During the pandemic / lockdown I was lucky enough to visit one of the reef pontoons off Cairns (Australia, on the Great Barrier Reef) that had been shut for several months. The resident Maori wrasse (a very large fish) at this pontoon, and others, has been known to have a relationship with some of the regular staff - often rubbing up against them in the water. When we jumped in the water that day the fish's reaction was the wildest thing I've ever seen. It was like a small puppy who has been locked inside all day. It literally jumped into my arms, flapping its tail to get closer. I'm going to repeat - this is a big fish, maybe a metre long and stocky, covered in a nice thick layer of slime. It would then swim away and come back and rub up against us. It did this to all three of us in the group ... only one of us was a regular. She hung with us for the whole snorkel and it was a bit sad when we had to get out of the water. Amazing experience. Made me feel differently about wrasses, that's for sure.
While I was scuba diving in Belize with some friends we encountered some Goliath Grouper which would follow us around. Later we were amazed when we saw another diver hold out her arms to one and it swam right up to her so she could hold it and pet it. Keep in mind this was a massive fish that probably weighed as much as a person.
We asked her about it afterwards, turns out they just like being petted :). Eventually got to try it out ourselves on another dive, fish can be really friendly.
Wow. We have a "Queensland" Grouper here .. similar size to the goliath, but there is no way I would hug it. A mate was a skipper of a dive boat and went for a freedive on their break - got a little bit too close to one that was chilling under the vessel. It opened it's mouth and sucked their head in. Happened very quickly. This person has a pretty decent breath hold, and experienced all round. But they thought that was it - all over. Until they were promptly spat out - never to venture within 10m of a fish that size again.
We don't eat them because they are uncool, we eat them because we can farm them 'en masse' in a cost effective manner and they cannot escape. I've had moose, horse, and a few more non-typical farmed animals. I like horse steak the best. But, a beef steak costs X and a horse steak costs 5x.
It's a complicated multi-threaded discussion. I saw a vid recently from (I assume the UK) that people were protesting on the meat-alley of a super market. So those people are cool when the super market sells cigarettes, sugary drinks that cause diabetes to kids, 'chocolates' with 50% sugar, alcohol that ruins millions of lives around the world, etc. But steak.. that is their problem. Oh the hypocrisy.
Perhaps they feel that tobacco farming and harvesting causes significantly less distress to the tobacco plants than animal farming and slaughter does to the animals.
The plant stays alive once its 'fruit' is remove, true (although I've never picked cotton or tobacco leaves - I assume the process doesn't injure the plant).
But we don't care. We only keep the plant alive so we can make more of the 'good stuff' (cigarettes, jeans, etc.)
Again, low effort and low cost from our side. If it would be cheaper to kill the tobacco plant (I don't know much about tobacco plants, perhaps that at some point/age of the plant it becomes sterile, so we kill the old one and plant a new one?) If this is the case, then kill the old cotton plant, get a new one, start harvesting. We decided that we rule the earth. Until something very dramatic happens (ruin ecosystems, aliens invade, etc.) then we run the show.
That’s a textbook example of whataboutism if I’ve ever seen one, but it’s also a category error:
Selling cigarettes harms the buyers, but selling factory-farmed meat harms the animals being factory farmed, and they don’t have any agency in this at all.
> Selling cigarettes harms the buyers, but selling factory-farmed meat harms the animals being factory farmed,...
Yes, it is exactly as you write it! Did you just realize that? (pardon the irony but come on.. idealism = ideas, realism = reality)
> and they don’t have any agency in this at all.
Correct again! No they don't. We cut down trees that are very much alive because we want new/more/better chairs. We take a fish from the water, kill it, skin it, eat it. We don't care for its life. We care for our lives and comfort more. Yes. It has been decided, humans are the dominant species on this planet. We rule. Now, I wished we ruled with more wisdom (e.g. avoid over-fishing and other unsustainable practices). But that's not how greed works. And our species is greedy. Perhaps you and I are not, but 'we' are. And perhaps it will ruin us.
My point was about "we eat what does not resist" also "cost". If it would cost us $1m to eat 1kg of fish, we wouldn't be eating fish (the 99.999% of the population). If hunting cows would end up costing us $200k per 1kg of beef.. same.
It is about "how obedient/simple/easy/effortless" is the thing we eat.
I probably did not explain that well in my initial message.
At the zoo’s seal exhibit, there’s a spot where you can watch them underwater. There was one seal that was literally waiting for us to show up so we could play with him. The guide told us that we could show him keys, and he would act like a cat. And that’s exactly what happened. It was unforgettable. He chased after my keys and seemed so happy with all the attention!
I’ve encountered a couple of these Sunfish (“Mola mola”) in the wild off the coast of Southern California. They’re absolutely incredible to see in person and massive! While it seemed to enjoy our presence we made sure not to get too close or they might mistake your boat for a rock and try to flop on board, which is the only way they’ve ever killed a human. I’ve read they move to warmer waters as they age and the ones I saw were “only” around 800-1200 pounds. The ones around Indonesia can be 3000 pounds or more. Fascinating creature.
Also, they famously carry a huge number of parasites. This just seems normal for the species, similar to how sloth fur supports a variety of organisms.
It's normal for all species, humans included. We generally aren't carrying large loads of parasites, but that's not because not doing so is normal. It's because we put tremendous effort into getting rid of them. This is one of the theories for why human body temperature seems to have lowered since the measurement was standardized at 37 C.
We "met" a king penguin at Singapore Bird Paradise that would follow people around at the edge of the tank (an acrylic sheet separated you from their enclosure) and try to interact. It swam up to my wife and followed her around, then went to another bunch of people and did the same. It seemed to enjoy watching people watching it and waving to it. Not every animal does, but this one did.
