Simply too depressing

Well, ain't our fault most humans aren't bright enough to comprehend this stuff.

I'd elaborate on my dislike of most of the species, but I don't feel like sounding like a friggin' Debbie Downer.
 
I agree. Tha majority of the US doesn't understand that the Earth is a limited supply. They think that it will always be there and nature is ours to do with what we please. If you try to tell people that we were once animals in the food chain they wont believe you. They'll say it's always been like this and always will. If more people would be like the indigenous tribes of Central and South America and the Indo-Pacific islands that care for their wildlife like farmers do their crops this wouldn't be such a disaster. But the bottom line is that we are the top animal on this planet and we keep multiplying at an alarming rate with no natural predators to stop us. IMO we will eventually over populate this planet to the point where we consume every single natural resource to the point of canibalism unless something happens to greatly affect our numbers. All of these conservation acts are just delaying the enevitable. IMO either some cataclismic event will wipe out the majority, we will run out of resources and begin fighting each other, or we will discorver a new technology that will allow us to populate another planet and/or create artifical food. Either way I don't think our way of life will continue but another few houndred years before the strain of our population takes its toll on this planet.
 
Even humans that seem bright enough to understand seem to keep doing things that don't help. In reality, it seems hard to actually justify, based on resource use alone, the keeping of saltwater aquarium in private homes.
 
My general stance on animal-keeping, period, is that one shouldn't do it unless they have reason to believe they can provide the animal a full life, even if their keeping methods are experimental. I would gladly keep a captive-bred cuttlefish if I had the money and the resources, but I put the animal's quality of life before my wants in this instance.

I have strong objections to zoos and aquaria as a general institution unless their animals are captive-bred or endangered in the wild, in which case, zoos are important for the health and welfare of these captive-bred animals and for the conservation and continuous reintroduction of animals. Their original legacy is a tragic one and the modern institution seems partially to exist to deal with the needs of the continuing captive-bred populations.

I think it is a good idea to keep unendangered animal populations out of zoos and aquaria, to cut the captive-bred populations of these animals to a token minimal supply for the sake of education by neutering or sex-separating existing animals, and to focus zoos and aquaria mostly around the keeping and conservation of animal species who need intervention to survive.

The only other instance in which I think keeping a wild-caught animal is acceptable is for research purposes, and in fact I want to discuss that in TONMOCON's ethics panel, Thales.
 
We can all agree this is a complicated problem which requires that greedy folk out to make a buck be stopped in their tracks.

Let's be honest: The animal suppliers? Most of them? They got into the business for the money. Only a handful have more than nominal knowledge of what they stock. I'm not even sure of how ethical folks such as Tom's Caribbean are, and they sound like they've got their heads screwed on compared to much of their competition. The animal trade is alive and well, and this is a bad thing.

And half the problem with the ocean is unregulated resource-gouging and the results of use of those resources. Combine that with the fact that the providers of these resources often are behind campaigns to spread misinformation, in a quasi-sociopathic way. Such poor foresight they have - they'd gamble on humanity's entire future for a quick buck that they'd lose soon enough anyway. I have a bizarre mental picture of encountering one of the Koch brothers destitute on the street begging for money and perhaps giving him a 20-dollar bill for food but only after a harsh lecture.

Unfortunately part of the problem is the dysfunctions in many human minds. Many are impulsive. Many are short-sighted. Many are uneducated. Many are unempathic and uncompassionate (incidentally, this mess is part of what's made my own general sense of empathy and compassion for most of the species go out the window - I'm not going to hide it, I'm a bitter jaded arse when it comes to this stuff). Many are lazy.

I think we can still exploit the resources available to us on Earth, but it must be done sustainably.
 
Personally I feel that keeping animals in general is bad unless they are to be bred and released. If you think about how much we pull out of the wild purely to show case in a glass box its mind blowing. And each animal vertebrate or not that we remove damages the ecosystem just a little morr. Yes we could provide a healthier life for these animals but that is not their purpose. They need to grow, reproduce, and die, and that is how it has to be for life to continue. That being said, I am without a doubt a hypocrit because I know these things and yet continue to collect and keep them and do nothing about it. So like Thales said, its not just the ignorant to blame, we are all at fault.
 
My main concern is food supply as our population continues to grow. My wife read something online the other day that there are more than 6 billion people on earth now and should increase to over 9 billion within 20 years.
 
skywindsurfer;178706 said:
Personally I feel that keeping animals in general is bad unless they are to be bred and released. If you think about how much we pull out of the wild purely to show case in a glass box its mind blowing. And each animal vertebrate or not that we remove damages the ecosystem just a little morr. Yes we could provide a healthier life for these animals but that is not their purpose. They need to grow, reproduce, and die, and that is how it has to be for life to continue. That being said, I am without a doubt a hypocrit because I know these things and yet continue to collect and keep them and do nothing about it. So like Thales said, its not just the ignorant to blame, we are all at fault.

Yeah, I'm not going to lie; it's pretty hypocritical. Why are you getting that squid tank built again? (I ask this not to offend. It is salient to the discussion, though, and I wonder if you've thought about that in the course of this discussion.)

I think that continued research on keeping squid is important for research in general, since squid are valuable research organisms, particularly in neuroscience. If we can refine our use of cephalopods further, we can streamline their use in research to a point where we have a clearer idea of whether it's necessary to, for example, use more threatened species, or if we can use captive-bred animals (and that requires the ability to culture them; unfortunately, there has been no success with small-egg octopuses. Perhaps if we constructed gigantic cylindrical tanks and had institutions such as the recently-defunded NRCC and Aplysia Research Center which are devoted full-time to provision of animals for research purposes and on-site research on these animals, we could reduce the requirement that we take specimens from the wild for research, which I hear was a big topic at EuroCeph .
 
Breeding aquatic animals and releasing them unfortunately doesn't work unless your system shares the same water as the sea. Once an animal is in an aquarium, it starts bacteria cultures that may introduce dangerous bacteria to ecosystems.
 
I used to volunteer at an aquarium. They had a fairly sizeable collection of material made from endangered animals that was confiscated by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

They have warehouses full of these things that are lent out only for educational purposes.

I have held a severed shark fin and the only thing that makes me think, in retrospect, is that some shark went through an interminably painful death for that, and the only justice they got was posthumous confiscation of the fin for use in education to prevent other sharks from suffering the same fate.

I have seen a can of turtle soup and seen visitors say 'Ooh, yummy!', and because I was a volunteer I couldn't harangue them for their stupidity.

I have seen belts and shoes made out of alligator and frog and I couldn't harangue the fashionistas, either.
 
skywindsurfer;178707 said:
My main concern is food supply as our population continues to grow. My wife read something online the other day that there are more than 6 billion people on earth now and should increase to over 9 billion within 20 years.

Cynically, I am not worried about myself as regards this. I am getting sterilized as soon as I finish undergrad, and my family's income is relatively high, so I will get off scot-free on this.

Others aren't so lucky.

Consider, also, the ramifications of food shortages on global intelligence: Poverty and hunger are linked to lower IQ.
 

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