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The “why didn’t you help X animal” comments annoy me to no end

Deleted member 19533

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I actually just googled this and the first thing I found was a couple of guys saving a turtle from being eaten by a shark.

So, I'm wondering if the one that OP is talking about is different or if it's a cut down version that's not the whole thing. It also kinda throws dirt in the face of those saying you couldn't do anything.

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Deleted member 27246

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enempi said:
This idea that intervening is going to totally shatter the natural balance and condemn the shark to death seems hyperbolic to me. Not that I know anything, but it makes it sound like nature is something that exists apart from humans. Isn't a human using their brain and making an emotional decision to intervene also part of the natural order? Like obviously if your small dog was snatched by a coyote you wouldn't just be like "Aw shucks, I wouldn't want to upset nature here. That coyote has to eat too!" Why is it seen as natural for a human to intervene there, but choosing to intervene for a wild animal is upsetting the natural balance of things? It seems to me that humans making arbitrary distinctions and decisions about wild animals is also part of nature.
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Yeah well technically us destroying the entire planet and killing everything on it is also part of nature.
 

Imperfected

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Nov 9, 2017
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Fat4all said:
it's gotta be annoying as fuck eating a turtle
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You gotta really want it.

On the other hand, think about how that turtle's gotta be feeling. Millions of years of evolution with a singular focus on being really hard to eat at the cost of basically any other useful traits, and the shark's just like, "lol k".
 
Rats

Rats

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Oct 25, 2017
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enempi said:
I take your point about domesticated animals, but choosing to intervene and save the dog is something people do bc they have an emotional attachment to their pet, not bc they feel bad it's a domesticated animal. Saying it's a member of your family is just an arbitrary distinction made for the dog. We have an emotional attachment to dogs, so we say it's okay for us to make emotional decisions about them and intervene in a situation like that. I don't see how that's anymore justifiable than someone wanting to save the sea turtle because they thought it was cute. Humans intervening because they decide to for whatever reason is part of nature too.
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Domestic dogs would not even exist if not for the protection they receive from humans. It's a fundamental part of their ecological niche. Quite different from a sea turtle.
 
Joliet Jake

Joliet Jake

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Oct 27, 2017
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I would save the turtle. A.k.a. mildly inconvenience the shark while getting my own arm bit off and the turtle still gets eaten. But the internet would love me for my effort, and it would all be worth it.
 
xxracerxx

xxracerxx

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What bothers me is people reading comments on social media and not expecting them to be garbage.
 
Kotto

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This is the same forum that talk about killing spiders that live their lives? We being selective on what animals get to eat now?
 

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Rats said:
Domestic dogs would not even exist if not for the protection they receive from humans. It's a fundamental part of their ecological niche. Quite different from a sea turtle.
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Sure, but the person intervening to save their dog is not thinking that they have an imperative to intervene because dogs are domesticated. They are just thinking they don't want their dog to get eaten. It's an emotional decision. I don't see how that's more justified than wanting to save the turtle for some other arbitrary emotional reason.
 

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Nepenthe said:
It's ultimately not about the one shark. It's about the fact that a lot of misguided human intervention in nature, bleeding hearts "just trying to help," can at best, lead to the death of animals that become too dependent upon human kindness (see the numerous bears needing to be put down because people couldn't heed the "Do not feed" signs), or result in an upset in populations because people like those in this thread think sharks are bastards who deserve whatever is coming to them. Tons of shark populations are vulnerable and endangered too, and no one is shedding tears for them simply because they're not cute enough. Wildlife advocates emphasize as little contact with wild animals as possible. It's because we fuck shit up, regardless of our intentions. Yes, that deserves shaming.
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Sorry but I don't think wanting to save animals who are about to die deserves any shaming. If you take a big picture view none of this is making any difference. No predator populations are endangered because the humans are saving all their prey. And actually I feel bad for sharks too, what humans do to them is awful and needs to be stopped.
 
Lobster Roll

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Stardragon said:
Sorry but I don't think wanting to save animals who are about to die deserves any shaming. If you take a big picture view none of this is making any difference. No predator populations are endangered because the humans are saving all their prey. And actually I feel bad for sharks too, what humans do them is awful and needs to be stopped.
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Yeah, I agree. What humans do the them is indeed awful. Let's start by not robbing them of their food source.
 

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enempi said:
There seems to be quite a large gap between what I'm describing and what you're describing, but okay.
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I admit that was quite the leap ;)

But I do think human nature should be left out of this, because (even though we are part of nature) we tend to fuck shit up. the thought of the shark as a nasty mean predator is one of the reasons is has been killed of in to oblivion by humans. It breaks my heart to see baby turtles getting snatched up by seagulls, but I am not grabbing my shotgun and start shooting birds over turtle beach.

These last decades humans (or at least some of them) have come to realise that it is best to preserve and guard ecosystems. And part of that is not to interfere when a shark eats a turtle
 
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HandsomeCharles

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Oct 26, 2017
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If it's two wild animals then it's nature, leave it be.

There are only a handful of exceptions to this. One of which is demonstrated here:


In that scenario, the penguins became trapped purely by accident. Their deaths would have had no benefit (No predators, scavengers etc.) and would only have led to the death of their chicks. It was fine to "save" them here. But in pretty much every other situation animals should be left alone and have nature take its course.
 
Aly

Aly

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Oct 27, 2017
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Those people should be laughed at. Leave that shark alone ffs. Now a human bothering an animal or an animal stuck somewhere is a different story.
 