I’m not sure if it applies with all birds, but many seem to become fixated on humans. This can happen if you care for very young, sick or injured birds. My wife cares for various sad cases and if she isn’t careful they stay with with us.
We have 4 pigeons at the moment, with various issues. I call them our rehoming pigeons. Do you want a pigeon?
Funny enough, my late father was a veterinarian and we had a pigeon that we raised from a chick (we weren't sure what this thoroughly ugly bird was and it turned out it was a pigeon). It was very tame and lived in a hutch on the back porch, and would watch for us to come back from the electric pole out the front. Unfortunately its knowledge of cats was limited to our extremely lazy ones and one day it disappeared; we suspect it got eaten.
I became friends with a mallard while living near a pond, he would follow me when I walked to the bus stop, and greet me while on my way home (closer to home, he wouldn't typically leave the apartment complex, thankfully).
one year, he disappeared, which added a lot of sadness to my life. that summer, he reappeared and walked up a hill to greet me, with his mate and ducklings in tow. his mate had had a shattered (and repaired) beak, and was easy to pick out, and he spent time walking between us with "quack quack quack", back and forth, as if to introduce us. they stayed around at least until I moved a year or so later. by far the most profound experience I've had with a "wild" animal, a memorable experience that I will continue to cherish.
We treated a pigeon back to health from a failed cat attack - healthy enough to eat and walk, but not fly. It took a while but she eventually fully regained her ability to fly.
She had some rather distinct markings and would hang around the house pretty regularly after that. Then one day outside she was getting seriously groomed by a larger pigeon and wow is that where that term comes from?
Anyhow yeah she returned the grooming (which I'd later look up was her way of saying 'yeah I'm down - let's go') and I never saw her, or him, again.
So yeah - there could've been a happier ending there, especially because when a cat does eat a pigeon there tends to be evidence left.
Famously there is a kakapō named Sirocco who imprinted on humans to the point of being sexually attracted to them rather than to other kakapō. Which is both a problem because with only 244 individuals left, the species needs as many mating pairs as it can get; and a blessing because his international fame and fondness for humans makes him an effective "spokesbird" for conservation.
Birds can imprint on humans when exposed to them at some critical period after hatching, which seems adorable at a first glance, but can ultimately be a problem for birds that could otherwise be released into the wild, as it’s often irreversible.
Some of them fixate on one kind of person. They have a type.
I knew someone who got a bird at a pet store. The bird's favorite caretaker looked like a younger version of my friend. So the bird was intrigued. When she surrendered the bird about five years later, the girlfriend of the man running the sanctuary also had the same hair color and skin tone. So again the bird was eager to check out the new person. Most other people could fuck right off.
Any article about cardboard standees in japanese aquariums is incomplete without reference to Grape-kun, a penguin who fell in love with a cardboard cutout from an anime promotion.
I understand the conservation aspect of aquariums and all the good things that come out of it (research, etc) but it still makes me a bit sad when I read things like this.
I think it's better to think of zoos and arboretums and sanctuaries as embassies than as conservation.
Except in the direst of circumstances, your connection with that experience of seeing an African Elephant is a much more potent predictor for survival of the species than the benefit of having the elephant here where poaching is nonexistent but gene inheritance is complicated and limited. The star power of the animals triggers positive steps and slows or stops negative ones.
There's a conservation group I was involved with who thought they were going to save the world with a half dozen acres of land. The longer I knew them the more I realized that some of them didn't mean it figuratively. I love them but that's deranged. Meanwhile I treated it the way I think of zoos. That first hand experience re-establishing a human connection with Nature. The first or second domino in a long series of dominoes.
The better ones take really good care of the animals within.
And I think they serve an important and not-irreplaceable purpose - exposure. They help show ordinary people, many of whom live in cities with no exposure to real nature, just what out there is worth protecting. I think it helps build public support for things like reducing waste, better fishing and hunting practices, the importance of parks and preserves, wildlife crossings, etc.
Sure, you can see them on your phone. But the result is completely different than seeing them with your own eyes.
They ma provide good care, but how good can care be? A large animal would probably roam vast distances all the time and there's no way a zoo can allow that. Plus climate.
Polar bears at the zoo on plastic ice may be the saddest thing I've seen in my life, but how are you gonna provide tons and tons of ice for miles in a warm climate?
So it's okay to have some animals live in terrible circumstances in order for people to not have to put effort into being empathetic?
They might take "really good care" of the animals, feed them well, give them the best veterinary care, etc, but that's not a good life for an animal. When they have so little space to roam, so little engagement or interaction with other groups of the same species, no agency over their food or other aspect of their life, and all the while having humans gawk at them whenever they aren't hiding away. It's just a pitiful existence for the benefit of tourists. I can't buy into that.
Animal behavior and stress is a little more complicated than that. Not having to worry about predators, be low on food, or get sick/injured also significantly reduces stress.
Some animals need a lot of territory to roam and don't do well in captivity, some don't really care.
I'm not saying zoos are perfect, but well-run ones are far from evil either. Calling it 'terrible circumstances' is too broad. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
An alternative last resort could have been to let small groups of real people in to see the sunfish during renovations. It could even be a PR thing with a lottery or something for the lucky sunfish companions.
How complex and sensitive animals can be! And it’s a big reminder that we have a huge responsibility for their well-being when we bring them into these kinds of spaces.
They live in the middle of big oceans. Whenever I've found one in the wild, there is nothing nearby, so I imagine an empty tank is the best way to replicate that.
I'm surprised to see so many comments solely about how aquariums/zoos are cruel and feeling sorry for this particular fish, when it's a species that is regularly hunted. I wouldn't want to be locked in a cage/tank either, but by ending up in a well run aquarium this sunfish is doing better than 99.999% of sunfish that have encountered humans.
