An Elephant Never Forgets
Wed, Apr 30, 2008
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some elephants will be deemed “surplus” and killed.
Animal rights activists are, as you might imagine, strenuously objecting, not because it’s bad policy but because the government is using thuggish tactics to accomplish the reduction.
The government had stopped this practice in 1995 when the population of elephants was judged to be dangerously low. However now that they’re seeking to reinstate it, something has come up: expert scientists believe that elephants have cognitive capacity.
So what is the proposed solution to the fact that the friendly gray giants will feel pain, emotional loss, and fear?
To avoid traumatizing elephants and giving them the chance to learn what helicopters or gunfire mean, the government of
This, of course, is an extension of the old mob tactic: leave no survivors, and nobody will know who did it, or be around to try and get revenge. Isn’t there a better way than simply leaving all of the animals dead? We established yesterday the possibility that elephants might be edible and if you’re going to go to the trouble to assassinate entire herds with helicopter-borne hunters, there has to be a better way.
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April 30th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
This is horrific. Makes the humans seem a bit like the Nazi’s, doesn’t it? At this point, I have to wonder if elephants aren’t, in fact, the superior species. The one bright spot here is that the cognitive abilities of these magnificent creatures may finally come to light.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:19 am
“elephants have cognitive capacity”? along with pretty much all vertebrates, not to mention other animals species besides. wouldn’t any organism with a brain or largish ganglia have “cognitive capacity” simply by definition?
anyway, i don’t see how harvesting captive elephants for food would cause them any less suffering than simply shooting them from the air (i am not an advocate of either option, btw).
May 1st, 2008 at 1:21 am
The Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, and the South African National Parks have been in ongoing discussion for quite a long time about how best to “deal”. They claim they are too much of a pain to the people living close to them because they (prepared to be shocked) eat their crops, drink their water and “can” be dangerous. The Minister said they were going to try other things such as a contraceptives YET culling opens up on May 1st. Me thinks there is a bit of lie going on here!