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Ethical carnivory
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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Practicability and ethics aside, do people not understand how ecosystems work? What do they think keeps herbivore populations from growing uncontrollably and overrunning our fields? Ask China about the sparrows.
Absolutely not. This is why my friend who studies Forrest ecology sounds like an insane person whenever someone brings up deer.
Hes a lovely human being who really loves animals, but he honestly advocates that everyone should be forced to kill deer any time they see one.
CWD as well. Deer population collapse is real, because they have no real predators anymore. The sick bred and survive and you end up with crazy disease susceptible animals.
You're friend is absolutely correct. Proper conservation requires death.
Yep. From my understanding the native population of America basically reshaped all the forest in America to make the deer population go brrrr. Since we don't really hunt deer to the extent of the natives anymore, deer populations basically have stripped the forest of all shrubbery, low lying plants, and young native tree saplings.
It's more because white colonizers killed all the wolves, so deer don't have as many natural predators anymore.
It's pretty typical though that you would have heard someone "blame it on the indians" instead of the white settlers...
Wolves were not native to all of north America at the time when settler colonialists came to America. Nor were they ever in the amount of numbers that could control the deer population by themselves. Deer were a staple protein of native American societies and were utilized as free grazing stock animals by the tribal people in the anterior of America.
The native Americans developed the forest of America over thousands of years, and the overpopulation did not become a problem until the colonizers killed the actual predators who were namaging the deer population.... The native Americans.
The overpopulation got worse when white settlers expanded westward and killed off wolf populations as wolves were the only predators left to help moderate some of the overpopulation. However the real damage had already been done generations before when disease cut through the native American populations.
Just reintroduce wolves.
The problem is that wolves weren't really native to all the places deer overpopulated in America. The over population of deer wasn't a natural development, but a purposely implemented design by native populations of America that took place over thousands of years.
Humans hunting deer is really the only solution because humans reshaped the forest ecology to overproduce deer in the first place. A lot of people like to think that prior to European colonization, America had a pristine and untouched forest. In reality native Americans spent thousands of years reshaping the forest to basically become deer factories.
TIL, thank you. Then controlled/regulated hunting it is!
The problem is, there are fewer and fewer hunters every year. It's a problem that's just continually getting worse.
We had red wolves throughout the south. The northeast had timber wolves. Not to mention puma. Deer had predators everywhere they exist.
Which mainly prey upon small mammals like raccoons, possums, and rabbits. They also were never a large enough population to control deer populations even if that was all they were to hunt.
Again... Eastern wolves were rarely seen south of the Great lakes, and there's evidence that there were less than 70k prior to Europeans coming to the Americas.
On the other hand pre colonial white tail deer populations are estimated to be a little over 30 million.
I've seen entire herds with those weird tumors. I think I heard it's some type of prion disease...
Those are cutaneous fibromas or papilomas. Like big warts. Viral in nature.
CWD has no external symptoms beyond the listless "zombie" stage. It just turns the brain into swiss cheese.
I see, so I was thinking of two different diseases.
How do people who eat venison avoid prions?
You gamble... I stopped hunting and eating deer because of it. It's not worth the risk to me.
That's crazy. I grew up eating venison all the time. Maybe it wasn't as widespread back then. Now I'm happily vegetarian.
It wasn't at all. Now there are states and counties in some states with deer populations showing like 1 in 4 or even 50%+ of the entire population having CWD. I know the northern states, those populations are in real bad shape now.
Damn, that's crazy. You'd have better odds playing russian roulette.
You can send the neck lymph nodes and brain stem in for testing by your state wildlife agency. Wait for results.
Honestly there are a lot of hunters, not all, that just don't give a shit. No documented cases of CWD crossing into humans yet. I don't take the chance.
That's some scary stuff. Most hunters are probably the type to say science is just a liberal conspiracy, so it doesn't surprise me.
No prions for me, thanks.
https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2024/04/24/chronic-wasting-disease-feared-in-deaths-of-2-hunters-who-ate-deer-meat/
I think it has, or they think it has.
I try to reduce how much meat I eat, but if I had a good source on hunters’ venison, I wouldn’t say no.
Live in MA, I would gladly on sight deer for purely spiteful reasons. Glad to know I can cover up my seething hatred for nature's suicide bomber by saying it's based on sound ecological principals 😅
Give the herbivores abstinence only education
Sorry sir. We've miscalculated the experiment and cows are republican now.
Republican cows, voting to subsidize the meat industry because "it's our heritage".
“As a cow, I vote for the meat industry because I might become a farmer one day!”
"One day I'll own this ~~boot~~ slaughterhouse!"
Surprisingly few people think about ecosystems. Those that do often do not gauge their complexity deeply enough and view them as temporally static for the most part.
That isn't true.
This is easily solved by giving them access to contraceptives.
This bothers me.
It’s like ohhh don’t let the wolves kill the sweet deer! Get rid of the wolves, they’re mean!
If you don’t kill deer they get stupid and wander into roads, and they eat all your baby trees, then your forests die off.
Deer evolved with predation. When predators are around they behave differently, the system needs both to keep in balance.
And being vegan is fine, but animals don’t really have a conscience where they are in conflict with the morality of causing harm or it being optional for them.
That was a great read. How did they do getting rid of rats and mosquitoes?
Ok I’ll be that guy.
Human problems first. Let’s say we make it past this century, post scarcity, immortal, floating around in space or ascended or something.
Would you think about changing the ecosystem then? Nature’s pretty awful. Whether it’s the carnivores tearing apart herbivores or the herbivores starving themselves from over eating, like, I’d like to change that. Edit their genes maybe?
No.
Honestly, that sounds absolutely insane to the point where I'm not sure if you're trolling. Playing God for no reason except forcing our personal morals on animals that neither understand nor care for those morals. Nature is not "pretty awful". Nature is amazing! Millions of years of evolution have created more species than we can ever hope to even discover, let alone study. Who are we to decide we're so important and all-knowing that we can just undo that because animals eating each other feels icky to some of us?
I am serious but also realize it’s an extreme idea. That’s why I’m putting out there, seeing if I can moderate it a bit with other perspectives. But I see it as a natural extension to animal ethics. I don’t see how we can wash our hands of animal suffering as soon as we’re not involved in it.
Easy: there's nothing ethically wrong with killing animals to eat. Life requires death.
Again I’m thinking distant sci fi future here, where life (at least human life) doesn’t require death. But even before that, does life require suffering before that death?
We’re talking philosophy here right? I’m ok if you figure “That’s just your opinion, man…”. But is there anything logically inconsistent with extending “I’d like to reduce suffering” to “We need to control nature, eventually”?
Plants are also alive. The assumption that they are less worthy of respect than animals is arbirtrary (though understandable, since we too are animals).
This is the totalitarian villain slope. Who gets to decide? How long until "there can be no suffering if there is no life at all"?
Several points:
Taking away a predator's ability to eat meat causes at least as much suffering as protecting prey from being eaten takes away. They are hardwired to hunt. There is a reason why everything from a pet dog to a lion in a zoo needs constant enrichment activities to stay healthy - both physically and mentally. If they can't hunt (or simulate hunting), they suffer.
Evolution would be stopped dead in its tracks. The reason why we have so many different species on our planet is mainly because they compete with each other. Predators adapt to catch more prey. Prey adapt to not get eaten. At the same time, there is competition between species that rely on the same limited food sources. If we ever managed to make sure every single animal has exactly what it needs (which in itself is utterly unrealistic), there would be no pressure to adapt. Biodiversity would slowly dwindle when species get wiped out by factors we can't control and without natural selection, nothing new would evolve to fill a certain niche because every mutation that occurs is equally viable. Ecosystems would destabilize rapidly and eventually collapse when your super technology can't keep up anymore.
And most importantly: it's not our job to control nature. We're not god-like creatures who can just force our will onto everything else. Doing so is pure hubris. Nature has managed to regulate itself for hundreds of millions of years. Who are we to decide that the way things have always been is incorrect? Genetically engineering animals not to eat other animals is no more ethical than engineering them to be tastier.
You would turn the whole planet into a zoo that exists only to please your personal worldview. For me, that is the opposite of animal ethics. It reeks of ultra-conservative prescriptivism. Everyone must follow your ethics because anything else is icky and barbaric and certainly you're doing those less enlightened than you a favor by showing them the light.
To add some more: that's just not how genetics works.
The reason why humans can decide to be vegans is because we're already omnivores. We have evolved over a long time to be able to eat pretty much anything.
Most predators aren't. They are strict carnivores, not because they choose to be but because their whole body plan has evolved that way. Take wolves for example. Their teeth are designed to kill and rip apart their prey. Their stomachs are designed to digest meat. Their eyes, ears and noses are designed to find prey. Their legs are designed to run after prey. Every single cell in their bodies is hyper-specialized on one thing: eating other animals. You can't replace all that with traits that help it survive on a plant-based diet and expect to still have a wolf. You won't even have a dog. I don't know what you would get but it would probably be closer to a sheep.
These are valid points from the perspective of the present, near, and even semi distant future. I’m thinking centuries long sci-fi stuff here but I can appreciate not many people would have an interest in that kind of discussion; there are zero things I’m suggesting we do now.
Thanks for coming back with the counterpoints though. I find the “predators would suffer” the most compelling.