This isn't a screed against eating fish or meat; I eat both. There are a lot of unethical practices in these industries that I'd like to see greatly improved, but putting a few individuals in an enclosure where there is at least some research and educational value seems like not even a rounding error on the state of animal welfare.
Being cared for by conscientious humans, providing enrichment and variety, can be better than living in the wild. For any animal, living in the wild, life span tends to be short, and life tends to be brutal. Prey animals are hunted, and they scrounge for food; finding a steady, reliable, nutritious, and tasty source of food in the wild is vanishingly rare. Dealing with parasites, illness, injury, predation, and all the other stress and constant threats to life is why wild animals are dangerous. Peaceful, fulfilling, life is incredibly rare.
It's even incredibly rare for humans - we're currently in an age of plenty and abundance, with more people living better lives than at any other point in the history of our species.
Overfishing and the geopolitical nature of enforcement and exploitation aren't something we can affect at an individual level, but these aquarium staff are doing a good thing, making a pretty good life for a sunfish. An actual companion would be better, but as long as the cutouts are triggering relief for whatever social needs being affected, that's a good deal for the sunfish.
I was commenting to my wife the other day... it seems to me that there are very few wild animals that just die from being too old. Not an expert, but it seems to me that most animals in the wild live until they are brutally ripped apart and eaten alive by another animal, and it's only a matter of time -- very rarely reaching an age old enough to just die.
Very few other animals put energy (either directly or through abstractions like "money", "welfare", and "centralized monopolies on the legitimate use of violence") into sustaining members of the species/group that can no longer defend and feed themselves.
Humans in the developed world do this so well that very few of them are even required to defend and feed themselves without these abstractions.
The interesting thing is predator and prey both die when they get too slow. Not sure which side has a worse ending there! Then there's disease or even a simple scratch getting infected.
The world's a brutal place, probably all worlds. Because the very nature of evolution means species that exploit the most thrive the most. The obvious exception of things like a solar feeding plant isn't even an exception. The great oxidation event caused one of the greatest mass extinctions on the planet - we evolved to thrive on oxygen but for most of the other life alive at the time it'd be like if plants today produced cyanide gas.
Even a slight injury to a predator can mean a slow death by starvation.
That's why videogame predators are so ridiculous. They keep coming after you, even when half their ass is blown away. A real predator will bugger off, as soon as it figures out that there might be a cost to attacking you. That's a big reason that many herbivore defenses seem kind of ridiculous, but work. They just need to make the predator nervous. Unless the predator is starving, it's likely to seek prey elsewhere.
There's also tremendous competition between predators.
Certain prey animals, especially gazelles, engage in dramatic leaps known as stotting. This behavior makes them highly visible to predators. One theory for why they do this is as a fitness signal to predators, who generally want to go for the easy pickin's, not the ones who present a challenge, and represent taking on more effort and risk of injury or just wasted energy.
Most lions also know not to prey on humans, for similar reasons: if a lion took a human, it risks being hunted down by other humans related to their prey. Most "man-eating" lions or tigers are starving or injured, therefore desperate, and lions are largely seen in Africa as pest creatures who take livestock.
(Hippopotamuses, by contrast, give absolutely no fucks and will kill you on sight. Africans consider the hippopotamus to be the fiercest animal by far, even more so than the lion.)
I knew about the stotting, but figured it was for mating. The predator thing makes sense.
Hippos also hang out around humans a lot, which increases the chances of unfortunate misunderstandings (almost always resolving in favor of the hippo).
I remember visiting a village in Uganda, on the banks of the Nile.
They had a couple of jettys, going out into the river, and between them, a series of poles and whatnot. It looked like a fish hatchery.
Didn't matter. It was a hippo sofa. There was this hippo, just lying in the water, right in the middle of one of the busiest areas of the village. We were told that it was a regular. Everyone just ignored it.
The jury is still out, as to whether it is worse to be in front of an angry hippo, or behind an incontinent one.
I think this is probably right. But does that mean that cancer, cardivascular disease, ALS, Parkinson, etc etc human diseases are incredibly rare among animals?
And sure, cutouts aren’t a perfect replacement for real social interaction, but it’s clear the staff are doing their best to address its emotional needs
The issue is about whether the animal is forced to endure pain, not weather we eat it or not. The same is true for how we keep the animals we eat, and why people are rightfully upset about how some cows and chickens and the like are kept during their short lives before slaughter.
Essentially, having the animal be free before we catch and immediately and hopefully quickly kill it for food is fine. Keeping it in a zoo where it's not suffering is fine.
Keeping it in poor conditions before we kill and eat it is not fine. Keeping it in poor conditions in a zoo is not fine.
This story is interesting in that it gives insight into the mental state of these zoo animals, something that is often hard for the public to see and understand. It should make you pause to consider if we're really keeping these animals in humane conditions, given that apparently even fish have possibly more complex internal mental states than we assume.
Agree. There's a provocative word you don't mention: hypocrisy.
This has become my reflexive internal response when I hear complaining about small-beer animal cruelty. Why are we so quick to empathize with this sunfish, and so slow to do it for creatures whose products most of us eat every single day? The horror show of factory farming creates many orders of magnitude more suffering than all these little anecdotes put together.
Zoos are cruel? Hypocrisy. Circuses are cruel? Hypocrisy. Bullfighting is cruel? Hypocrisy. Euthanizing stray dogs is cruel? Hypocrisy. Using animals in a film shoot is cruel? Hypocrisy. Keeping a single guinea pig is cruel? Hypocrisy (but against the law in Germany). And so on.
People in developed countries have become very good at dealing with cognitive dissonance.
