Also, whatever happened to hating on PETA for valuing animals above people? Isn't this the same thing?

I'm not saying poaching isn't bad! I'm saying that celebrating the death of a person who was killing animals, not people, is never good. I don't mourn the death of cattle. Being rare doesn't elevate an elephant to the status of a person.

Frankly, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

poachers = human beings.

Yay for Western privilege and the devaluing of human life! Whatever happened to fines and prison sentences? Oh, and better options in the first damn place.

Ballsy.

When I was tiny and stupid, and I wanted to rule the world, one of my plans was to force archaeologists to do just this.

So yeah.

NO JOHNNY! He loses! The end of Battlestar Galactica was a LIE!!!
>=[

I can't wait for Neolithic Park.

I don't really get keeping reptiles. I mean they are totally awesome and I was a huge fan, especially, of cobras when I was a kid, but like... put them in a tank and they just sit there. Ooooh, exciting!

@Felix, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that they don't eat the lions and rhinos. They sell the parts to people who pay top dollar for them, often leaving very edible or useful parts behind for the vultures.

They use the money unscrupulous Westerners/Asian pharmacists pay them to feed their families.

While I'm not fond of poaching in the least, and really do love animals (vegetarian and everything) I can't say I'm heartened to hear a person was killed by wildlife. Poachers are often very poor. It's a career choice of desperation that would probably go away if the countries where it happens could provide better options for their citizens.

I haven't got a lot of sympathy for him, but I don't think it's a crime one could reasonably consider worthy of the death penalty. Unless you think animals are >/= humans. I certainly don't.

I'm sure there are some people who are in it for the thrill, but most people would prefer something that didn't include close encounters with hippos.

I don't know. A world record of 51? Are they big chilis? Maybe they still upset her stomach at some point, but that seems like a low record if she has no sensitivity to them.

Still, though. She's hard. Real hard.

Samantha, who exactly?

DavahDee beat me to it.

I bet those people were pretty sad when Alfie didn't come back.

Heck, I have to fight the urge to take it personally when I drop something on my foot or break off a nail past the wick doing dishes. Human beings are hard wired to detect agency -- even where there is none (better to be the one that runs away when the wind rustles the grass than the one that knows it could be the wind, but is wrong). Imagine how easy it would be for people who didn't even know the world was round or why there were seasons to just assume that there were forces beyond their comprehension controlling it all. Once you start believing that, and that you have a special place among it all (because we are also very narcissistic and prone to confirmation bias) the idea that you can appease those forces through abstract rituals doesn't seem so strange.

I don't think they were instructions so much as an attempt at "sympathetic magic." Hunters, not "warriors" ilandrah, learn better if they go out with experienced hunters and watch them hunt. There isn't really any need for instructions that are placed deep within dark, often dangerously inaccessible caverns, where cro-magnon was known not to live.

They may not have been religious drawings, but they were very likely part of important rituals, where the hunters drew what they wanted to happen, hoping that it would.

I'm all for not assuming ancient peoples were more superstitious than they were, but think for just a moment about what life was like for them. It was cruel, brief, and completely arbitrary. They had no idea why it sometimes rained so much that it flooded, and at other times so little that all of their resources dried up and the animals died. They developed complicated rituals to cope with a universe that seemed inscrutable to them, and projecting onto it an agency it didn't have.

Just like that hawk that raided our birdhouse when I was living with my parents and destroyed all the finch eggs. The finches never did come back to our birdhouse. Hawk was just doing what hawks do, but it was still very sad for us.