Instant death for rhino killing

[Syzygys]

It is in India, for the record...

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/03/06/indian-rhino-poachers-shot-dead/

Now personally, I don't have a problem when they are trying to protect endangered species, but oponents of the dead penalty probably are crying foul. Well, when you have a poor country, and you have to show precedent that you mean it, sometimes that's what it takes.

But I would like to hear the cry about humans being more valuable than rhinos. (they are not, there are way more people)

 

[Nehushtan]

I would grant that instead of being shot dead those poachers could have been arrested and thrown into jail. Still, I find it sad that there should be humans who have no respect for wildlife, who seem bent on doing all they can to destroy the planet we live on.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

But I would like to hear the cry about humans being more valuable than rhinos.

Some humans are more valuable than others.

Still, I find it sad that there should be humans who have no respect for wildlife, who seem bent on doing all they can to destroy the planet we live on.

There are humans who have no respect for anything. Taken to the extreme, this is nothing more or less than sociopathy. In this case it's probably just greed, the desire to acquire something without exchanging something else of equal value.

It's also probably rooted in a Stone Age instinct that the rest of us have either lost in the genetic evolution of our ancestors, or which may be weaker in us, or which we have learned to overcome. After all, for more than a hundred thousand years humans were hunters out of necessity because animal husbandry hadn't been invented yet. We are the only true predatory ape because we are the only one who can't survive on a herbivorous diet. So it's natural that we still have the predatory instinct, if perhaps it's not as strong as in our ancestors.

It's stronger in some people than in others. Those are the ones who like to hunt their own game. The rest of us buy meat in the supermarket that has already been butchered and cut up into meal-size fragments, that don't look exactly like a dead animal if we don't look at it too hard.

Rhinos are often killed just for their horns, because the Chinese and a few other cultures claim to be civilized but still believe in the power of Stone Age medicine. These are the same people who kill sharks just for their fins.

We all have our little weak spots, pointing out the ways in which we're not really as civilized as we claim to be.