I've seen some very large farms and they didn't seem like a horror show to me. Maybe they exist somewhere but I'm starting to get the feeling that "factory farm" is a term that people throw out to conjure a mental image of something that doesn't actually exist (or is the exception rather than the rule).
The internet in general finds the black in the rainbow, Hacker News is typically better in quality of argument as it tends to attract a more intellectual crowd, but the overall tendency is the same.
Additionally, most of us are taught "hurting things is bad" as children and many adults have a hard time reconciling that we have to intentionally hurt at least some living things to live, hurt an even greater amount of living things to flourish, and at a certain point decreasing suffering in one dimension increases it in another.
For those who haven't developed a more mature framework, they tend to revert to the childhood "hurting things is bad" lesson, and an alternative framework based on nuance and context around suffering is too emotionally painful for them to accept, even if they can intellectually admit to the logic.
> is typically better in quality of argument as it tends to attract a more intellectual crowd
On behalf of the more intellectual crowd, I'm obliged to devastatingly elucidate that we're (quite singularly) more intrinsically adept at forcefully projecting ex post facto rationalizations upon our--invariably and universally--emotional decision-making processes whilst obfuscating the same under an avalanche of loquacious hifalutinisms.
Big Zoos, yes. And they do some great research, as well as preservation and rehabilitation. But I've also been to a few small zoos in rural America that are essentially someone's private animal collection that they charge you a fee to see. I think those are less common than they used to be, but they do exist.
I went there as a kid. One visit was actually a school field trip. I have not been to one in nearly 30 years. And I should have more clearly said that I've only actually been to one, but have seen others while traveling. That was my mistake in saying that I've been to a few.
It’s highly questionable if wildlife and habitat protection had the same level of political support if most people would only knew the affected animals from photos and nature documentaries. Zoos can have a lasting impact on people.
Poppycock. I could make the exact inverse argument. Perhaps animals being easy to access in a city makes people care less about them. "Who cares if it goes extinct in the wild, I can still see it at the zoo." Without any kind of practical evidence, you cannot know what effect zoos have. The only effect zoos have had on me is that I went to a local aquarium one time and saw a giant sea turtle swimming round a very small tank. The sheer cruelty of that stays with me. A creature which migrates thousands of miles in nature confined to a cage perhaps ten meters long. It is, without a doubt, one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed. I don't think anyone who can tolerate zoos actually cares about animals.
Zoos are a lesser evil argument, locally they are not the best for the animals but they provide globally long-term benefits for humans and nature as well.
A world with no zoos and less appreciation and consideration for nature as well as the long term necessity of caring for it?
I’m wondering about creating more nature parks instead of zoos. Of course not as accessible for people in cities, but could be a much better compromise.
In general, we should avoid putting animals in small cages as much as possible.
Speaking of nature parks instead of zoos, the San Diego Wild Safari Park is just that. Very large enclosed pastures with multiple species living alongside each other.
Nature park is still basically a zoo, and yes the lesser evil is the sacrifice of animal wellbeing to ensure that the masses of urbanized humans get to physically see these animals. It is an inevitable tradeoff and there is no way around it, no euphemism for zoos or general appeals about animal wellbeing can paper over that.
If the benefit of putting wild animals in small zoos is some sliver of human cultural contact with the wilds, then that calculus is worth it, however paradoxical and politically incorrect it may appear to be. That's the argument.
The implication here is that it would be impossible to fund conservation without zoos. As a counter argument: we could just do it. Increase taxes by the amount people spend in zoos and spend that on conservation. The only argument in favour of the zoo over that other approach is that people want to look at animals in cages.
Yes, we could do that, but what would be the benefit? I'm saying that whether we want nature conserved and whether we want them to be in cages for us to look at are entirely separate issues that should be evaluated separately. The best argument in favour of zoos is assuming that the people who want to look at dancing bears would be sufficiently enraged by their absence that they would decide to condemn the whole of nature in not doing conservation.
As for why I think we could do it, the answer is because we obviously can. The world become a much worse place once you realise the many things of which humanity is capable, yet which we choose not to do.
I suggest to you that if you try to make that happen, you'll find that in fact you can't. Not everything you can imagine people doing is something that it's actually possible to make them do.
This logic is at the root of almost everyone who has been complicit in evil through history. It would once have been said about the abolition of slavery, gay rights, etc. It is a lazy attitude that's entirely self-justifying. Change is often opposed primarily by the great mass of people who use this same logic, in spite of them recognising that the change would be good.
During the pandemic / lockdown I was lucky enough to visit one of the reef pontoons off Cairns (Australia, on the Great Barrier Reef) that had been shut for several months. The resident Maori wrasse (a very large fish) at this pontoon, and others, has been known to have a relationship with some of the regular staff - often rubbing up against them in the water. When we jumped in the water that day the fish's reaction was the wildest thing I've ever seen. It was like a small puppy who has been locked inside all day. It literally jumped into my arms, flapping its tail to get closer. I'm going to repeat - this is a big fish, maybe a metre long and stocky, covered in a nice thick layer of slime. It would then swim away and come back and rub up against us. It did this to all three of us in the group ... only one of us was a regular. She hung with us for the whole snorkel and it was a bit sad when we had to get out of the water. Amazing experience. Made me feel differently about wrasses, that's for sure.
While I was scuba diving in Belize with some friends we encountered some Goliath Grouper which would follow us around. Later we were amazed when we saw another diver hold out her arms to one and it swam right up to her so she could hold it and pet it. Keep in mind this was a massive fish that probably weighed as much as a person.
We asked her about it afterwards, turns out they just like being petted :). Eventually got to try it out ourselves on another dive, fish can be really friendly.
