Important update Feb 6th: I am very well aware that several of the comments in this video are factually wrong. As I have explained in the comments below, it is also unimportant in regards to the reason I abhor the killing of dolphins, which is due exclusively to the amount of physical and emotional pain I believe they suffer. In addition, I do not hate the Faeroese, only their practice of killing Pilot Whales (which is a species of dolphin). Same goes for any other people who kill any other living creature that I believe feel a comparable amount of physical and emotional pain.
I am from Denmark, but I am NOT from the Faroe Islands. And quite frankly, with all the places in the world where people crave independence from the nation they belong to, I say, again, that we let the Faroe Islands go. Cancel their membership of Denmark.
Bastards.
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3 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
I couldn't agree more - that is so primitive and barbaric and should be illegal.
ReplyDeleteI had a discussion with a bunch of people on Politiken.dk a few years ago about this very thing. Would you believe some people pulled the tradition-card? "They have been doing this for hundreds of years, so who are we to tell them to stop?"
ReplyDeleteWhat's the counter, again? Slavery? Oppression? Superstition? Discrimination? Flat-Earthism?
Marriage has traditionally been, and should ONLY be, between one man and one woman. Or between one whale and a dozen crazed Faroe Islanders with giant hooks.
ReplyDelete(Didn't know about this bizarre practice till just now... woah, crazy)
I hope you don't draw your conclusions from a poorly made video, that is filled with spelling and factual errors.
ReplyDeleteThose are not dolphins, but pilot whales, they don't suffer, since they die within seconds.
Hey, we got a proponent of the killing for manhood! Great!
ReplyDeleteI don't care about the spilling errors. Do you?
Yes, they are called pilot whales, but... It's a species of dolphin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_whale
They don't suffer, you say... How do you know? How do you know how quickly they die? How do you know they don't suffer in the seconds you say they take to die? How do you know they don't feel immense pain, and fear, anger, and grief while seeing their kin being killed? Are you assuming they are just dumb animals who can't have such feelings?
Looking very much forward to your answer here.
Her har du lige en oversigt over nogle af fejltagelserne i videoen (på engelsk):
ReplyDelete1. Teenagers usually don't participate in the pilot whale killing. Especially not young teenagers, as described in the video.
2. We don't do it to prove our maturity, that would be silly.
3. How many animals can defend themselves when they are raised just to be slaughtered? They never get to see the light of the sun! At least these pilot whales are free until they're slaughtered.
4. I sure would run(or swim) away if a pilot whale would swim towards me! Up to 20 feet long and weighing 3 tons!
5. They get drawn to shore with blunt gaffs by their blowholes, and are not hit with big hooks "over and over again" - that would be even sillier.
6. There is no "loud sound, similar to children's screams."
7. Of course there is compassion from the Faroese. You would also have compassion for the cow, while it would be slaughtered - you just never get to see the cow, only the nice meat containers, ready to cook.
8. It's not a celebration.
9. Not all the people are at the whale killing. After all, the rest of society still has to function.
10. I think men here were "men with rights" before they had ever killed a Pilot whale. And I'm quite sure they were able to think and be aware beforehand, as well.
I recognize there may be factual errors in the video.
ReplyDelete1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 has no bearing on whether the dolphins are treated cruelly.
5. So, just one hit with a big hook, or? Is it guaranteed that they die with a single hit? Even for a first-time... butcher?
7. I don't believe compassion is of course, but I acknowledge there may be some there. Just not enough, by my standards.
RosinuSkurin, did you ever participate? How close to this have you been?
Once ashore the pilot whale is killed by cutting the dorsal area through to the spinal cord with a special whaling knife, a grindaknívur. Given the circumstances during a pilot whale hunt, the whaling knife is considered the safest and most effective equipment with which to kill the whales. Naturally since the whales are killed manually death cannot, by definition, be instantaneous. The length it takes for a whale to die varies between a few seconds to a few minutes, with the average time being 30 seconds.[10]
ReplyDeleteFrom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Faroe_Islands
Sounds like they have time to suffer, doesn't it?
http://www.animalsuffering.com/animal-cruelty.php
ReplyDeleteThis is so much better, isn't it?
The truth is that I'd feel better about eating Faroese whales that lived free than eating a sickly, inbred and overcrowded pig that rolled about in feces for a few months before being given a token 'stun' that may or may not have worked and being butchered perhaps alive and aware.
Oh damn - hinting at the tired old argument that because we treat pigs cruelly, we can't condemn treating other animals cruelly.
ReplyDeleteIt is actually a logical fallacy: "A is not wrong because B is wronger."
But, either way, my argument is that dolphins are, likely, very sentient beings, and that does make killing them in a cruel way worse. I ask people to imagine doing the same to humans vs. doing it to flies. Nobody (sane) cares about the flies. Everybody (sane) cares about the humans. Why? Well, because humans are more sentient (not sure this is the right word) than flies. They suffer more. Evidence does suggest that dolphins are way closer to humans than flies in this respect. Or cows. That does make a big difference, whether they scream or not when butchered.
