I have to admit that I like most animals better than I like most humans. When there is a quandary between saving an animal and a human, I don't always have a clear answer. Maybe I'd save the animal because I can eat the animal. Those questions don't answer the big question as well as how I live my life in real life.
Why would I want people to keep pets and livestock if I think that animals are better than humans? Part of the reason is because I don't think that better in some ways means better in all ways. Also, even if an animal or human is better in all ways, we can still associate and live and play together. They're really good at putting on their best to be with their humans and that's why they will always make us feel as if they are better people.
Love and happiness are resources. These are resources that humans provide for animals.Love is something that humans seem to be uniquely able to be good at in the company of an animal, largely because of something that I tried to explain earlier. A companion animal relationship is based on shared love, happiness, and pleasure. Farmers who keep livestock and draft animals also find that kind of relationship.
An animal that might have been doomed to a lonely search for the rare morsel of food, and that would have starved to death if it didn't, can find a precious resource in humans. Wild deer, bears, and raccoons routinely beg for food, or steal it, or scavenge it from humans because humans are good at getting food and often have a lot of it.
Even if animals are better than humans, smell better, are more pleasant to the touch, are happier beings filled with more light, are somehow morally or ethically better, they have uses for us and they love us. Nature produces an animal that can do everything that requires technical expertise simply because nature accretes genetic and outside-world information and that's how to deal with it, to produce a brain that can process this information in practical ways. Of course the other animals that are part of nature want a part of this. They have curiosity, even a sort of intellectual curiosity. They helped make us. They definitely have a right to share.
Showing posts with label captive breeding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label captive breeding. Show all posts
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Captive Breeding
I just had to answer this article about captive breeding.
Breeding of animals is not rocket science. The only way to fail at it is to never attempt it. Usually the problem is how to deal with an embarrassment of riches. I personally would rather have a few too many dogs, cats, or tigers than none at all. Captive breeding is in no way an "extreme tactic", it's a perfectly ordinary thing that billions of people have done.
The World Wildlife Fund uses one simple technique to persuade people that it is wrong to breed animals in captivity. I sometimes call it the "You'll shoot your eye out!" technique. They tell the reader or the listener to think only of all the things that can go wrong if someone tries to breed a rare animal. They might even admit that thousands have successfully bred those animals, but it's still "think of all the things that can go wrong." Why would anyone even listen to these people? All that they want you to do is stop doing what you think is right and obey them.
Think of all the things that can go right. Where there were no tigers there can be hundreds or thousands depending on the resources a group has. You might have mixed breeds but all of the animals whose genes went into the mix have many descendants and the more the merrier for genetic variety. The more genetic variety the better. Can you believe that so-called conservationists actually argue for "subspecies purity"? That's a lot like saying that a dog that is half Great Dane and half Saint Bernard is no good. When they say that Siberian/Bengal tiger mixes are no good for a species survival program, that's so wrong. They are the same species and genes from both populations are preserved. What they mean is that they want their programs to go their way, like an obsessive-compulsive thing.
They argue that there are "many difficulties" associated with captive breeding. So? We do it not because it is easy but because it is hard. They try to paralyze our thinking by talking about the dangers, and now the difficulties. Think of the reward: Most humans love animals. We get to keep them with us and take them into the future with us. A truly "natural" lifestyle includes as many plants and animals as we can have around us.
A species does not become uniform when humans take charge of its breeding. Look at the differences between the poodle, the dachshund, the border collie, the great dane, the pariah dog, the dingo, and all other dog breeds. Their genetic variety has obviously increased. This goes for horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and everything else. There are known and well-established methods for multiplying the number of "subspecies" of any animal, plant, or even bacteria. The only animals that have limited gene pools are the ones that people have been forcibly prevented from using in captive breeding programs, like the ocelot and the cheetah. Both of those species would number in the millions and they would be quite varied by now.
There are a lot of failures but that is the price of success. When they breed "naturally" in the wild every species loses a lot of its young. Fewer are lost in captive breeding. There is inbreeding in the wild, always. Lions are known for mating with their daughters. So are stallions. Those are just two species that live in family groups and the dominant males drive out their male progeny, or kill them, and mate with the females that stay. Outbreeding is actually alien to them.
