Herbivore populations are balanced by their food supply, so any benefit they get from evolving defenses against predation is tautological - it wouldn't be necessary at all if the predators weren't there.

Predators happen in nature, but that doesn't mean they serve nature. They're a problem that nature works around - a huge energy drain on ecosystems.

In absolute objective terms, nature is literally everything, and thus nothing can by definition be called "unnatural" - and yet we have that concept and it means something to us.

I define nature in the subjective sense as symbiosis and ecological efficiency. Predators are neither, and one has to engage in circular arguments to say otherwise. Nature copes with them, it doesn't benefit from them.

They are a part of nature, not a perversion of it.

Predators happen in nature, but that doesn't mean they serve nature.
You mean except for culling the herd of the sick and weak and strengthening the remaining animals because of it?


We are overjoyed that she made it through hundreds of miles of politically hostile territory.... said Drew Kerr
Politically hostile? Were they voting the wrong way or what? lol

Being weak or disadvantaged in some way is only a bad thing because it makes them vulnerable to predators.

If there were no predators, the only things that would normally determine their survival are their immune system (which is only necessary due to microscopic predation) and their ability to find food (which in the animal world is the definition of merit).

Humans look out for our vulnerable a lot better than other species, and arguably it makes us stronger, not weaker.

controlled by predators. A swift death from a bite to the neck of a deer by a predator is less painful than a slow, agonizing death from starvation and the elements.

And I doubt any being with feelings would.

It is about predators and prey. You are anthropomorphizing wild amimals.

By the way, we ate venison sausage stuffing today.

It suggests you don't know much about either humans or other animals that you see the distinction as black and white.

If you eat them, it's because you can get away with it - because you have the power to. Not for any lack of subjective existence on their part.

large they decimate the environment. Look at the video about Yellowstone.

P.S. I eat them because they are delicious.

At first they breed out of control and devastate the plant life, then there's a die-back and a plant resurgence, then the oscillations dampen out.

Predators are superfluous - the only services they provide to an ecosystem are in pushing evolution to resist them, which obviously wouldn't be necessary if they weren't there.

I am really surorised that I would ever have this type of exchange with anyone. This is unbelievable. It appears you believe that we should abolish all laws protecting preditors and kill them until they are extinct. What a wacky idea that is.

Someone's got to be lampooning a position that they think someone actually takes by raising it to the absurd.

They're not fooling anyone.

I tend to take people at face value. It did not occur to me that I was being punked.

"Predators are a perversion of nature, in my opinion."

"I'm arbitrarily defining the word [nature] in moral terms."

"Predators are superfluous"


From a biological perspective, predators are absolutely necessary. Any first year biology text will give you a free clue.

I would however be in favor of - eventually - engineering more symbiotic ecologies.

And what exactly is it you think Yellowstone is an example of?

that occurred in Yellowstone that resulted because of the reintroduction of wolves?

Yellowstone never had a shortage of predators, just one specific type. Humans still hunted the deer, and bears eat everything.

Of course if you reduce the population of large herbivores, plants will grow bigger in some areas. The problem is that plants are not sentient creatures and deer are.

African lions? What about African leopards and African Cheetahs? These are some of the most protected animals on the earth. Do you really believe they should be hunted until they are extinct?

You need to actually read what someone writes before responding to them, and preferably invest a scintilla of rational thought in your response.

If I have a problem with predators because of what they do, why would I advocate killing them?

As I said in the post you deliberately ignored, I support eco-engineering toward greater symbiosis. However far in the future it has to be, some day we can have the kind of nature where compassion is a shared instinct among all living things complex enough to manage it.

And in that respect, a rising tide floats all boats. More compassionate nature <--> more compassionate humanity.

Even the horses are back,

That doesn't make any particular evolved behavior a good idea in the big picture.

Otherwise we would have to say that behaviors in the human world that evolved along similar lines are equally "beneficial" because of all the ways we end up organizing to prevent or cope with them.

All predation is the same: Overpowering another will in order to take what they have by force.

They regulate the larger animal populations & indirectly improve the conditions in many ways leading to reintroduction of more & more species.

It isn't like they're an invasive species or humans.

What is the big picture and what would be good for the big picture?

Humans driving down the road hitting roadkill regulate animal populations too.

Major wars regulate human populations.

I don't think we can say that war and roadkill are good things.

Nature gave us morality, and we can apply it to nature itself and say that certain patterns it creates should be diverted into other behavior modes. Not a high priority, obviously, just my opinion for the very long-term future.

Wouldn't some species somewhere be effected in a morally bad way?

