Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/07/should-we-wipe-out-vampire-bat.html
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What good are humans for the bats?
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Aren’t smallpox a species? And polio? We eradicated them quite intentionally. Do animal rights depend on the cuddly cuteness of the animal?
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Smallpox and polio are viruses, not even cellular let alone animals.
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I sorta tuned out at 3:10 when guy said the vampire bats are expendable as they serve no useful purpose (as far as our limited understanding goes).
I hear things like this and wonder who’s payroll is he on? No one advocates the end of a species like this without some deep-rooted motivation. Money, racial hatred?
Maybe cure rabies, that seems to be the better solution for everyone (including the bats).
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What could possibly go wrong?
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There will be nothing left but AstroTurf, fake flowers, bunnies and ducklings… TeletubbieLand.
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Having watched the video, my question remains: how about raising and eating a lot less meat?
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The question is framed badly and argued even worse. Eradication efforts against animals, especially ones which do not reproduce with the prolific rate of arthropods should be focused on keeping them out of strictly human habitats. We are intruding into their space, but they are a hazard to us nonetheless.
Nobody in their right mind would argue that we should wipe out all rats and mice and as entire species. But it is sane to argue that they should be kept from homes and food storage areas and wiped out from there if found.
One of the roles of wildlife preserves and government parkland is to put a break on human development and create spaces for wildlife to flourish without our interference. What may be welcomed as cute and cuddly outdoors is not so welcomed inside your house.
YOU ARE NOT WELCOMED IN MY HOME!
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Hey I like the Teletubbies! The thing I’m worried about is a world with nothing but roaches and rats and dandelions.
Do you think the outcome would have been different if smallpox was caused by a parasite?
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Is this race to the bottom that you are leading … is it exhilarating ?
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And humans.
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Yup. We wouldn’t have been able to eradicate as effectively it if that was the case. For example, bubonic plague still exists and still causes problems in the developed world.
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Erm… I feel as if you have cleverly destroyed my argument, except I have no idea what that phrase means, and I wasn’t advocating any position at all.
Since I was unclear, let me be more explicit. I think there could be a valid argument about eradicating a species, such as Plasmodium, but there has been little rigorous thought on the subject. As a result, our emotional attachment to some creatures at the expense of others distorts the conversation.
Is this the bottom?
Humans are emotional animals. Someone can pretend that emotions don’t influence their decisions, but they’d be lying. An animal’s (and I use the word very broadly) emotional appeal to human’s is always going to influence its long-term prospects. But so will the risk it poses to humans, its usefulness to human activities, and the appeal its habitat and food sources pose to humans for a wide range of reasons.
To paraphrase your initial question, what would have been the long-term prospects of baby kittens if their presence caused anaphylactic shock in 5% of the human population? 20%?
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Go, listen to the rest of it. It gets better. There is a use for vampire bats - there is an anti-coagulant property to their saliva, But that’s not the real point: the people who work with them say bats should be kept even if we didn’t have a use for them, because they are neat.
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If a headline ends with a questionmark.
The answer is always NO.
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Someone inform these guys:
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