Someone coming from a nation keeping millions and millions of animals - cows, pigs, chicken, turkeys, sheep etc etc - in very tiny steel boxes, fed with an unatural diet, overloaded with antibiotics, lying in their own shit, never seeing the sun, moon or earth, never eating a meal of proper grass or feeling the wind, being transported miles and miles in the poorest conditions possible, only to be electrocuted and butchered on a steel and concrete floor in a totally industrial and nazilike manner - calling another nation, that has its meat come from animals running free in the mountains and from hunting and killing free animals, that roam the seven seas and live and die with dignity and respect - you call our culture a horrible culture.... I'd say that is pure hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteLike Nazi Germany pointing the finger at Denmark for not being nice to pigeons or something
So, Guy from the Faroes, you want me to denounce the ways the Danes treat their pigs etc. cruelly before I complain that the Faroe Islanders do? Well, as I explained above in a comment, logically that doesn't hold water.
ReplyDeleteBut, I am nevertheless perfectly willing to do so anyway, because I do think the treatment of animals in Denmark is a fucking disgrace.
That good enough for you?
I posted this yesterday, but it didn't get posted, appairently..
ReplyDelete1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 are still corrections to the lies told in the video. In the video, the author doesn't only talk about how the dolhins are treated. And if you read all those lies, you come to think of the Faroese as "so primitive and barbaric" as stated by Morten in his comment on this blogpost.
5. I guess you pretty much answered that yourself. Are you sure that they are awake and suffer all 5 seconds to some minutes? Wouldn't an animal pass out(or something similar) if the spinal cord was cut? I'm not saying it would, neither am I saying it wouldn't. Better leave that to the specialists.
7. If you would have to kill an animal, you would have compassion. But you would have to do it anyway. After you would have done it a couple of times, you'd still have compassion, you'd just not think so much about the compassion. The difference is that You don't have to, you can just skip the whole "compassion" fase, and go directly to the nice little containers with meat ready to put on the pan.
The first time I saw a man getting shot on TV, and blood squirting out, I was horrified. But now that I'm older, and have gotten more used to it, it's not as horrifying (and I'm not saying that it's not horrifying or terrible to kill another human being).
You kind of get more immune to the whale killing, after you've seen it a couple of times - leading to your next question: no, I have never participated in a whale killing, I've just watched from the shores, and yes, I think it's sad for them to die.. of course I do. Every light stopping to shine is sad. But people have to eat, to live.
As you may or may not know, the Faroe Islands are highly dependent on the fish industry, and when it collapsed back in the 90ies, a lot of people went bankrupt. So it's not a very long time ago, since the pilot whales have "saved lives." Therefore it seems like a bad idea to just "forget" how to kill a whale. When a "school" of whales is killed, the meat and blubber gets shared between the people. Whale meat and blubber cannot be bought in the Faroe Islands. Whaling is not an industry, no one here is a "full time whaler," not even a "half time whaler" or anything as such. If you have read the article on wikipedia about whaling in the Faroe Islands, you probably already know all that..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Faroe_Islands
http://www.whaling.fo/
You should definetly read this one: http://www.heinesen.fo/faroeislandsreview/pilotwhaling.htm
5. I guess you pretty much answered that yourself. Are you sure that they are awake and suffer all 5 seconds to some minutes? Wouldn't an animal pass out(or something similar) if the spinal cord was cut? I'm not saying it would, neither am I saying it wouldn't. Better leave that to the specialists.
ReplyDeleteNo, we must err on the side of caution when the suffering of other sentient beings are in question. That goes both for physical and emotional suffering.
But people have to eat, to live.
Would you accept killing other humans in a similar manner, if it was necessary to eat and live?
If you have read the article on wikipedia about whaling in the Faroe Islands, you probably already know all that..
Aye, that be true.
I also did read the heinesen.fo site a while ago. Bottom line is: economic despair is awful, but it is nothing compared to what the dolphins likely feel (and if you hope/think/trust they don't, then please reread above).
5. No, I wouldn't be willing to kill human beings like that. Human beings are sofisticated beings. "Humans are the only species known to build fires, cook their food, clothe themselves, and use numerous other technologies." Whales are not humans. It would be wrong to compare killing a human being and a pilot whale.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure that all the "cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, sheep etc etc, who spend their whole lives in very tiny steel boxes, fed with an unatural diet, overloaded with antibiotics, lying in their own shit, never seeing the sun, moon or earth, never eating a meal of proper grass or feeling the wind, being transported miles and miles in the poorest conditions possible, only to be electrocuted and butchered on a steel and concrete floor in a totally industrial and nazilike manner" don't FEEL anything throughout their whole lives in these horrible conditions?
At least the pilot whales get to live Freely, their whole lives, and maybe(?) feel "physical and emotional suffering" for 5 seconds to some minutes.. maybe..
Whales are not humans. It would be wrong to compare killing a human being and a pilot whale.
ReplyDeleteWhy? Suppose they feel almost the same amount of physical pain, fear, anger, sadness, horror, and grief as we would? (You mention building fires, etc., but that is really astonishingly irrelevant here.)
