This photo in the
Telegraph by Tom Whetten (Caters News), shows a zebra/lion encounter in the Ngorongoro Conservation area of Tanzania. I'm posting it because it reminds me of a segment in an old nature documentary that is indelibly etched in my memory. Perhaps 20-30 years ago someone documenting lions in ?the Serengeti filmed a chase scene during which some kind of gracile, cervine prey (perhaps a gazelle, I don't remember) lashed out with its rear hooves during a chase, catching the lioness squarely in the jaw. In a subsequent scene she was shown back in her lair with her cubs, but with her fractured jaw hanging askew from her face, and the narrator noted that over the course of the next few weeks she visibly starved and died because she was unable to chew.
I understand that the photography and film teams cannot interfere in the actions of the animals they are documenting, but in the case of the lioness dying a prolonged and painful death, withholding care or a quick death is unethical and unworthy. Since the photographers were in the area for weeks, long enough to document the lioness's slow decline and death, why couldn't they have notified a game warden or at least a local hunter who could have put here out of her misery?
ReplyDeleteAnd presumably her cubs died as well, since she was incapable of providing them with food and survival skills.
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
ReplyDelete— Richard Dawkins (River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life)
Why is the male lion out there hunting zebras? They almost never find reason to do anything other than sleep and fight other male lions...
ReplyDeleteMaraK: This lion is probably a nomad: prideless male lions that travel alone or in pairs and fend for themselves. They can't all be lucky with the ladies :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome quote, Nolandda. As the Buddha said, life is suffering.
ReplyDeleteI remember that documentary. I saw it when I was about five years old and it's stayed with me ever since.
ReplyDelete