Hunting

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.