this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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submitted 21 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 18 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

OK, I think this is an incredibly stupid argument.

From the ethical perspective of anti-meat, hunting animals is so much better. They get to live natural lives, and they die in a similar manner to they do in nature (maybe a little faster, which is good).

From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people don't like to be attacked by wild animals. It also doesn't consume many resources, as they're just living their lives in nature.

I don't think there's any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. That's fine, and you can just not do it. I've never hunted in my life, and I suspect I never will. It's not really something I want to do. I can't construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you can't either. If you can, give it a shot, and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors. Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they aren't hunted by humans.

[–] Aarkon@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Just because something happens on its own in nature doesn’t mean it’s a good thing per se - for instance, I prefer the warmth of my heated house over the "natural" cold temperatures of the winter months. That’s the famous "appeal to nature" fallacy right there.

Also, like others already pointed out, hunting deer is only necessary because we eradicated most of their natural predators. Making the case for hunting today in order to fix a problem hunting created in the past feels oddly circular to me.

[–] qaeta@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 hours ago

I mean, kinda yes, kinda no. We generally weren't hunting predators primarily for meat, but for community safety. The meat was a byproduct of not wanting a bear or something to decide our children would make for a tasty snack.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

An appeal to nature is only wrong if it's saying something is good because it happens in nature. I don't believe I did so, except maybe saying it's ethically better for them to live in nature than in slaughter houses. I'd love to see an argument in favor of horrible large-scale animal raising though. That'd be interesting.

It being evolutionarily necessary isn't an appeal to nature. It's just stating a fact. It isn't a judgment. It's just a statement that overpopulation causes massive issues, and prey animals evolve to have tons of children because they were hunted (by other animals than humans) . Without hunting of some kind, their populations balloon out of control.

It's not circular, because it needs to be done. If it isn't done we have massive problems. It doesn't depend on any other logic. Sure, the issue was created, in part, by hunting also (a lot just because predators won't live near population centers though), but the argument that it needs to be done isn't dependent on you agreeing with killing predators.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I have a half assed argument against hunting, and it's mostly my being a picky ass. Most of the time, the game around here, you get better meat from the store. So people just let it sit in their freezer and it ends up going to waste. Which reminds me, I have some moose ass in my freezer I gotta eat.

[–] Senal@programming.dev 9 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Crazy ape comment aside (i'd put it closer to apes with delusions of grandeur but that's just me), not shooting guns and allowing hunting aren't mutually exclusive.

Especially given all the hunting that happened pre-gun.

I don't know if it's on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 8 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Sure, you can hunt without guns. I don't really see an argument for not using them though, as long as there's no lead. What's really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever? I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms. If you can ban hunting with firearms, you can also just ban using lead ammo, so I don't see how banning them is the best option in general.

I didn't make any proposals in my above comment. It's entirely statements of observations. I don't know what you mean by saying you don't see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isn't negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?