Wierdosity off the scale, captain

[andrewducker]

Cheers to laserboy for sending me a link to this article about conservation efforts for the wierdest animals (i.e. those with the least close relatives).

Comments

[andrewducker]

Why, exactly, should I care about any particular animal? Is there a reason why I shouldn't prefer cute animals to non-cute ones?

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, what was the other half of my point, and I'm pretty sure I said it was "I mean, objecting to eating a chunk of meat because of how it looked when it was alive seems weird to me. *shrug*"

It was an opinion. I'm explaining why -I- think what I do, not why you should agree. If you didn't see the reasoning in there, you don't have to agree.

To be honest, I don't really mind how food looks when it's on my plate, let alone when it was in its natural state. As many have said, it all ends up the same anyway.

It's like the way that lots of fruit juices/jams/gooey dishes etc get colourings added to stop them being an unappealing-to-many brownish colour. If I get a vegetable, or a chunk of meat, or some jam on toast... I am going to put it in my mouth, cover it in saliva, chew it into little bits, swallow it, then it will slowly dissolve, merge with everything else and I think you know the rest. Even before that, I will take it from the plate, probably cut it up and so forth. Taste, for me, is a part of eating. I've never really found sight to be the most important part.

I guess if it helps, and you don't like eating cute chickens, or cute rabbits, you could maybe think of the one you're going to eat as one that had a terrible life, in a tiny cage, force fed and in constant pain. It wasn't one of the happy ones out in a field playing with farmers and singing cheery songs voiced by a hollywood star. Heck, if you -don't- eat the force-grown animals, you're making their entire short miserable existence meaningless ;-)

[ninox.livejournal.com]

That was kind of my point but statistically people will protect creatures dependant on the degree of relatedness, hence mammals come top of the list and spiders are viewed more alien and way out.