steel about this but I don't remember it well enough to recount it exactly correctly. But basically when people finally came across the landbridge they went buckwild on unsuspecting north American landbeasts.

Ok I just read this and I am pretty grossed out now. Sorry for being a dick about this, (although I will still shit on the face of anyone who uses the hashtag #lionlivesmatter):

https://www.facebook.com/captpaulwatson/posts/10153393430140932

This story makes me feel depressed and misanthropic, maybe for reasons that aren't ethically consistent. The lion was so beautiful, I feel sick contemplating the mindset of someone who would take pleasure in hurting it.

Also the fact that he deliberately went after a celebrity lion, a lion with a name -- according at least to the link man alive posted -- makes what he did seem akin to murder. A sentimental distinction sure but it's hard to wring sentimentality out of morality and I'm not so sure we should want to (kant to the thread)

he kant

all this sentimentality is just so much kant

anyway everything about this story is basically an emile cioran quote in narrative form imo

This provides interesting context:

http://www.ianscoones.net/Blog.html

In brief, the large hunting estates were usually in the hands of white landowners prior to the major programme of 'land reforms' Mugabe introduced. Unlike much of the farming land, which for the most part went to the poor, the hunting reserves were given to a handful of well-connected Zanu-PF / military figures who are subject to less scrutiny. While there's a case for saying that game hunting can contribute to local communities, it tends not to be the case in these situations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/opinion/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html?smid=tw-share

MY mind was absorbed by the biochemistry of gene editing when the text messages and Facebook posts distracted me.

So sorry about Cecil.

Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe?

Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.

My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States.