Wow. We have a "Queensland" Grouper here .. similar size to the goliath, but there is no way I would hug it. A mate was a skipper of a dive boat and went for a freedive on their break - got a little bit too close to one that was chilling under the vessel. It opened it's mouth and sucked their head in. Happened very quickly. This person has a pretty decent breath hold, and experienced all round. But they thought that was it - all over. Until they were promptly spat out - never to venture within 10m of a fish that size again.
Goliath Groupers are massive! It must’ve been surreal to interact with something like that up close.
Other animals are really cool it's a shame we eat them and treat them so cruelly.
We don't eat them because they are uncool, we eat them because we can farm them 'en masse' in a cost effective manner and they cannot escape. I've had moose, horse, and a few more non-typical farmed animals. I like horse steak the best. But, a beef steak costs X and a horse steak costs 5x.
It's a complicated multi-threaded discussion. I saw a vid recently from (I assume the UK) that people were protesting on the meat-alley of a super market. So those people are cool when the super market sells cigarettes, sugary drinks that cause diabetes to kids, 'chocolates' with 50% sugar, alcohol that ruins millions of lives around the world, etc. But steak.. that is their problem. Oh the hypocrisy.
Perhaps they feel that tobacco farming and harvesting causes significantly less distress to the tobacco plants than animal farming and slaughter does to the animals.
The plant stays alive once its 'fruit' is remove, true (although I've never picked cotton or tobacco leaves - I assume the process doesn't injure the plant).
But we don't care. We only keep the plant alive so we can make more of the 'good stuff' (cigarettes, jeans, etc.)
Again, low effort and low cost from our side. If it would be cheaper to kill the tobacco plant (I don't know much about tobacco plants, perhaps that at some point/age of the plant it becomes sterile, so we kill the old one and plant a new one?) If this is the case, then kill the old cotton plant, get a new one, start harvesting. We decided that we rule the earth. Until something very dramatic happens (ruin ecosystems, aliens invade, etc.) then we run the show.
That’s a textbook example of whataboutism if I’ve ever seen one, but it’s also a category error:
Selling cigarettes harms the buyers, but selling factory-farmed meat harms the animals being factory farmed, and they don’t have any agency in this at all.
> Selling cigarettes harms the buyers, but selling factory-farmed meat harms the animals being factory farmed,...
Yes, it is exactly as you write it! Did you just realize that? (pardon the irony but come on.. idealism = ideas, realism = reality)
> and they don’t have any agency in this at all.
Correct again! No they don't. We cut down trees that are very much alive because we want new/more/better chairs. We take a fish from the water, kill it, skin it, eat it. We don't care for its life. We care for our lives and comfort more. Yes. It has been decided, humans are the dominant species on this planet. We rule. Now, I wished we ruled with more wisdom (e.g. avoid over-fishing and other unsustainable practices). But that's not how greed works. And our species is greedy. Perhaps you and I are not, but 'we' are. And perhaps it will ruin us.
Sorry, most of fish we eat were not farmed by human.
My point was about "we eat what does not resist" also "cost". If it would cost us $1m to eat 1kg of fish, we wouldn't be eating fish (the 99.999% of the population). If hunting cows would end up costing us $200k per 1kg of beef.. same.
It is about "how obedient/simple/easy/effortless" is the thing we eat.
I probably did not explain that well in my initial message.
At the zoo’s seal exhibit, there’s a spot where you can watch them underwater. There was one seal that was literally waiting for us to show up so we could play with him. The guide told us that we could show him keys, and he would act like a cat. And that’s exactly what happened. It was unforgettable. He chased after my keys and seemed so happy with all the attention!
I’ve encountered a couple of these Sunfish (“Mola mola”) in the wild off the coast of Southern California. They’re absolutely incredible to see in person and massive! While it seemed to enjoy our presence we made sure not to get too close or they might mistake your boat for a rock and try to flop on board, which is the only way they’ve ever killed a human. I’ve read they move to warmer waters as they age and the ones I saw were “only” around 800-1200 pounds. The ones around Indonesia can be 3000 pounds or more. Fascinating creature.
Also, they famously carry a huge number of parasites. This just seems normal for the species, similar to how sloth fur supports a variety of organisms.
It's normal for all species, humans included. We generally aren't carrying large loads of parasites, but that's not because not doing so is normal. It's because we put tremendous effort into getting rid of them. This is one of the theories for why human body temperature seems to have lowered since the measurement was standardized at 37 C.
There was a poem written about the phenomenon:
Big fleas have little fleas
upon their backs to bite 'em
And little fleas have lesser fleas
and so ad infinitum
Written by de Morgan of de Morgan's Laws!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_(poem)
But he lifted the genius part of it from Jonathan Swift.
But there is also a scientific measurement if parasite load. Not all species carry an equal amount.
Turbulence: Great whirls have lesser whirls, that feed on their velocity / and lesser whirls have lesser still, and so on to viscosity.
The version I recall has "upon their knees to bite 'em". Maybe my juvenile brain made up that internal rhyme the better to remember it.
The ones I've seen get scared pretty easily, and when scared will rocket off awfully fast.
We "met" a king penguin at Singapore Bird Paradise that would follow people around at the edge of the tank (an acrylic sheet separated you from their enclosure) and try to interact. It swam up to my wife and followed her around, then went to another bunch of people and did the same. It seemed to enjoy watching people watching it and waving to it. Not every animal does, but this one did.
I’m not sure if it applies with all birds, but many seem to become fixated on humans. This can happen if you care for very young, sick or injured birds. My wife cares for various sad cases and if she isn’t careful they stay with with us. We have 4 pigeons at the moment, with various issues. I call them our rehoming pigeons. Do you want a pigeon?
