Statement: Predators Kill the Sick and Weak Prey Species

Yesterday I posted a video that showed a woman representative of PETA who wrote a letter to a young girl who had been attacked by a bear. PETA wanted the girl to sympathize with the bear because the girl deserved to be attacked for being a hunter. In that video, the PETA representative made the statement, that we hear on a regular basis, that bears kill only the weak and sickly of their prey species. Do readers fully understand how ridiculous that statement is?

First of all, I believe that for anyone to make such a statement and believe it true, they are placing human traits on animals that just don’t belong. This, of course, has gone on for many years as people have been programmed to think that animals have equal rights with humans, have emotions and feelings like humans and, we know that corporations, like Disney, have made billions of dollars, fabricating human-like animals and forcing them onto our children.

However, if you believe that a large predator (after all, the talking point is that all large predators kill only the sick and weakly of the prey species and that this makes for balanced and healthy ecosystems.) kills only the sick and lame prey, then you must believe that the predator possesses the ability to recognize when the prey they are seeking is in poor shape, diseased, going to die; whatever condition fits into the narrative of those worshiping the predator to justify its protection.

If someone was to tell me that a predator might be able to recognize a badly limping prey species and over the years had learned that that’s an easier catch than a non limping prey member, I might have reason to believe that as a possibility. How else does a large predator recognize “the weak and sickly” of the prey species? Can a mountain lion stare at an elk and recognize that the elk’s lungs and liver are full of Hydatid cysts, and know that elk can’t run so far and so fast because of the cysts. Do they recognize rabies, or Taenia krabbei or Taenia arctos in the muscle tissue of the animal they are about to chase and kill? What constitutes lame, sick, weak?

I think you might be getting my point.

But let’s turn this around a bit. Let’s agree that a large predator possesses a natural ability to recognize the sick and lame (undefined) of the prey species. If so, isn’t this predator just as capable of recognizing a healthy prey species? Isn’t this predator capable of recognizing a pregnant prey species? If we wish to place human traits on animals, then one would have to ask why a predator would want to kill and eat a disease-laced prey species? Yuck! (Human reaction here. Follow along.)

Boots on the ground observations and studies have revealed that wolves, for example, love to kill pregnant elk cows, rip out the fetus and have a favorite feast. Did the wolf recognize the pregnant cow? Or was it a coincidence that the wolf must have noticed a limp in that cow and it was only a bonus that that limping cow elk was with calf?

Also yesterday, I covered much of an article that Dr. Charles Kay had written originally for Muley Crazy magazine. In that article Dr. Kay spoke of how advocates for wolves wanted to have things both ways in the roles that wolves play on our ecosystems; that being that wolves were a “keystone” species but did not have any substantial effect on the population of their prey base. And this, by definition, is impossible.

In much the same way, making claims that predators kill only weak and sick prey is an attempt at dishonestly convincing people that the predator is only smart enough to kill and eat bad food and not capable of picking out a preferred meal. Silly isn’t it? Predators, by definition, “prey” on their food. If you’re a prey species and you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’re a quarter-pounder with cheese to go.