The hopefully large number of tigers and lions in captivity in the United States reflect the success of an informal grassroots breeding program. Some say that there are as many as 25,000 tigers in the U.S. and I could only wish. No one ever seems to estimate the number of lions but it would seem that there would be more because even fewer of them kill their owners than tigers do and they like to live in family groups. Any true conservationist would congratulate the private owner on the success of breeding thousands of species individuals of endangered and threatened animals. A really good conservationist finds ways to help them and make it legal to breed the really endangered animals.
Were I to be in charge of a conservation program I would do this: Live-capture orphaned cubs from the wild and hand-raise them as pets. Take advantage of the large body of knowledge from successful private owners, and their enthusiasm, and their money and time and energy, and use them to raise the next generation of that endangered animal. Let's not kid ourselves. The wild is disappearing. People are living there. A war to move those people would destroy the habitat and kill a lot of humans. So let's put the animals on the dole and do it right. They'll be living better than they do in the wild. Humans will be a happier and calmer species. Everyone benefits.
Breeding of animals is not rocket science. The only way to fail at it is to never attempt it. Usually the problem is how to deal with an embarrassment of riches. I personally would rather have a few too many dogs, cats, or tigers than none at all. Captive breeding is in no way an "extreme tactic", it's a perfectly ordinary thing that billions of people have done.
The World Wildlife Fund uses one simple technique to persuade people that it is wrong to breed animals in captivity. I sometimes call it the "You'll shoot your eye out!" technique. They tell the reader or the listener to think only of all the things that can go wrong if someone tries to breed a rare animal. They might even admit that thousands have successfully bred those animals, but it's still "think of all the things that can go wrong." Why would anyone even listen to these people? All that they want you to do is stop doing what you think is right and obey them.
Think of all the things that can go right. Where there were no tigers there can be hundreds or thousands depending on the resources a group has. You might have mixed breeds but all of the animals whose genes went into the mix have many descendants and the more the merrier for genetic variety. The more genetic variety the better. Can you believe that so-called conservationists actually argue for "subspecies purity"? That's a lot like saying that a dog that is half Great Dane and half Saint Bernard is no good. When they say that Siberian/Bengal tiger mixes are no good for a species survival program, that's so wrong. They are the same species and genes from both populations are preserved. What they mean is that they want their programs to go their way, like an obsessive-compulsive thing.
They argue that there are "many difficulties" associated with captive breeding. So? We do it not because it is easy but because it is hard. They try to paralyze our thinking by talking about the dangers, and now the difficulties. Think of the reward: Most humans love animals. We get to keep them with us and take them into the future with us. A truly "natural" lifestyle includes as many plants and animals as we can have around us.
A species does not become uniform when humans take charge of its breeding. Look at the differences between the poodle, the dachshund, the border collie, the great dane, the pariah dog, the dingo, and all other dog breeds. Their genetic variety has obviously increased. This goes for horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and everything else. There are known and well-established methods for multiplying the number of "subspecies" of any animal, plant, or even bacteria. The only animals that have limited gene pools are the ones that people have been forcibly prevented from using in captive breeding programs, like the ocelot and the cheetah. Both of those species would number in the millions and they would be quite varied by now.
There are a lot of failures but that is the price of success. When they breed "naturally" in the wild every species loses a lot of its young. Fewer are lost in captive breeding. There is inbreeding in the wild, always. Lions are known for mating with their daughters. So are stallions. Those are just two species that live in family groups and the dominant males drive out their male progeny, or kill them, and mate with the females that stay. Outbreeding is actually alien to them.
The hopefully large number of tigers and lions in captivity in the United States reflect the success of an informal grassroots breeding program. Some say that there are as many as 25,000 tigers in the U.S. and I could only wish. No one ever seems to estimate the number of lions but it would seem that there would be more because even fewer of them kill their owners than tigers do and they like to live in family groups. Any true conservationist would congratulate the private owner on the success of breeding thousands of species individuals of endangered and threatened animals. A really good conservationist finds ways to help them and make it legal to breed the really endangered animals.
Were I to be in charge of a conservation program I would do this: Live-capture orphaned cubs from the wild and hand-raise them as pets. Take advantage of the large body of knowledge from successful private owners, and their enthusiasm, and their money and time and energy, and use them to raise the next generation of that endangered animal. Let's not kid ourselves. The wild is disappearing. People are living there. A war to move those people would destroy the habitat and kill a lot of humans. So let's put the animals on the dole and do it right. They'll be living better than they do in the wild. Humans will be a happier and calmer species. Everyone benefits.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Why Risk Your Life for a Chimpanzee or a Tiger?