And no, I am not sure what other livestock feel. I am convinced they feel fear and pain - as I have stated, I am pissed as hell, too, by how especially pigs are treated. I have seen pigs been killed close up by a gun to the head (my grandparents had an old-style farm), and they died instantly. Doing it that way I think is defensible. Additionally, I do think it is more important how they are treated while alive, and how Danish farmers do it is a disgrace. I do protest it, and perhaps ought to write a lengthy blog-post about it.
But, the reason I am particularly upset about the killing of dolphins can be illustrated like this:
On a scale of feeling physical and emotional distress/pain when being butchered like Pilot Whales (D), some people would say (i.e. assume for arguments sake) that dolphins, pigs (P), chicken, and cattle feel much less than humans (H) do:
|-F----------PD-----------H--> (more pain)
But perhaps a lot more than fish (F).
However, my whole argument rests upon the belief (which is based on some evidence, though it is not guaranteed) that this scale should look more like this:
|-F----------P----------D-H-->
I therefore think it makes a lot more sense to compare dolphins to humans in this regard (i.e. in terms of stress/pain).
You say it would be wrong to compare killing humans and dolphins, but I contend that it is proper. I also suspect that you think it is wrong simply because you are a human yourself (I acknowledge I don't know you and that I could be wrong about you), like I have found out about a fair number of people that I know better than people in the blogosphere.
Please see the update on top of the main post.
ReplyDeleteAnd let me add that my name is Bjørn Østman, and I do not endorse every statement in the video in question - only the message that killing pilot whales is wrong.
"Oh damn - hinting at the tired old argument that because we treat pigs cruelly, we can't condemn treating other animals cruelly.
ReplyDeleteIt is actually a logical fallacy: "A is not wrong because B is wronger.""
I didn't 'hint' at it, I said it and meant it. If you are a vegetarian and you believe killing all animals is wrong, then yes, killing whales is also wrong.
"But, either way, my argument is that dolphins are, likely, very sentient beings, and that does make killing them in a cruel way worse. I ask people to imagine doing the same to humans vs. doing it to flies. Nobody (sane) cares about the flies. Everybody (sane) cares about the humans. Why? Well, because humans are more sentient (not sure this is the right word) than flies. They suffer more. Evidence does suggest that dolphins are way closer to humans than flies in this respect. Or cows. That does make a big difference, whether they scream or not when butchered."
Dolphins probably are more sentient than Pigs. But by how much? Pigs are much, much more intelligent than cattle. Cattle are much, much more intelligent than flies. Do you eat flies and not cattle? Do you eat cattle and not pigs? Granted, at some point you do have to draw a line. But I'm not convinced about where that line should be, why it should exclude e.i. pigs, and whether science has proven that whales are above it.
Male dolphins kill baby dolphins and rape random females even of other dolphin species. The other dolphins in the pod do not treat members who do these things any differently - these are not 'deviant' dolphins like human criminals - they are simply behaving as a large number of wild animals do.
I didn't 'hint' at it, I said it and meant it. If you are a vegetarian and you believe killing all animals is wrong, then yes, killing whales is also wrong.
ReplyDeleteWere you not hinting that because pigs are treated cruelly, then we cannot argue against treating dolphins cruelly? If not, then I misread you.
Dolphins probably are more sentient than Pigs. But by how much?
Suppose pigs and dolphins are equally sentient (defined here as feeling a lot of physical and emotional pain), then that does not contradict anything I have said about dolphins here. I have, emphatically, not said that I condone how pigs are treated. Rather, I have said how much I despise it. Like you, I don't know where to draw the line, but I do draw it below dolphins, for sure. And apes. And elephants.
As for what to eat - I don't have any problem eating any of these animals, as long as they are treated well while alive, and not caused much pain when butchered. And both of those requirements do have to be modulated by how sentient they are. I know it's hard to assess this, but just lumping all other animals but humans below this line is lazy and insensitive. Would you agree?
Pigs may have been a pure example, Bjorn, though of course as you are well aware I am maybe a little biased :) They are widely recognized as (along with dolphins) one of the six most intelligent animals on the planet (the others being dogs, chimps, bonobos, and humans). And I dunno about Denmark, but they really get the shaft here in the United States, so bad that I'm gonna have to say it's probably worse than the pilot whale thing in the Faroe Islands.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your general point about there being a continuum, though, and if you had use cows, or, better yet, chickens in your example, I'd be right with ya.
An interesting one for me is squid. It seems as though they'd be pretty, well, not sentient, but recent video footage shows them doing some pretty remarkable things. Not sure what to make of that. It's probably not going to make me stop eating squid anytime soon though, heh...
D'oh, I meant poor example, not pure example. Derp..
ReplyDeleteJames, believe me, Pigs are mostly treated horribly in Denmark.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, perhaps pigs was a bad choice, but they were just an example. Think cows, or better yet, horses. Horses are supposedly dimmer than cows.
Oh, and I suspect we should count elephants with pigs an dogs in this respect.
We do this to eachother all day. It isn't anything new.
ReplyDeleteWe do this to eachother all day. It isn't anything new.
ReplyDeleteWhat difference do you think that it makes in regards to killing dolphins that we also kill humans?
Do you accept that humans are killed? If so, why? If not, then why dolphins?