AGoodODST

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Stardragon said:
It's called having empathy for a living creature that's about to die. If you want to call that "irrational sympathy" sure but I think it's weird that it would be shamed.
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Empathy doesn't exist in the natural world. It's okay as a human to feel bad about an animal getting scranned. It's not okay to want to interfere and apply your human emotions to world where they aren't applicable. In this situation, by saving the turtle you are physically harming the shark and subjecting it to hunger, wasted energy etc.
 
Joe

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Fat4all said:
it's gotta be annoying as fuck eating a turtle
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Apparently, the Galapagos Tortoise is so fucking tasty, that when people in England would send ships away to bring them back, the journeys would always fail because the sailors would eat all the tortoises before they returned. Darwin had trouble doing some of his work on evolution after returning to England because the crew of the Beagle ate them all. Sometimes, ships would go back for seconds to restock for the original purpose, then eat all those, too. So probably worth dealing with the shell.
 
Fall Damage

Fall Damage

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Not all sea turtles are herbivores. I wonder how many jellies and crab lives were saved by that shark having its meal.
 

Imperfected

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Stardragon said:
This just happens to be the situation people are talking about, a shark and a turtle. If I saw any animal in danger of being killed I would feel bad for it, there's nothing "selective" about it
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She's saying there are animals dying right now and you're doing nothing about it. You do not actively go out and seek animals in danger to help them, you're perfectly content to know this is happening and do nothing about it. Why?

Basically: there are no ethics involved in the decision you are making, it's purely an appeal to emotion.
 
Nepenthe

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Stardragon said:
This just happens to be the situation people are talking about, a shark and a turtle. If I saw any animal in danger of being killed I would want to help it, there's nothing "selective" about it
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Wanting to help is another matter. Would you actually intervene? And to what extent? Because again, the predator has to go off and kill something else to eat. What about that prey animal it finds outside of your purview? Why doesn't it deserve help? Should humanity do its best to interfere with all instances of predation so absolutely nothing has to die in a barbaric manner?
 

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This is something that natural history documentary makers come across throughout their careers and normally they have a non interference policy, but in the filming of Dynasties they did indeed interfere and it resulted in a positive outcome. Some choice quotes by those involved:

The penguins at the centre of Sunday's episode of Dynasties had either blown or tumbled into a gully in a storm and were unable to to get out. In what BBC Earth described as an "unprecedented move", the crew dug a shallow ramp so some of the penguins would be able to use it to save themselves.

Veteran wildlife cameraman Doug Allan, whose work has been lauded by Attenborough, described the convention of not interfering as a "cardinal rule". He said: "If [for example] you're watching a predator and prey relationship, the key thing is your presence must not influence the outcome."

But Allan said he saw no problem with the film crew's intervention. "Interfering or not is a decision based on what you're seeing at the time. To interfere on a predation event is definitely wrong but, in this situation, they didn't spook the penguins. All they did was create an escape route for them," he said. Allan explained it would have been a far more stressful situation for the penguins had the film crew decided to pick them up and move them.

He added: "I certainly think, in that case, what they did was entirely justifiable and entirely understandable. I would have done the same thing in their situation."

Mike Gunton, the executive producer of the series, also defended the crew's decision to help the penguins. He told Radio 4's Today programme: "In the 30 years I've been doing this, it's one of the very few occasions when we've ever done anything like this because it's a very unusual situation. Normally, you don't interfere, you can't interfere, or you wouldn't interfere because of all sorts of consequences.

"One, it would be very dangerous to do often for both you and the animal. Also, you'll probably be changing the dynamics of the natural system or you might be depriving something of its food. But, in this particular situation, none of those things applied."

While it has previously been reported that Attenborough had opposed the move, saying that "tragedy is a part of life", Gunton said that the presenter had told him he also would have rescued the penguins.

www.theguardian.com

Top film-makers back penguin intervention on Attenborough show

Wildlife documentary experts defend crew’s decision to help trapped birds
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Sharks eat to survive (unlike non-vegan humans who pay to slaughter animals for taste pleasure) and I don't see a compelling argument why a turtle's life is more important than a shark's.
 
BringBackSonics

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Apathy said:
Animals doing animal stuff to other animals is normal and doesn't need our intervention.

Now if an animal is getting mistreated by a human, then they definitely should have intervened
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I saw a guy post a video of a hawk eating a cat, and he was basically saying, hawks gotta eat as well. No one complains when their cat murders thousands of birds, but one gets eaten by a bigger bird and it's a problem.
 
Pandaman

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If the shark doesn't eat the turtle it either starves or eats something else. In the wise words of that lizard from Ferngully, 'If I'm going to eat somebody, it might as well be you'
 

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AGoodODST said:
Empathy doesn't exist in the natural world. It's okay as a human to feel bad about an animal getting scranned. It's not okay to want to interfere and apply your human emotions to world where they aren't applicable. In this situation, by saving the turtle you are physically harming the shark and subjecting it to hunger, wasted energy etc.
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But you're saving the turtle from being killed. One of the animals is just in more immediate danger than the other so it makes sense that people's attention might go to that one and they'd want to save it without thinking in the moment of the long term affects to the shark.

And that's the other thing, the long term affects to the shark wouldn't be very drastic. It would miss one meal but would surely find others. It would be different if sharks were endangered because humans were saving all their food but that isn't the case.
 
MrCibb

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It's natural to feel bad for the prey in situations like that but people need to keep their emotions in check. And attacking someone for resisting that emotional urge is just stupid, just ignore cunts like that. That shark isn't the "bad guy". If you stop it feeding it'll either go eat something else, or it could potentially die if it's starving and worked hard for that meal.
 
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