in any event, my only argument is that saying, "most animals eat meat, therefore meat-eating is right and proper and [worse] 'natural'" is a spurious argument. this is particularly true in terms of biology/ethology if you compare humans to other primates, but in the end the moral arguments remain qualitatively different from humans to pretty much any other known animal for the simple reason that humans are capable of higher moral thinking--even if some of us choose not to exercise it.
j
On Monday, July 8, 2002, at 10:23 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
> Chimps and other nonhominid primates never had their eating patterns
> determined by a there ain\t no plants Ice Age *sorry I cant get the
> freaky ass Estonian keyboard to do punctuation in anything approaching
> a normal fashion.
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>> From: Jeffrey Fisher <jfisher at igc.org>
>> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>> Subject: Re: Blood and Soil (Nazi "Greens")Primates hunting
>> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 10:12:36 -0500
>>
>> thanks. continuing to do a little more research on this, as i'm very
>> curious.
>>
>> so, fwiw: it looks rather as if chimps and bonobos both hunt red
>> colobus monkeys, although one chimp subspecies gets chased around by
>> the colobus, instead, in territorial battles. nevertheless, it looks
>> as if meat (i.e., mammal flesh, not insects), comprises about 2% of
>> their diet in terms of number of different species consumed and about
>> 4-6% in terms of time spent feeding (depending on availability of
>> certain foods). relative volume or calorie intake is basically
>> impossible to get observing the animals in the wild.
>>
>> note, however, that most "animal" consumption among the largely
>> frugivorous/folivorous higher primates is the eating of *insects*, not
>> flesh, and even a lot of that is incidental (e.g., insects on leaves
>> when they eat the leaves). only chimps and bonobos eat meat out of
>> that group, and only chimps hunt. even then, they seem not to do it
>> very much and seem not to be especially good at it.
>>
>> a snippet from prominent primatologist/ethologist frans de waal on
>> chimps and bonobos, including a bit about social behavior. the whole
>> article is fascinating in many respects.
>>
>> "Fruit is central to the diets of both wild bonobos and chimpanzees.
>> The former supplement with more pith from herbaceous plants, and the
>> latter add meat. Although bonobos do eat invertebrates and
>> occasionally capture and eat small vertebrates, including mammals,
>> their diet seems to contain relatively little animal protein. Unlike
>> chimpanzees, they have not been observed to hunt monkeys.
>>
>> "Whereas chimpanzees use a rich array of strategies to obtain foods ñ
>> from cracking nuts with stone tools to fishing for ants and termites
>> with sticks ñ tool use in wild bonobos seems undeveloped. (Captive
>> bonobos use tools skillfully.) Apparently as intelligent as
>> chimpanzees, bonobos have, however, a far more sensitive temperament.
>> During World War II bombing of Hellabrun, Germany, the bonobos in a
>> nearby zoo all died of fright from the noise; the chimpanzees were
>> unaffected.
>>
>> "Bonobos are also imaginative in play. I have watched captive bonobos
>> engage in "blindman's buff." A bonobo covers her eyes with a banana
>> leaf or an arm or by sticking two fingers in her eyes. Thus
>> handicapped, she stumbles around on a climbing frame, bumping into
>> others or almost falling. She seems to be imposing a rule on herself:
>> "I cannot look until I lose my balance." Other apes and monkeys also
>> indulge in this game, but I have never seen it performed with such
>> dedication and concentration as by bonobos."
>>
>> http://www.geocities.com/willc7/bonobos.html
>>
>> j
>>
>> On Sunday, July 7, 2002, at 10:55 PM, John Thornton wrote:
>>
>>> Chimpanzees hunt for food but also to form alliances and for greater
>>> access
>>> to females. Their meat consumption is far from entirely
>>> opportunistic. Of
>>> primates only humans and chimps engage in this behaviour.
>>> John Thornton
>>>
>>>>> Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>>>>>
>>>> incidentally, i reiterate my initial point about other primates and
>>>> their largely non-meat diets. orangutans, the most highly developed
>>>> along with bonobos, eat only about 1-2% meat in their diets, entirely
>>>> opportunistically. i'm not an expert on primatology, but this is my
>>>> understanding.
>>>
>>>
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