In any ecosystem wouldn't a species somewhere (a bird for example) kill another species? Bison are pure herbivores and can be moral peaceful creatures but Bison also attack without warning, sometimes killing their victims. Also insectivores will probably always exist even though the moral thing for them to do is starve.

Not a high priority, I'm wondering if it isn't even possible.

and whose very nature is rooted in the perfection of delivering death to other sentient beings is an abomination that shouldn't exist - at least not as such.

Exact methods of steering predatory species toward more innocuous food sources would be speculation or science fiction on my part. I just know that a nature whose harmonies only exist on the most abstract, distant, unfeeling level is a flimsy rationalization of chaos and not really an ecosystem.

There is no "Gaia" until we create it, however far in the future that is.

First I'm trying to imagine such a world and wonder if I or even you would want to live in such a world, though I can't imagine a predator such as a spider could possibly be steered away. Cause and effect & natural selection occurring absent carnivores would probably be chaos, probably a huge loss in biodiversity as well. We could only speculate theoretically and biology isn't an area I have a whole lot of knowledge in but if there was a way to do a "Its a Wonderful Life" to see what it would it be, I imagine this debate would be a whole lot different.

You're calling wolves (predators) serial killers?

the anthropomorphizing of wild animals?

"If they could talk".

Why can't you just argue a point rationally instead of getting all pearl-clutchy at the outrageous idea that resemblance to you is not the standard by which other living creatures are judged to be sentient?

what would they say about the life that eats them? Plant life can't escape as it is rooted to the spot. At least deer have a chance to escape the wolves. Seems to me if I follow your line of thinking the herbivores would also be serial killers.

How can you possibly believe that the lack of symbolic communication is equivalent to the lack of sentience?

And not all non-human animal life necessarily lacks even that.

I just think that using your thoughts on predators being serial killers, herbivores would be serial killers as well. My bad.

As you can guess I am on the side of the wolf.

plants just needed a smarter alien plant to lead them and an animal life hating crazy botanist to make it all possible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/seedsofdoom/

and as you guessed my post was not serious.

while wolves kill to defend or eat?

They do it because they love it. All animals love eating as a matter of evolutionary necessity, and by extension, everything associated with eating. In their case, eating is associated with exploiting weakness, becoming excited by something else's fear, chasing it down, and tearing it to pieces.

but if there is an already dead carcass they go for that rather than bypassing the opportunity to chase an animal.

They love the chase and kill when those instincts are triggered, but the smell of a recognized prey animal's blood on the wind skips ahead to the eating part and they just want a free lunch.

Which is where another favorite predator pastime comes from - waiting for another predator to kill something, then muscle in and take it. They're fantastic gangsters.

Still with the anthropomorphizing the wild animals, huh?

really?

that would not be a useful endeavor.

I know your input is infinitely precious to all mankind, and it would be a tragedy if you didn't transcribe every mental burp for the world to see, but maybe I'm greedy and hope for a little more.

Like maybe I expect a progressive not to be so thrown for a loop when they hear an unusual idea that they lose all capacity for meaningful dialogue. Me and my silly expectations about people behaving like intelligent adults.

We have land that is part of the territory of a wolf pack in northern Minnesota.

Edit to add: I don't know what the policy is, but I would like to see a male wolf relocated near the female, assuming they would take a liking to one another.

If she decides to return north they are going to let her, whatever happens they're not going to get in the way or alter anything except for a brief kidnapping to change the batteries in the collar and release back at the spot where she was.

I'm not sure where the article is where I read that so I'm unable to find it (I added the kidnapping part myself but that is typically what wolf scientists do -- though they just knock them out for the collars I think.

I hope wolf populations can come back again.

Regulated hunting should be instituted as well.

there is a wolf hunting season in Minnesota.

I was really young, but I remember seeing a couple of wolves hanging alongside the deer while on a hunting trip wirh my family. Back then, wolves and bears were unprotected and viewed as nuisance creatures. I saw a wolf while deer hunting just a couple weeks ago.

When you see them it's because they've been watching you for some time. Cats occur where I hunt deer, but I've never seen one. They are considered a nuisance in TX.

People forget MN has had wolves all along, and even with hunting their populations don't seem threatened.

The great lakes area starting with Minnesota & the upper peninsula is where they first started returning and growing in numbers in the 1970s growing rapidly in the 1980s. The 90's is when they started coming back to the Rockies and growing.

Since apparently she now resides in Arizona enough that some tea partiers are asking her to primary John McCain.

the Palins own a home in AZ?