Cecil the lion's killing tells us a lot about the wrongs of animal rights activists
We claim to love animals like Cecil the lion, while ignoring the plights of thousands of other species - not least our own
Last photograph of Cecil with his pack friend Jericho (standing) a month before he was killed Photo: Brent Stapelkamp
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By
Bryony Gordon
4:06PM BST 31 Jul 2015
Animal lovers are a peculiar lot, aren’t they? Actually, no, that’s not right. People who love animals are not peculiar. Very few of us don’t love animals. We might be scared of some of them – spiders, snakes, sharks, that sort of thing – but by and large we respect and admire them and don’t begrudge their right to an existence.
No: loving animals is perfectly normal; it is not peculiar at all. But people who feel the need to announce that they are animal lovers, in
Twitter bios and on
Facebook pages and dating profiles? Well they are a different kettle of fish entirely.
When someone tells you that they are an animal lover, I find that what they actually mean is: “I care a lot. I mean,
a lot. Way more than you. I am full of empathy and compassion and I have ascended to a higher plane through my love of animals.” At the nub of their love for animals is a fundamental mistrust of humans.
This week, I was reminded of my no doubt hugely unpopular theory when
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) released a statement about
the appalling killing in Zimbabwe of Cecil the lion by Walter Palmer.
Walter Palmer, pictured with a leopard and a rhino, shot dead Cecil the lion (Photo: AP)
“Hunting is a coward’s pastime,” said the organisation’s president Ingrid Newkirk. “If, as has been reported, the dentist and his guides
lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property, because shooting him in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged and, preferably, hanged.”
Peta has long used deliberately incendiary tactics to hammer home their point – in 2011, after a spear fisher was bitten by a shark, they released a poster of someone being eaten by one with the slogan
“Payback is hell. Go vegan” – but this seemed particularly crass. In a country where human rights abuses are part of everyday life and are rarely punished (or tweeted about, for that matter), Peta’s statement showed an unbelievable lack of the compassion self-proclaimed animal lovers always profess to have.
Meanwhile, back in Minnesota, outside Palmer’s dentistry practice, a poster that read “Be Kind to Animals” sat side by side with one that suggested the hunter should “Rot In Hell”.
Humans, I thought: showing animals how to behave like animals since the dawn of time.
I am not for a moment excusing what Palmer did. I find trophy hunting grotesque, and I hope that Cecil’s death will at the very least bring the practice to an end. But I also think that this whole sorry episode shows us how mixed up we are about animals, what hypocrites us humans are (and, as a meat eater, I happily include myself in that sweeping generalisation). Why are Americans outraged at the shooting of a lion, but not
the routine gunning down of their own people? Why are we all horrified by Cecil, but not the dozens of other lions hunted around Africa each year?
Is it because Cecil was given a name and thus anthropomorphised? A post this week on thinkprogress.org tried to make sense of it all. They spoke to Ernest Small, a doctor with the Canadian government who specialises in biodiversity. He explained that lions are known as “charismatic megafauna… [these animals] are usually at least the size of a large dog, and generally larger than a man. Here we are, as humans, getting very excited about charismatic animals. We never think about all the pain we cause to billions of sentient creatures.”
So just over 20 million of us go to
Seaworld each year to watch killer whales perform, despite it being well known that many of the orcas are traumatised by being in captivity.
We abhor the presence of horse meat in our supermarkets, but thousands upon thousands of us will happily plough money in to an industry that sees the creatures routinely flogged for the sake of our enjoyment and wallets.
We eat meat, but we are horrified by the slaughter of an innocent lion, and we justify this by telling ourselves there is a world of difference between breeding an animal for food and killing one for pleasure. I’m not entirely sure that distinction cuts much ice with the animals, who end up dead either way.
We find
halal disgusting, seemingly unaware that 94 per cent of the chicken we eat in this country has been intensively farmed. We think foxes should be saved, unless of course we live in a city, in which case they should be destroyed to stop them rummaging through our bins or keeping us awake all night with that awful screeching sound they make as they have sex. One week we are calling for seagulls to be culled, the next for dentists who shoot lions.
We bang on and on about animal rights but are responsible for untold animal wrongs.
So maybe we don’t all love animals. Or maybe we do, just as long as it suits us as humans.