Funny enough, my late father was a veterinarian and we had a pigeon that we raised from a chick (we weren't sure what this thoroughly ugly bird was and it turned out it was a pigeon). It was very tame and lived in a hutch on the back porch, and would watch for us to come back from the electric pole out the front. Unfortunately its knowledge of cats was limited to our extremely lazy ones and one day it disappeared; we suspect it got eaten.
I became friends with a mallard while living near a pond, he would follow me when I walked to the bus stop, and greet me while on my way home (closer to home, he wouldn't typically leave the apartment complex, thankfully).
one year, he disappeared, which added a lot of sadness to my life. that summer, he reappeared and walked up a hill to greet me, with his mate and ducklings in tow. his mate had had a shattered (and repaired) beak, and was easy to pick out, and he spent time walking between us with "quack quack quack", back and forth, as if to introduce us. they stayed around at least until I moved a year or so later. by far the most profound experience I've had with a "wild" animal, a memorable experience that I will continue to cherish.
My stereotype of ducks is that they're bastards who will fight you for a crust of bread. Lovely to see you met a friendly one.
This made me smile, thank you for sharing!
We treated a pigeon back to health from a failed cat attack - healthy enough to eat and walk, but not fly. It took a while but she eventually fully regained her ability to fly.
She had some rather distinct markings and would hang around the house pretty regularly after that. Then one day outside she was getting seriously groomed by a larger pigeon and wow is that where that term comes from?
Anyhow yeah she returned the grooming (which I'd later look up was her way of saying 'yeah I'm down - let's go') and I never saw her, or him, again.
So yeah - there could've been a happier ending there, especially because when a cat does eat a pigeon there tends to be evidence left.
Sadly, nature can be harsh...
Famously there is a kakapō named Sirocco who imprinted on humans to the point of being sexually attracted to them rather than to other kakapō. Which is both a problem because with only 244 individuals left, the species needs as many mating pairs as it can get; and a blessing because his international fame and fondness for humans makes him an effective "spokesbird" for conservation.
Here he is mounting and having a go at Mark Carwardine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY
"You are being shagged by a rare parrot!"
Birds can imprint on humans when exposed to them at some critical period after hatching, which seems adorable at a first glance, but can ultimately be a problem for birds that could otherwise be released into the wild, as it’s often irreversible.
Some of them fixate on one kind of person. They have a type.
I knew someone who got a bird at a pet store. The bird's favorite caretaker looked like a younger version of my friend. So the bird was intrigued. When she surrendered the bird about five years later, the girlfriend of the man running the sanctuary also had the same hair color and skin tone. So again the bird was eager to check out the new person. Most other people could fuck right off.
Any article about cardboard standees in japanese aquariums is incomplete without reference to Grape-kun, a penguin who fell in love with a cardboard cutout from an anime promotion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape-kun
Unbelievable. A penguin found himself a waifu.
ma hawt, ma soul
These animals yearn for their mates.
I understand the conservation aspect of aquariums and all the good things that come out of it (research, etc) but it still makes me a bit sad when I read things like this.
I think it's better to think of zoos and arboretums and sanctuaries as embassies than as conservation.
Except in the direst of circumstances, your connection with that experience of seeing an African Elephant is a much more potent predictor for survival of the species than the benefit of having the elephant here where poaching is nonexistent but gene inheritance is complicated and limited. The star power of the animals triggers positive steps and slows or stops negative ones.
There's a conservation group I was involved with who thought they were going to save the world with a half dozen acres of land. The longer I knew them the more I realized that some of them didn't mean it figuratively. I love them but that's deranged. Meanwhile I treated it the way I think of zoos. That first hand experience re-establishing a human connection with Nature. The first or second domino in a long series of dominoes.
I yearn for my mate… but do they yearn for me?
I agree with you. The older I get, the less and less tolerant I become of the concept of zoos and aquariums.
The better ones take really good care of the animals within.
And I think they serve an important and not-irreplaceable purpose - exposure. They help show ordinary people, many of whom live in cities with no exposure to real nature, just what out there is worth protecting. I think it helps build public support for things like reducing waste, better fishing and hunting practices, the importance of parks and preserves, wildlife crossings, etc.
Sure, you can see them on your phone. But the result is completely different than seeing them with your own eyes.
They ma provide good care, but how good can care be? A large animal would probably roam vast distances all the time and there's no way a zoo can allow that. Plus climate.
Polar bears at the zoo on plastic ice may be the saddest thing I've seen in my life, but how are you gonna provide tons and tons of ice for miles in a warm climate?
So it's okay to have some animals live in terrible circumstances in order for people to not have to put effort into being empathetic?
They might take "really good care" of the animals, feed them well, give them the best veterinary care, etc, but that's not a good life for an animal. When they have so little space to roam, so little engagement or interaction with other groups of the same species, no agency over their food or other aspect of their life, and all the while having humans gawk at them whenever they aren't hiding away. It's just a pitiful existence for the benefit of tourists. I can't buy into that.
Animal behavior and stress is a little more complicated than that. Not having to worry about predators, be low on food, or get sick/injured also significantly reduces stress.
Some animals need a lot of territory to roam and don't do well in captivity, some don't really care.
I'm not saying zoos are perfect, but well-run ones are far from evil either. Calling it 'terrible circumstances' is too broad. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
An alternative last resort could have been to let small groups of real people in to see the sunfish during renovations. It could even be a PR thing with a lottery or something for the lucky sunfish companions.
How complex and sensitive animals can be! And it’s a big reminder that we have a huge responsibility for their well-being when we bring them into these kinds of spaces.
Is it loneliness, or stimulus deprivation? The tank looks barren in the photo.
They live in the middle of big oceans. Whenever I've found one in the wild, there is nothing nearby, so I imagine an empty tank is the best way to replicate that.
