Carl Akeley’s fight to the death with a leopard (1923)
stuffnobodycaresabout.com
stuffnobodycaresabout.com
I suspect Mr. Ackley's encounter was with a young or sick leopard, or perhaps the tale is exaggerated. An experienced adult would have dispatched with him in seconds.
It looks that he sort of agrees with you, except it was a injured leopard and he was the one who injured her earlier. From the story:
> As I looked at her later I came to the conclusion that what had saved me was the first shot I had fired when she went into the bush. It had hit her right hind foot. I think it was this broken foot which threw out the aim of her spring and made her get my arm instead of my throat
I reckon if it was a big one he'd not be remembered... because he would have got eaten.
> That done, the antiseptic was pumped into every one of the innumerable tooth wounds until my arm was so full of the liquid that an injection in one drove it out of another
Isn't antiseptic applied topically not systemically, as they seem to be doing here by injection, and didn't antibiotics get developed later than this? I can't understand what they were injecting him with. Can anyone fill in my gaps, please.
I assume "injection" here is referring to something like a bulb syringe or pipette, neither of which pierce the skin but simply a way to extract and apply a liquid, e.g. antiseptic solution. Because presumably the tooth wounds were so deep, inserting the tip of the syringe into the open wound when applying could be described as injecting, especially in more florid prose.
I am on the leopard's side here. Leopards, and most members of the Felidae (cat) family, are sentient, and we hunted some members of this family to near extinction because of accounts like these. Accounts that glorified the "adventure" of going into their habitats, killing their prey, and then shooting them with gun powder and a metal slug.
This man wasn't a scientist. He was a thrill seeker. One who killed sentient beings for amusement and then donated the carcasses to a museum.
If he was a scientist, quietly observing the fauna, and taking notes, I would have had no objections to him killing the leopard in self defense. Instead, he encroached on a sentient being's habitat + territory with hostile intentions. And was attacked for it. I do not wish him harm, but I feel more for the leopard than I do for him.
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If you doubt that these are animals capable of joy, I'd suggest watching this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWuFoPguAlE
Of course, they're still wild animals and you should stay away, but they are sentient and should be treated with care.
This is a lion being reunited with the guy who bought it from Harrods as a cub. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLHdp_dL5Uk
Its surprising how hormone profiles alter one's perspective on life as aging occurs.
Everyone in that era including scientists killed too many animals imo. Glad he helped get a park going though!
What Akeley did, was more the scientific way.
While I don't condone free kills either, let's not idealize animals.
I wish I could find the article that dispelled myths about animals (where you among other things learn that dolphins and sea otters have rapists amongst their ranks).
Sorry, but no. Leopards are not mindless eating machines that can be treated like evil robots with one intent. They have complex lives think about things, and feel pity, if limited. They are scrappy fighters getting pushed to the brink by human encroachment. They have shard minds and are shrewd when necessary. When they're gone, the world will have lost something seriously majestic--majestic in terms of millions of years of evolution and another branch of the tree of life sawed off. There will be only one reason that leopards go extinct, and that's us. They are consummate hunters, and they'll eat anything because they have to.
> dispelled myths about animals (where you among other things learn that dolphins and sea otters have rapists amongst their ranks).
If anything, the myth is that animals are simple, don't have issues, and don't live complex lives. Squirrel #57 is not the same as squirrel #43. That should make us want to stamp out their existence even less.
However maybe they could be domesticated over long time.
If we take it as a given that animals have no morality, or at least different morality than our own, surely it's incumbent upon us to act accordingly among them.
Incidentally: while backpacking on Isle Royale, which has a robust wolf/moose ecosystem I asked a ranger why the wolves didn't just eat the plentiful, slow, weak humans instead of the moose. The ranger said humans aren't tasty to wolves.
If you look at human history, they have mostly done that by eliminating predatory megafauna. There used to be lions in the Middle East and Europe.
> The ranger said humans aren't tasty to wolves.
I'm pretty sure it's BS. I'd bet more on wolves being afraid of humans (which is a good survival trait! Here in western Europe they have been hunted to extinction).
I saw a YT video where a woman is recording a wolf that didn't see her. When it realize she's there, the wolf is startled and runs away.
Toss a deer leg in the pen and they run for the back fence.
Not all though. Some of the “lower ranked” ones realized what was happening and took the opportunity to grab food they usually would have to wait for.
Some animals attack out of defense as well, as in this case.
> let's not idealize animals
Acknowledging that most animals have consciousness, emotions, language, etc. isn't idealizing them, it's just an accurate observation. This is opposed to treating animals like trophies or non-sentient creatures.
> where you among other things learn that dolphins and sea otters have rapists amongst their ranks
As do humans.
No one said animals are better or more virtuous than humans. OP's point is that it's not OK to go into nature and randomly shoot at animals for fun, entertainment, etc.
Ok, so some I could see (elephants, dolphins, etc), but if it's most I'm gonna need a source on that.
Almost every animal needs to be able to communicate with their own species either through cooperation, competition or finding a mate.
All mammals I know of (and I think by definition) nurse and care for their young. That means there’s some form of communication between the parents and the child.
And for emotions, it’s easy to see in domesticated cats and dogs, as well as wild primates. Fear, jealousy, anger, affection, etc. But it’s also been documented in many other species as well.
Here’s some more info:
https://online.uwa.edu/news/empathy-in-animals/
> We know that fish are conscious and sentient, rats, mice and chickens display empathy and feel not only their own pain but also that of other individuals
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_kind_of_e...
> Even rodents, once thought to be unaffected by emotions and devoid of facial expressions, have been found to “express anguish through narrowed eyes, flattened ears, and swollen cheeks.” They also have facial expressions for pleasure, and they recognize these states in other rats. As for horses, De Waal notes that their faces are “about as expressive as those of the primates.”
I can have pity on a baby, or a tree, and help preserve it, even if it doesn't have the capability to pity or perform a similar task for me.
Except for the gun powder and metal slugs, that “adventure” is the story of humanity’s rise and spread. Humans are native to only a very small part of the world. We became the way we are because humans did go into new habitats, challenged the apex predators, took their prey, and displaced the previous apex predators.
That story of adventure resonates because it has resonated for millennia (consider the myths and paintings and sculptures). That story resonates, because you and I are descendants of people just like that who entered new habitats and outthought, outorganized, and outfought, all the predators that would want to kill them.
So my sympathies are with the man and not the leopard.
It is a very different story when one kills a predator to make a new safe living space for themselves and their family. The person in question had a safe and comfortable place to live and went out of their way to kill a sentient being and then left the area thus secured.
One is about necessity and the other is a blood sport.
Also where does it say that humanity have to spread? I’m sympathetic with people whose current location become undesirable and they have to move to a new place. But “spreading” is not the goal.
Society uses, builds, and works to maintain delusions like this because it helps keep us all from a mad max future. It’s one of those ‘useful to believe’ things most of the time.
But don’t buy it so much you let someone use it against you as a weapon, instead of as a mutual agreement.
One example of this is people living with pet tigers and lions, who behave exactly like domestic sized felines, but of course are bigger than humans so can actually hurt you when wrestling in play, etc. . People kill other people out of fear, a wild animal sort of thing itself.
Anyway, I just have not thought of a counterexample to the assertion that wild animals extend into the realm of things called domestic.
As for us homans, sure, of course we're evolutionarly related to other animals, and are going to exhibit some of the same behaviors.
That's enough for me to root for the wild beast in its natural habitat, against my own kind even, and I don't care about your morality of not harming sentient beings. The ugly bald ape with the bushy beard is a sentient being, too, and I wouldn't mind if the leopard ate his stupid face off.