From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Thu May 01 2003 - 14:43:23 MDT
> (Greg Jordan <jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu>):
>
> Sterilization disrupts herd social patterns?
> More than violent deaths? please.
Actually, that seems quite reasonable. Many mammals have
alpha males with harems, while most males don't breed at all.
When an alpha male dies, another male takes his place. But
animals wouldn't /know/ they were sterilized, and so if you
happened to sterilize an alpha male, you wouldn't reduce the
breeding rate, you'd eliminate it entirely. I can imagine
that other social systems might also be upset by sterilization.
Predation, on the other hand, is something prey animals have
evolved to deal with sensibly.
Not to mention that being shot by a human hunter is much
less "violent" than natural predation.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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