:(
I'm surprised to see so many comments solely about how aquariums/zoos are cruel and feeling sorry for this particular fish, when it's a species that is regularly hunted. I wouldn't want to be locked in a cage/tank either, but by ending up in a well run aquarium this sunfish is doing better than 99.999% of sunfish that have encountered humans.
This isn't a screed against eating fish or meat; I eat both. There are a lot of unethical practices in these industries that I'd like to see greatly improved, but putting a few individuals in an enclosure where there is at least some research and educational value seems like not even a rounding error on the state of animal welfare.
Being cared for by conscientious humans, providing enrichment and variety, can be better than living in the wild. For any animal, living in the wild, life span tends to be short, and life tends to be brutal. Prey animals are hunted, and they scrounge for food; finding a steady, reliable, nutritious, and tasty source of food in the wild is vanishingly rare. Dealing with parasites, illness, injury, predation, and all the other stress and constant threats to life is why wild animals are dangerous. Peaceful, fulfilling, life is incredibly rare.
It's even incredibly rare for humans - we're currently in an age of plenty and abundance, with more people living better lives than at any other point in the history of our species.
Overfishing and the geopolitical nature of enforcement and exploitation aren't something we can affect at an individual level, but these aquarium staff are doing a good thing, making a pretty good life for a sunfish. An actual companion would be better, but as long as the cutouts are triggering relief for whatever social needs being affected, that's a good deal for the sunfish.
I was commenting to my wife the other day... it seems to me that there are very few wild animals that just die from being too old. Not an expert, but it seems to me that most animals in the wild live until they are brutally ripped apart and eaten alive by another animal, and it's only a matter of time -- very rarely reaching an age old enough to just die.
Very few other animals put energy (either directly or through abstractions like "money", "welfare", and "centralized monopolies on the legitimate use of violence") into sustaining members of the species/group that can no longer defend and feed themselves.
Humans in the developed world do this so well that very few of them are even required to defend and feed themselves without these abstractions.
The interesting thing is predator and prey both die when they get too slow. Not sure which side has a worse ending there! Then there's disease or even a simple scratch getting infected.
The world's a brutal place, probably all worlds. Because the very nature of evolution means species that exploit the most thrive the most. The obvious exception of things like a solar feeding plant isn't even an exception. The great oxidation event caused one of the greatest mass extinctions on the planet - we evolved to thrive on oxygen but for most of the other life alive at the time it'd be like if plants today produced cyanide gas.
Predators tend to have a thinner margin.
Even a slight injury to a predator can mean a slow death by starvation.
That's why videogame predators are so ridiculous. They keep coming after you, even when half their ass is blown away. A real predator will bugger off, as soon as it figures out that there might be a cost to attacking you. That's a big reason that many herbivore defenses seem kind of ridiculous, but work. They just need to make the predator nervous. Unless the predator is starving, it's likely to seek prey elsewhere.
There's also tremendous competition between predators.
Certain prey animals, especially gazelles, engage in dramatic leaps known as stotting. This behavior makes them highly visible to predators. One theory for why they do this is as a fitness signal to predators, who generally want to go for the easy pickin's, not the ones who present a challenge, and represent taking on more effort and risk of injury or just wasted energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting
Most lions also know not to prey on humans, for similar reasons: if a lion took a human, it risks being hunted down by other humans related to their prey. Most "man-eating" lions or tigers are starving or injured, therefore desperate, and lions are largely seen in Africa as pest creatures who take livestock.
(Hippopotamuses, by contrast, give absolutely no fucks and will kill you on sight. Africans consider the hippopotamus to be the fiercest animal by far, even more so than the lion.)
Huh. TIL.
I knew about the stotting, but figured it was for mating. The predator thing makes sense.
Hippos also hang out around humans a lot, which increases the chances of unfortunate misunderstandings (almost always resolving in favor of the hippo).
I remember visiting a village in Uganda, on the banks of the Nile.
They had a couple of jettys, going out into the river, and between them, a series of poles and whatnot. It looked like a fish hatchery.
Didn't matter. It was a hippo sofa. There was this hippo, just lying in the water, right in the middle of one of the busiest areas of the village. We were told that it was a regular. Everyone just ignored it.
The jury is still out, as to whether it is worse to be in front of an angry hippo, or behind an incontinent one.
I think this is probably right. But does that mean that cancer, cardivascular disease, ALS, Parkinson, etc etc human diseases are incredibly rare among animals?
And sure, cutouts aren’t a perfect replacement for real social interaction, but it’s clear the staff are doing their best to address its emotional needs
The issue is about whether the animal is forced to endure pain, not weather we eat it or not. The same is true for how we keep the animals we eat, and why people are rightfully upset about how some cows and chickens and the like are kept during their short lives before slaughter.
Essentially, having the animal be free before we catch and immediately and hopefully quickly kill it for food is fine. Keeping it in a zoo where it's not suffering is fine.
Keeping it in poor conditions before we kill and eat it is not fine. Keeping it in poor conditions in a zoo is not fine.
This story is interesting in that it gives insight into the mental state of these zoo animals, something that is often hard for the public to see and understand. It should make you pause to consider if we're really keeping these animals in humane conditions, given that apparently even fish have possibly more complex internal mental states than we assume.
[dead]
Agree. There's a provocative word you don't mention: hypocrisy.
This has become my reflexive internal response when I hear complaining about small-beer animal cruelty. Why are we so quick to empathize with this sunfish, and so slow to do it for creatures whose products most of us eat every single day? The horror show of factory farming creates many orders of magnitude more suffering than all these little anecdotes put together.
Zoos are cruel? Hypocrisy. Circuses are cruel? Hypocrisy. Bullfighting is cruel? Hypocrisy. Euthanizing stray dogs is cruel? Hypocrisy. Using animals in a film shoot is cruel? Hypocrisy. Keeping a single guinea pig is cruel? Hypocrisy (but against the law in Germany). And so on.
