So You Want to Be a Part of the Food Chain?

On Tuesday, when discussing the Florida incident in which a 663-pound hammerhead shark was killed ("A Celebrated Death and Why There's No Seafood in a Shark"), I mentioned that I now wanted to discuss something related here. If you haven't read the first post yet, go do that now, so that we're all on the same page, with the same information, as we move forward.

The MSNBC journalist who brought us this story, after reducing the shark to nothing but fins and "seafood," even went so far as to say what surely many said about this killing--that "it's a good thing that this one's out of the water too; Valusia County leads the country in the number of shark bites per year." Yes, it's best that we went into this animal's habitat and killed him when we didn't need to because there is an ever-so-slight chance that otherwise, when someone else entered into his habitat without killing tools, he might mistake that person for prey. (And the chance that this ever would have happened really is slight, by the way; hammerhead shark attacks are incredibly rare. The shark bites cited aren't results of hammerhead encounters.)

Shark attacks are awful. They are the stuff of nightmares. And my heart aches for every person who has survived one and for every family who has lost a loved one to a shark attack. But do I blame the sharks? No.

We cannot knowingly take the risk of entering the natural habitats of other animals and then demonize the animals who do only what they are naturally supposed to do in those habitats. We cannot put ourselves in such situations and then use the tragedies-for-humans that result as an excuse to go out and kill these animals without need or reason. When nonhuman animals attack humans, they don't do it for sport; they don't do it so that they can have our bodies hung on a tree or an underwater cave wall. They kill for food and in defense of themselves.

So it's interesting that we congratulate our own kind for going out into the waters (or forests or mountains) and killing these animals unnecessarily for fun, profit, and food--and for doing so with killing tools that make the playing field anything but fair--but then we cry foul when one of those same animals does what he or she is intended by nature to do, what he or she must do to survive: hunt and defend.

We justify our killing and eating of all animals with references to the food chain but then want to place ourselves outside of it. A mountain lion attacks and eats a human? Well then, we have the right--nay, the duty!--to kill any suspected mountain lions until the one whose stomach contains human body parts is found. A bear attacks a human? Well then, it's time for a state to open or increase hunting on those damn vicious bears. One rare pig or bull, after great abuse and a time of unbearable confinement and isolation that would make anyone go mad, turns on a human exploiter, and it's just proof once again that we are civilized, and they are not.

We commandeer and invade their habitats because we are humans, and we have decided it is our human right to do whatever we want with land and fellow animal alike. We kill and eat both free and domesticated nonhuman animals because we are humans, and it is our right as members of the food chain to kill and eat whatever and whomever we can. But when we become part of the food chain against our will, we insist we are suddenly outside it, and those animals who would dare try to drag us into it are savage, immoral, evil beasts.

And this thinking makes no sense. If you think you have the right to eat any nonhuman animal you can catch and kill, you must grant that any nonhuman animal who can catch you has the right to kill and eat you too. If your justification for killing and eating animals is that it's all a part of the cycle of life, I must assume that you would accept large free-roaming carnivores coming into your cities and neighborhoods and hunting you too.