Photosynthetic Animals

[Raiden]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

Is it even possible to be too humane? Isn't that a contradiction in itself?

I mean that if humane behaviour becomes detrimental to life, then can it even be considered humane anymore?

Yes, it is possible.

But once you cross the line, it ceases to be humane and it just becomes irrational behavior based on feelings.

For example, I feed my treefrogs and my tarantulas crickets, mealworms, waxworms, and other insects, alive. For the smaller ones, sometimes I have to physically disbale the insect so that they can eat it more easily. This could be considered inhumane, but the insect would have died anyway, and it isn't dying for no reason; another animal is hungry and will only accept live prey as food.

I spend a lot of time on youtube looking up videos of other people's cool lizards, snakes, frogs, spiders, etc. and I run into idiots all the time who squeal when an Arowana eats a live fish, or when an L. parahybana tarantula eats a live mouse; they post tons of negative comments and generally make the person who is feeding the animal in question look like a demon. That is when you cross the line; every second, millions of living things are brutally and viciously murdered by other animals in search of food. Nobody accosts them for their meal when Lions snap a gazelle's neck, nobody yells when a peripatus worm eats its prey alive, and nobody protests when a Python squeezes the life out of a baby jungle boar. Predation is a natural occurrence, and small predatory animals in captivity need to eat something, but when people become "humaniacs", they no longer think of these things with reason, and so if they take action, they cause more harm than good.

If you want a great example, look up PETA on wikipedia. Those people are nutjobs.