Extremely few humans are killed by captive-bred exotics. It's reasonable to take some risks for a measurable gain. In some way or another these animals are worth a lot of risk to some humans. Environmentalists insist that tigers, lions, chimpanzees, and other animals that can kill humans be allowed to run free in their native habitat which also happens to be the native habitat of humans. That's a lot easier to sell to people who are willing to let Africans deal with lions and chimpanzees in their backyards, and East Indians and Chinese deal with tigers in their backyards. Any English-speaking culture tightly controls its predators, using lethal means, and calls that "conservation."
Myself, just in the interest of fairness, I believe that the risks that a person or group takes should be similar to those that we ask of others. The question of whether this kind of risk should be taken has already been settled in the minds of animal rights activists and environmentalists who advocate the sharp culling of the human race or its total extinction. That bit of information doesn't really process. It's hard to take in. Add in the contradiction when they scream at us that we just can't keep exotic animals as pets because it's "too dangerous." Sort of causes a brain seizure, doesn't it? That's why adults make their own decisions.
Everyone wants the animals to be saved and everyone wants someone to take some risks and spend some money to do it. Most people don't want it in their backyard and some of us find out the hard way that they think that my backyard is their backyard. Once the fear button is pushed they don't want it near them, they don't want to process it in their minds, but they still want someone else to do it and will pay them to do it. That's how we get "sanctuaries" that promise to keep the allegedly dangerous animals on small reservations. Just send them the money and they will put them on display and only breed what the government says that they can breed, and they can explain why it's best for the animals too, even if it contradicts established science and experience.
Why take the risks at all? It is because there is an ethical sense that most people have that says that we don't have to make extinct the creatures that sometimes inconvenience us and even kill us. We think that fair is fair. We also like the creatures and benefit from their company even when we don't use their physical carcasses for food and useful materials. For their benefit, humans can farm tigers and just about anything else so that their numbers remain stable or even grow. On at least some of China's farms the tigers die of old age before they are used for materials. The market for tiger parts is just going to have to do without wild-caught tigers. Not that the wild is going to exist much further. Americans seem to demand a buffer zone between us and the wild animals that's larger than some countries, so you can't even count most of what's outside of city limits. Other countries are growing even faster. We either find a way to breed in captivity or we lose them as resources and we lose their ability to live for their own sakes.
One side of this controversy produces large numbers of new animals who are quite fit to carry on the species. The other side, the animal rights/conservation side, does what it can to gather up those captive-breds and eliminate them. Which side do you think has the greater ability to preserve non-human life?
Myself, just in the interest of fairness, I believe that the risks that a person or group takes should be similar to those that we ask of others. The question of whether this kind of risk should be taken has already been settled in the minds of animal rights activists and environmentalists who advocate the sharp culling of the human race or its total extinction. That bit of information doesn't really process. It's hard to take in. Add in the contradiction when they scream at us that we just can't keep exotic animals as pets because it's "too dangerous." Sort of causes a brain seizure, doesn't it? That's why adults make their own decisions.
Everyone wants the animals to be saved and everyone wants someone to take some risks and spend some money to do it. Most people don't want it in their backyard and some of us find out the hard way that they think that my backyard is their backyard. Once the fear button is pushed they don't want it near them, they don't want to process it in their minds, but they still want someone else to do it and will pay them to do it. That's how we get "sanctuaries" that promise to keep the allegedly dangerous animals on small reservations. Just send them the money and they will put them on display and only breed what the government says that they can breed, and they can explain why it's best for the animals too, even if it contradicts established science and experience.
Why take the risks at all? It is because there is an ethical sense that most people have that says that we don't have to make extinct the creatures that sometimes inconvenience us and even kill us. We think that fair is fair. We also like the creatures and benefit from their company even when we don't use their physical carcasses for food and useful materials. For their benefit, humans can farm tigers and just about anything else so that their numbers remain stable or even grow. On at least some of China's farms the tigers die of old age before they are used for materials. The market for tiger parts is just going to have to do without wild-caught tigers. Not that the wild is going to exist much further. Americans seem to demand a buffer zone between us and the wild animals that's larger than some countries, so you can't even count most of what's outside of city limits. Other countries are growing even faster. We either find a way to breed in captivity or we lose them as resources and we lose their ability to live for their own sakes.
One side of this controversy produces large numbers of new animals who are quite fit to carry on the species. The other side, the animal rights/conservation side, does what it can to gather up those captive-breds and eliminate them. Which side do you think has the greater ability to preserve non-human life?
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