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Albinism an advantage!

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sussexecology View Drop Down
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    Posted: 02 Mar 2012 at 9:54pm

I know that I haven't been adding to this thread as much as Richard and Gemma but  have been reading with interest everybody's views. It has been an interesting discussion for sure, and has raised some valuable points.

I think it is too easy to be misinterpret posts on a forum like this and text messages too..... that is right for sure. That is the problem with modern technology; same applies to emails.

I haven't noticed any tempers being raised here, and hope that i haven't raised mine on here either. If it was raised, it certainly wasn't intended to be that way.

Sorry to hear Ben on how you feel. Thanks for the pics though and for an interesting debate.

bye for now.
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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2012 at 10:29pm
Respond away Ben, I have absolutely no further interest in your 'debate' so don't let me get in your way.
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Liz Heard View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Liz Heard Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2012 at 10:11pm


happy herping 2012.

ben

Edited by ben rigsby - 14 Oct 2012 at 1:44pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2012 at 8:09pm
I haven't seen any tempers raised, from where I'm sitting Ben it looks like you wanted to stir things up and it is only you who has any sort of problem with this debate.

I'm interested in your use of the term anthropomorphism also. Perhaps we should steer that way if it is your opinion that we are all too emotional to take on your own particular point of view. I have no problem admitting that I am very emotional about wildlife and the injustice it faces due to our development as a species I certainly don't feel a lesser person for it. I don't actually see much sophistication in any of you arguments on here really, in fact you are extremely predictable.

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Richard2 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Richard2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Feb 2012 at 9:53pm
Ben,
 
You haven't offended me at all. Why would you? I love debate, as you've probably gathered, and you haven't been rude or ad hominem.
 
I am interested in a lot of the questions raised by this exchange, and not all of them apply only to badgers. Some apply to reptiles and amphibians as well, so the discussion isn't out of place in a herp forum. I'd still like to know why you thought I was anthropomorphising and sentimentalising; I really would. I'm interested in ways of thinking about animals that move beyond some of the old polarities.
 
What about this question of anthropomorphism, for example? My assumption is that anthropomorphism, and its partner, theriomorphism, cannot and should not be banished from our relationship with animals. That would be like trying to expel the principle of identifying with others from our relations with other people. Identification and empathy are two of our most important and natural ways of being with each other. But they need to be tempered by alternative ways of seeing. The assumption that other people are like us is necessary, but it has its dangers: chiefly the danger that we will refuse to acknowledge and respect the strangeness and otherness of the people we meet. We need identification, and we need rational distance. Either, on its own, is insufficient and dangerous.
 
I think this is also true of our relations with animals. Anthropomorphism is an indispensable part of the way we live with them. The alternative to it is to hold ourselves aloof and detached, and in doing that we would do violence to our own impulses and perceptions. But other kinds of knowledge, coming from rationality, are always needed to temper and correct anthropomorphism, and be in dialogue with it. Thinking rationally, it is a mistake, for example, to interpret the shape of an animal's face as a smiling or sad look, but what do we do to ourselves if we try to root out these responses from our perceptual life? 
 
Similarly, I'm puzzled (not offended!) by the way you referred to my 'seemingly emotional' responses. Of course they have an emotional element. Show me a response to anything that doesn't. Do you think your
responses are unemotional, and would you want them to be? We don't want to be emotionless, do we? Emotion can be distanced and criticised, but the claim to have transcended it seems to me a dangerous thing. 
 
The enthusiasm for reptiles - the love of seeing them in the wild - that brings us to this forum is an emotional thing.
 
Richard
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Liz Heard Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Feb 2012 at 8:42pm


welcome Madfossa.
your tragi-comic anecdote belongs in a book! LOL! thanks for sharing it






Edited by ben rigsby - 14 Oct 2012 at 1:43pm
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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Feb 2012 at 11:07am
I have to say Ben I rather think 'sniping' is a little strong as were your assumptions regarding Richard's views.

It is simply pragmatic to consider first if a method will work before employing it on a large scale. The long term effectiveness of culling is in doubt.

You say farming can't wait. Well that is is exactly why in my opinion that the government favours appeasing farming with this particular solution whether or not it is a well thought out one.

Why do I have to have an opinion on what should be done? Why can't I have the opinion that nothing should be done and that farmers in infected areas should just be left to go bankrupt? Plenty of farmers have gone bankrupt elsewhere for political/economic reasons and most I know these days are either giving up or diversifying.

What we are looking at is a 'quick fix' to help unprofitable farming - both unnecessary and unlikely to be effective in the long term. My view is until that is addressed one doesn't even need to get into the deeper moral issues Richard has put across. Though I'm happy to state my views are inline with his. And no I'm not a vegetarian, animal rights activist or a tree hugger. I am just someone who thinks in this day and age where our progress as a species has already led to huge pressures on, and local extinctions of wildlife, I cannot and will not support the organised culling of any species, particularly when it is not even proven to be effective..



