animal torture for pleasure

[Michael Gochfeld]

I've tried hard to keep out of this senseless ongoing rhetoric, but friends
Chris and Norbert, I can't agree with you.
Most of the anti-collecting people are NOT animal rights activists (nor even
particularly interested in animal rights per se).   All perspectives are
represented among the watchers and there are probably butterfly collectors who
don't believe that warm fuzzy creatures should be experimented on.

Some watchers vehemently object to collecting and others moderately and others
not at all and some watchers like me collect for particular reasons
(intellectual?).
But there is no anti-collecting monolith.

AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, virtually none of the animal rights activists give a hoot
about invertebrates. Try to interest PETA or PAWS people in butterfly rights. Or
take a wounded butterfly to a wildlife rehab center.

The notion that this is a single continuum from right to left or (right to
wrong) is not helpful, anymore than trying to figure out what the U.S. political
spectrum looks like nowadays.

Nor is the anti-collecting sentiment anti-intellectual, anymore than collecting
is purely intellectual.  Aesthetics play a role in both.

Several posts have demonstrated that collectors and watchers co-exist in most
place and respect each others viewpoints and proclivities under most
circumstances.  Watchers can examine mounted specimens with awe and appreciation
even though they might never want to collect or mount a specimen.  And they can
appreciate the ability to examine subtleties of species differences (or
variation) closeup, without ever perfecting the swing and twist.

And there exists also some resentment about the fact that many collectors
unabashedly identify "sale and trade" as interests in the LEP SOC directory.

Mike Gochfeld



"Chris J. Durden" wrote:

> Norbert is quite right about this issue. These anti-collecting people are
> "animal-rights activists". In other branches of science, animal-rights
> activist supporters have taken the law into their own hands and perpetrated
> acts of terrorism in the name of animal rights. Usually they do not blow up
> labs, but they do destroy equipment (as Leroy knows), and they do release
> captive animals as my daughter discovered when she employed one to assist
> her in her Masters research.
>     We may laugh at the anti-intellectual antics of these animal-rights
> activists when they posture and publicise their agendas. It is no laughing
> matter when they fund slick publicity machines that invade the education
> enterprise, and support plants who are sympathetic to their views, in our
> regulatory agencies.
>     Beware, as the World gets smaller (more people per hectare), it gets
> more and more political and the lunatic fringe becomes uncomfortably large.
> Speak up now, before it is too late.
> ................Chris Durden
>
> At 02:37 PM 1/25/2002 -0800, you wrote:
> >This topic kinda reminds me of that infamous piece of yellow journalism
> >published in Audubon Magazine a few years back by a guy called Williams, if
> >memory serves. He did a great job of villifying butterfly collectors and
> >even went so far as putting us in the same league as the villian in the
> >movie Silence of the Lambs. Ron is very correct. Watch out for those people
> >who seek to impose their views and morals on the rest of us with fanatical
> >determination. Some of them are very slick operators/snake-oil salesmen :-)
>
>
>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>    For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:
>
>    http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl
>


 
 ------------------------------------------------------------ 

   For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:

   http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl