Animal Rights Community Online

[Tigereye]

Hey guys. Thought I might add in my penny's worth seeing as I haven't been on in a while.

So, about this whole "we were meant to eat meat" thing...Anyone ever thought about the point that maybe we evolved with the ability to (not that we need to and, for most of us on here, definitely don't want to) eat meat, BECAUSE some stupid twat wanted to show off by eating meat (come on, we all know someone who likes to show off). The point i'm getting at is that, in some species of monkeys, if a male kills, and eats an animal, it is practically worshipped by the females, until another male does the same. Maybe this is what happened to us? Some stupid guy goes out and kills an animal and a crowd of people are after suddently him, so more stupid guys try it. Then natural selection (though I hate to call it that -meat eating isn't a natural thing to do) kicks in and mutations for the eating/digesting of meat become increasingly more common, and suddently, we become a few vegans, veggies, fruities, and raw foodies in a world of meat-eaters. It's sad.

Also, I found this on a website somewhere else. Its rather interesting:

Goodall gives a two-year-average chimp diet based on time invested in various items.
Conklin gives similar results summarized from 24 studies at 11 sites.
Primate diets by animal weight demonstrates that the larger the animal, the less flesh and more fruit/leaves are consumed.
Goodall Conklin
Item % time feeding
Fruit 59.5 64
Leaves 21.4 23
Blossoms 4.1 2
Seeds 5.0 3
Insects 4.1 Prey
"Meat" 1.4 4
Galls 0.8
Misc. 4 4

Compared to the average human cultural diet, no doubt, this chimp diet would be far, far healthier.

Meatarians, in their never-ending, but always irrational and fruitless, attempts to justify human flesh-eating often use the claim that "chimps eat meat, so we should also". In doing so, they ignorantly or intentionally ignore the important quantitative and qualitative issues. In stating "chimps eat meat" it is implied that ALL chimps eat meat ALL the time (as would be the case IF flesh was eaten for legitimate nutritional purposes) and that the quantity is significant. Here, the 1.4% shows that flesh is a quantitatively-insignificant portion of the overall diet; especially so, as these data are for the time spent in "feeding on different food types". The time spent in catching and eating animal flesh per unit of food consumed would be unrealistically high compared to that invested in obtaining plant-foods, since these do not run away or fight back. Also, that such 'feeding' on flesh is often accompanied by aggressive fighting and squabbling of the chimpanzees themselves over the distribution of the flesh, thus further increasing the time per unit of possible nutrition.


(So they can't blame it on genetics -chimps are 98.6% similar to us gene-wise. Also, see the bit I highlighted. We are really just big monkeys (whether people like it or not) and so theoretically, because of our size, just like big chimps we (as a species) should be eating far less meat and much more fruit and veg. Animals are not there for our benefit, except as friends.)

[teddy bear]

This was interesting, thank you.

[Gliondrach]

Good points, Tigereye. And worth saying twice.

When you mention the squabbling over meat, this ties in nicely with your idea of showing off. The successful hunters do give meat to other chimps they want to make alliances with - and to females they want to impress.

[nadlemgarcia]

Way back when I was a kid, I used to eat exotic foods which are considered as unusual animals that people tend to eat. Frogs, snake and even a dog. All of those that I have said, I never knew it when I ate them especially the dog. I just found out when a pissed drunk relative of mine told me after I ate it. I might be killed by PETA and I had a guilty feeling about it. Eating a man's best friend? It wouldn't happen again.


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