Today, the zoo...
Mar. 10th, 2009 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I love the tone of this article: Chimp planned rock attacks on zoo visitors.
Aww! Look at how ingenious his plots are to kill the zoo visitors! And see the sociopathic calm with which he prepares his weapons! Isn't nature inspiring?
I also like the way chimps disprove all those fluffy ideas about animals being too simple and pure for war and cruelty. I saw a doco once where one chimp cheerfully beckoned a park keeper (with whom he had an established relationship) over while his friends snuck around the other side to bring him down (the keeper outsmarted them, but geeze)
Really it's the same sort of anthropocentrism that leads to people arguing that animals don't have love or real language or whatever: humans being a special kind of nasty is still us being special.
Aww! Look at how ingenious his plots are to kill the zoo visitors! And see the sociopathic calm with which he prepares his weapons! Isn't nature inspiring?
I also like the way chimps disprove all those fluffy ideas about animals being too simple and pure for war and cruelty. I saw a doco once where one chimp cheerfully beckoned a park keeper (with whom he had an established relationship) over while his friends snuck around the other side to bring him down (the keeper outsmarted them, but geeze)
Really it's the same sort of anthropocentrism that leads to people arguing that animals don't have love or real language or whatever: humans being a special kind of nasty is still us being special.
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Date: 2009-03-10 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-03-10 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-03-10 10:28 am (UTC)Hah! Yes, exactly. And anyone who has spent any time working with animals - or even had a pet - knows that some of them can be downright mean.
Like most country people I have a very jaundiced view of animal rights people and all the other stages of fluffy bunny syndrome down, so I am fully aware I am horrendously biased, but I have to say that in my experience people who think either humans or animals are special always seem to have very little knowledge of animals.
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Date: 2009-03-10 10:42 am (UTC)*looks at my often very mean spirited cat* Heh. Yes :)
But I think thinking of humans as just animals would be just as likely to make you more in favour of animals rights, up to a point: if it's good enough for us, and we're they're same as them, why is it not good enough for them? And the animal rights activists I know (who are on my flist, just so you know :)) don't seem any more prone to that sort of romanticism than anyone else, especially the ones from the country...
In my experience the sorts of people who really go on at length about how much worse humans are than animals aren't actually interested in being nice to animals, they just like putting down humanity.
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Date: 2009-03-10 11:00 am (UTC)And yeh, I think I'm just going to walk away from this. There's some stuff that it would be interesting to talk about with you but this one is too emotionally charged for me.
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Date: 2009-03-11 05:00 am (UTC)(*)Though I'd like to make it clear that I have no problem with them if I can walk away :)
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Date: 2009-03-10 11:38 am (UTC)*glares at her also rather cranky cat*
I suspect I might be one of the animal rights people from the country you're thinking of, though I do tend not to identify with animal welfare type activities as opposed to animal rights. :P
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Date: 2009-03-11 05:05 am (UTC)Oops, sorry, I do realise animal rights /= animal welfare! I didn't think about what I was writing carefully enough.
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Date: 2009-03-10 10:47 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-03-10 03:46 pm (UTC)I've heard some doozies of stories from zookeepers about great apes: they're smart, and they've got nothing to do over the course of their life but figure out how to get the jump on you to get out of their enclosures. And yes, trickery and deceit is very much part of their strategy-set.
(Somehow, I always end up rooting for the apes. Weirdly enough, the zookeepers tell these stories as if they're rooting for the apes, too.)
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Date: 2009-03-11 05:11 am (UTC)I think if I was stuck in the same place all day with people looking at me I might consider throwing rocks at them too.
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Date: 2009-03-10 07:51 pm (UTC)This article was discussed at our media meeting at work this morning. I love it how non humans planning something is seen as being so amazing in articles like this. I mean a bird doesn't randomly fly around picking up twigs and suddenly they just happen to form a nest.
And quite frankly if I was in jail for no good reason I'd be sneakily trying to hurt my captors if I could.
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Date: 2009-03-11 05:17 am (UTC)I think in general science journalism has an unfortunate tendency to go "OMG! Obvious, dumbed down fact!!".