Perhaps it also worth noting that if full-scale culling does take place it will in itself be economic suicide for the farming community. It has always been very easy for pressure groups to influence the public and get them to vote with their feet when food production harms wildlife. Just take a look at Dolphin friendly tuna as an example. I for one would support a boycott of meat produced in areas where Badgers were culled in order to produce it.

Reading back through and I might by wrong, but it rather reads that your view is that anyone who eats meat should support its production regardless of impact or how marginal that production is. That is not a sophisticated argument nor one that stands up to scrutiny regarding past consumer choices.

I drive a car and therefore accept that there is an environmental impact, it doesn't however mean that I would then argue it is OK to poor used engine oil down a drain as it is just a consequence of owning a car.

It is an argument regarding our responsibility to the environment and other species and one that I believe will see the public making the long term decisions.


Edited by GemmaJF - 26 Feb 2012 at 9:40pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Richard2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Feb 2012 at 1:15am
Ben:
 
"regarding your point about human affection of wildlife, naturally i consider myself a lover too or i wouldnt be an avid amateur naturalist and forum member.
but i try to remember (as Gemma commented on the forum somewhere a while back) that we are part of nature and not aside from it. i endeavour to keep any anthropomorphic and sentimental notions in check.
i feel no inner conflict between loving animals yet controlling them where necessary.

are you a vegetarian or a vegan by any chance?"
 
 
These terms are surprising. Anthropomorphic? Why do you raise that question? Am I projecting human qualities onto badgers? How so?
 
Sentimental? What do you mean by this? It usually means, I take it, that one is allowing feelings of sympathy or wishful thinking to distort one's sense of reality. How am I doing that?
 
I don't understand these accusations. And, no, I'm not a vegan or vegetarian. Perhaps, in consistency, I should be. My position, I suppose, is that it's all right to eat meat if the animals have led a life resembling a natural or wild life reasonably closely, so that human consumption is analogous to the actions of any other predator that kills animals but doesn't transform their evolved lives. This position is a bit weak when it comes to farmed animals, admittedly; for me the question is whether their conditions of life enable them - largely - to fulfil their natural behaviour. To put it more simply, I try hard to avoid factory-farmed meat, but do eat meat produced by organic farms and farms that, as far as I know, treat their animals well. You did ask.
Surely we are both part of nature and aside from it, in that we remain subject to natural evolved dispositions and ecological forces but have developed a capacity for self-conscious moral evaluation and technological power over our environment that distinguishes us from all the other natural creatures we have encountered so far. This gives us special responsibilities without removing us from nature.
 
Richard
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Madfossa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 11:33pm

Albino badger

As i said before i used to help out with a badger group, we were told of a recent sighting (late 1980s)
of an albino badger, the 1st recorded in Buckinghamshire. Needless to say the core members of the badger group were very excited and plans were afoot to try and watch it. 
As it happened we had a group meeting that month and we all turned up waiting to hear news of our rare albino badger, had anybody seen it?
Unfortunately one of our members on the way to the meeting had seen it crossing the road in front of his/her car and had hit it, it was then taken to a local museum and placed in a freezer, where we all could see it Unhappy,
Tragically beautifully and quite funny
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Madfossa View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Madfossa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Feb 2012 at 11:23pm
Evening all.

I am quite new to this forum but felt i had join in with this emotive but scientific debate.

Firstly the idea of a cull is akin to the old saying :Do you build a decent fence at the top of a cliff or a hospital at the bottom. Surely prevention is better than cure in the long run, i'm sure you would agree with that Ben.

Farm animal husbandry, transportation of cattle have to be looked at, as stress is a known contributor to bTb. Farmers must also look to themselves as was recently discovered,when Welsh? farmers  were falsifying records in order to move cattle and these are just the ones that have been caught.
I also read somewhere that calves under a certain age (28 days??)were exempt from testing before moving.
Going back to animal husbandry again surely if Farmers want to increase their yields/profits they should look at the amount of cattle killed each year because of lameness, mastitis and infertility. i believe that accounts for about 10 times the amount slaughtered for bTb, but there is probably no compensation paid for that. 

The possum issue in Australia and New zealand is always posted up as a great advocated of culling and eradication of bTb, but unfortunately the possum is not endemic to either country and is seen as removing a non native species as well.

I thought all the bTb cattle slaughtered entered our food chain any way, they just have the lesions removed.
Vaccination not eradication of badgers and cattle is the way to go, but then that would remove the compensation cash cow for the farmers???
I did work for a local badger group in the past so i admit i like badgers and it will be mostly people like you and me and members of the public that will try and disrupt the trial cull not just the Animal rights movement.
 If anything i have said is wrong (apart from spelling and punctuation) please correct me, i like to learn.
If the science backed the cull to eliminate bTb then i would sadly agree with it..but thats never going to happen is it?LOL
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