Do some lives matter more than others?

I recently read that wild boar populations are destroying crops Who Can Stop These Adorable Pigs? It's a war against wild pigs and we're losing and that the best ways to kill them are poisoning; though this will also kill other wildlife, or inventing some kind of contraception for them.

Wild animals are also accused of spreading disease, which of course they don’t. In the UK we hate rats because we’ve been brainwashed by a cock and bull story that they caused a plague.

The Black Death (or the fear of it) killed 50% of the population (or perhaps no-one died at all);

In other countries rats don’t seem to cause disease and are not so abhorred; though just about everybody uses them in experiments.

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It reminded me of the millions of wolves, wild horses, elephants (>40,000; thanks Alan Savory), billions of bison and indigenous human populations who have been slaughtered to make way for roads, trains, towns, cities, crops, fishing or pasture for animals enslaved to humans.

Wild animals (and domesticated, farmed animals) have just the same rights to roam the earth and sea as we do.

We are animals who are very closely related to wild boar and share common ancestors. All lives are born with dignity, regardless of shape, colour, manual dexterity or IQ. Freedom is essential to that dignity. No one can own an individual of the same, nor a different species, nor do they have the right to do what they like to them.

All of us humans have our version of how armageddon will happen; 5G, vaccines, the burden on society of obesity, dementia and autism, economic collapse, climate change, dead oceans, pollution, containment in cities.

The apocalypse (and some) has already arrived for indigenous peoples and all other animals; apart from our pets; mostly wolves bred in our own image into dogs, some of which find it hard to breathe or have back issues, and neutered cats who allow us to be their bitches.

The Anthropocene age is said to have begun in the 1950s and has affected the Amazon rainforest.

When I’m quiet and still I can smell the scorched earth and hear the sighs and squeals of millions of sows and piglets in thousands of factory farms.

And I can hear the sound of billions of cows crying for their precious, eagerly awaited babies; who are then fed though plastic tubes while we steal her milk.

We wouldn’t dream of milking a woman and as adults drinking her milk, which would be more species appropriate, yet we are happy to do it to a cow. A mother’s milk contains growth factors specifically for her newborn, there is a two way communication between mother and baby, as well as pus cells from her udders and homeostatic factors produced by the mastitis and inflammation that the physical and emotional stresses of losing her beloved baby and mechanically sucking out milk from her body causes. These factors may cause the phlegm, asthma, eczema and breast and prostate cancers seen in humans consuming it. ‘Dairy’ is icky and gross in every way.

Humans, like me, make a lot of noise; chattering and twittering away on the interweb; what does the data show? who said what? what should we do about it all?

It’s time now to listen.

🐒