People in developed countries have become very good at dealing with cognitive dissonance.
I've seen some very large farms and they didn't seem like a horror show to me. Maybe they exist somewhere but I'm starting to get the feeling that "factory farm" is a term that people throw out to conjure a mental image of something that doesn't actually exist (or is the exception rather than the rule).
If factory farms were so benign, they wouldn’t need laws designed to encumber whistleblowers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
The internet in general finds the black in the rainbow, Hacker News is typically better in quality of argument as it tends to attract a more intellectual crowd, but the overall tendency is the same.
Additionally, most of us are taught "hurting things is bad" as children and many adults have a hard time reconciling that we have to intentionally hurt at least some living things to live, hurt an even greater amount of living things to flourish, and at a certain point decreasing suffering in one dimension increases it in another.
For those who haven't developed a more mature framework, they tend to revert to the childhood "hurting things is bad" lesson, and an alternative framework based on nuance and context around suffering is too emotionally painful for them to accept, even if they can intellectually admit to the logic.
> is typically better in quality of argument as it tends to attract a more intellectual crowd
On behalf of the more intellectual crowd, I'm obliged to devastatingly elucidate that we're (quite singularly) more intrinsically adept at forcefully projecting ex post facto rationalizations upon our--invariably and universally--emotional decision-making processes whilst obfuscating the same under an avalanche of loquacious hifalutinisms.
[dead]
[flagged]
Poor fish
Zoos are really quite cruel.
Most zoos nowadays are important research centers.
Besides that, they have an important educational component that surely contributes politically for conservation efforts.
Big Zoos, yes. And they do some great research, as well as preservation and rehabilitation. But I've also been to a few small zoos in rural America that are essentially someone's private animal collection that they charge you a fee to see. I think those are less common than they used to be, but they do exist.
I don't think those can be considered zoos from your description.
And maybe stop going to them (you went to a few?) and they will become even less common.
Never seen one of those, but there's plenty of private animal habitats I've seen that take injured and stray animals.
Usually just ran/funded by someone who loves animals.
I went there as a kid. One visit was actually a school field trip. I have not been to one in nearly 30 years. And I should have more clearly said that I've only actually been to one, but have seen others while traveling. That was my mistake in saying that I've been to a few.
False dichotomy. If we wanted to, we could do both preservation and not lock them up.
It’s highly questionable if wildlife and habitat protection had the same level of political support if most people would only knew the affected animals from photos and nature documentaries. Zoos can have a lasting impact on people.
Poppycock. I could make the exact inverse argument. Perhaps animals being easy to access in a city makes people care less about them. "Who cares if it goes extinct in the wild, I can still see it at the zoo." Without any kind of practical evidence, you cannot know what effect zoos have. The only effect zoos have had on me is that I went to a local aquarium one time and saw a giant sea turtle swimming round a very small tank. The sheer cruelty of that stays with me. A creature which migrates thousands of miles in nature confined to a cage perhaps ten meters long. It is, without a doubt, one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed. I don't think anyone who can tolerate zoos actually cares about animals.
Zoos are a lesser evil argument, locally they are not the best for the animals but they provide globally long-term benefits for humans and nature as well.
What’s the alternative? The implied greater evil?
A world with no zoos and less appreciation and consideration for nature as well as the long term necessity of caring for it?
I’m wondering about creating more nature parks instead of zoos. Of course not as accessible for people in cities, but could be a much better compromise.
In general, we should avoid putting animals in small cages as much as possible.
Speaking of nature parks instead of zoos, the San Diego Wild Safari Park is just that. Very large enclosed pastures with multiple species living alongside each other.
Nature park is still basically a zoo, and yes the lesser evil is the sacrifice of animal wellbeing to ensure that the masses of urbanized humans get to physically see these animals. It is an inevitable tradeoff and there is no way around it, no euphemism for zoos or general appeals about animal wellbeing can paper over that.
If the benefit of putting wild animals in small zoos is some sliver of human cultural contact with the wilds, then that calculus is worth it, however paradoxical and politically incorrect it may appear to be. That's the argument.
The implication here is that it would be impossible to fund conservation without zoos. As a counter argument: we could just do it. Increase taxes by the amount people spend in zoos and spend that on conservation. The only argument in favour of the zoo over that other approach is that people want to look at animals in cages.
> As a counter argument: we could just do it. Increase taxes by the amount people spend in zoos and spend that on conservation.
Why do you think we could do that?
I say we could just increase taxes by $5,000 per person per year and spend it on breeding and releasing mosquitoes in Los Angeles.
Yes, we could do that, but what would be the benefit? I'm saying that whether we want nature conserved and whether we want them to be in cages for us to look at are entirely separate issues that should be evaluated separately. The best argument in favour of zoos is assuming that the people who want to look at dancing bears would be sufficiently enraged by their absence that they would decide to condemn the whole of nature in not doing conservation.
As for why I think we could do it, the answer is because we obviously can. The world become a much worse place once you realise the many things of which humanity is capable, yet which we choose not to do.
I suggest to you that if you try to make that happen, you'll find that in fact you can't. Not everything you can imagine people doing is something that it's actually possible to make them do.
> We can't do it because people won't do it.
This logic is at the root of almost everyone who has been complicit in evil through history. It would once have been said about the abolition of slavery, gay rights, etc. It is a lazy attitude that's entirely self-justifying. Change is often opposed primarily by the great mass of people who use this same logic, in spite of them recognising that the change would be good.
I wish I was that sunfish.
Want me to print you some friends? :)
You wish you were in prison?
It's a fucking baby wheel man!!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0IQCLQDfKw)