Why is YouTube (and some other parts of the internet) full of people who think that animals eating each other is immoral?

[WeBuiltThisCityOnSimCity 40]

I just noticed that if you go onto any video on YouTube where animals kill and eat each other, you are bound to see a bunch of commenters condemning the photographers for not helping the animals and saying that those who don't stop animals from eating each others are heartless.  Such videos are full of comments like "you [explicit words] why didn't you help the animal from being eaten I hope you die" and "I hate [predator animal] they're so cruel I hope they go extinct".  I know that online, there will always be people holding various viewpoints, mainstream or not.  That is expected.  However, these days they seem to be in the majority.  If you go onto many videos such comments tend to be the top rated comments.  For example, if you see a video of herons eating ducklings and such comments tend to be the top rated with over 50 thumbs up.  In real life if you ask people the responses are usually just "so cruel but it's nature" but if you do it on some YouTube videos you often get stuff like "who cares if it's nature it's wrong you have no heart" and such comments will also get many thumbs up.  Fact is, I was on Yahoo! the other day and there was someone saying that she deliberately runs over geese with her car because she saw a goose killing a duck, and on some article on Times saying how we should exterminate carnivorous animals.

 

To be clear, animal cruelty is despicable.  I believe that other sentient beings should be respected, and that nobody should go out of their way to hurt another.  Additionally, I believe that if we have to kill animals, that it is wrong for us to subject them to prolonged, inutile torture (that includes humans manipulating animals to use as sentinels to exact cruelty) and we should reduce the amount of pain as much as possible - if not eliminate the pain altogether ("Nature is cruel but we don't have to").  In addition, there is nothing wrong with feeling repulsed by nature being red in tooth and claw.  What I am referring to, however, is how there seems to be a growing number of people, especially on YouTube, that tends to think that human morality must apply to every animal and that humans should interfere with nature to impose our morality upon.  

 

Why is that?

[Easy Bakes 253]

people who comment on you tube videos are mostly idiots?

[Indiana Joe 1,752]

Youtube is riddled with spam and bots. Just like the so-called "comment" sections of many websites and blogs.

Sometimes what happens is an online community will set up an event where they all go together and flood a video or website. That's probably what happened here. Either a troll group, or, hopefully not, radical pacifist vegans, sought out these videos, made the comments, and up voted each other.

Long story short: don't believe what you read on the internet unless the source is verifiable. Much of it isn't even written by live people. It certainly isn't a good place to determine majority opinions ir even trends. Leave that up to Gallup Polls and other trusted sources.

[Drack 616]

because those kind of people are trapped in their basements and never bothered going outside?

 

also helping preys is like pulling down a pillar of the food chain. way to go so-called 'people who care'.

[Alejandro24 575]

Modern life makes some humans more far from a view point of true nature.

Those people who take pictures or video of natural wildlife are only doing their job. They're like journalists at war and/or disaster zones, by taking an extreme of human behavoir circunstances.

The people who says that kind of scenes are heartless and cruel are people that are in a trentch of ignorance, and at this heights of life being ignorant is an option. One of the faces of true nature are heartless and cruel and there is no way to change it.

Now, I would like to see those people trying to survive in a forest or at least in a rural area.

[Huston 5,800]

Well, like everyone's been saying, it's all about ignorance and the fact that these people will literally say anything to make a point; regardless of their being any point to be made, valid or otherwise. It's not really the only thing I've come across on Youtube anyway; people yammering on about senseless conspiracies, personal attacks, and all those other cringe-worthy comments that people come up with on endless expanses of video. Youtube (and various other social sites) are practically a magnet for the stupid. It's becoming more apparent every day.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Nature is all about the survival of the species.  Some animals are prey, some are predators.  Human beings are in the middle being both prey and predator. 

 

There are organizations around that utterly disgust me because they want to change the natural order, PETA being one of them.  Applying ethics to things like survival hunting means they've never heard of Cave Bears.  For acronym definitions I prefer People Eating Tasty Animals.

 

People who make these kinds of comments on U-Tube and other places are clearly over-urbanized who don't know where their hamburger comes from.  Each of them needs an observation trip to the killing floor of the local abattoir.

 

A final observation:

 

If bacon and eggs are on the menu, it demonstrates the difference between commitment and involvement:  The hen is involved;  The pig is committed.

[WeBuiltThisCityOnSimCity 40]

also helping preys is like pulling down a pillar of the food chain. way to go so-called 'people who care'.

 

Well if the prey is endangered due to human activity then there's a reason to save the prey from a predator.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

The food Web is very important and one should try to improve biodiversity as much as possible. This sometimes means that certain species in certain areas should be culled (such as the cute bunnies in Australia) and that predation by most animals should be encouraged. Top predators often behave as keystone species and increase biodiversity by allowing species (often endangered) that are not the primary prey to thrive where other prey animals might out compete them (such as the complex relation between wolves, deer, and other animals in Yellowstone National Park).

--Ocram

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

 

also helping preys is like pulling down a pillar of the food chain. way to go so-called 'people who care'.

 

Well if the prey is endangered due to human activity then there's a reason to save the prey from a predator.

 

Doing that may doom the predator.  The whole ecosystem is interrelated, so unless you are really sure about your actions, you should just watch.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I know about this because my Biology 213 (3rd in the majors series) Final starts in 10 minutes.

--Ocram

[blade2k5 1,523]

Maybe it's because they're full of "you know what" to their necks and the rest in concrete.  Who knows, it's pointless trying to get into the mind of craziness.

[SteveMSim 275]

I do not pay any attention to the comments on YouTube.  They all sound like they were made by 13-year-olds or people with the mentality of 13-year-olds.  Mostly, its trolls who will say anything to get attention.  This is why forums like this are moderated to prevent trolling and such.

 

Also, you can't change the animal kingdom.  There has been predator animals and prey since the first multi-celled animals appeared some 550 million years ago.  

 

One problem that is taking place is the overpopulation of deer and other animals that had been prey to large carnivores such as wolves and mountain lions because humans have hunted them to near extinction.  Such carnivores were hunted because they were attacking livestock, and until as late as the 1960s, the U.S. Government actually had an eradication program in effect for such predators.  Even today, when conservationists want to reintroduce wolves or some other predators to an area, they meet stiff resistance from ranchers and farmers who fear their livestock will be attacked, affecting their livelihoods.  With cattle now going for over $10,000 a head due to high beef prices, that's a lot of revenue lost for each cattle that is attacked.

 

Because large predators have been eliminated from some areas, humans have to step in that role.  Hunters are now needed to control the deer population.  But the radical animal rights types get up in arms whenever such hunts are organized.  And with predators gone, we are now seeing such wildlife such as deer and black bears moving into built-up areas because whatever natural habitats are left are overpopulated.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Generally speaking, a few donkeys in with a cattle herd will keep most medium predators away.  Works for sheep, I see no reason it wouldn't work for cattle except may they don't get along with the donkeys.

 

Nearly all the shepherds around here have at least one donkey in with their flock in the field.

 

All in all, it is a matter of some ecological understanding.  People like La Bardot and her friends at PETA are not helping, only making a lot of noise.