I was reading a news story online years ago about a kid that got eaten by an alligator. So the locals actually caught the gator, and found the boys body inside of it. Thankfully, most of the photos were censored in the news article.
Here’s my question.
Wouldn’t the boys body be better off inside of the alligator, then buried?
(Hear me out) The boys body while no longer suitable to house life, still had use in providing substance to another creature. Essentially it was almost as if he was still living through the alligator that had consumed him. The body became part of the alligator as he was being absorbed. That seemed much more useful than just being buried underground in a box. I feel like that point the gator had more right to the body, which was a part of it than the boys family.
Comments
The laws of the jungle stop when it directly affects us humans. We wouldn’t kill a croc to retrieve the body of a deer, a pet maybe but not just some random animal. Humans culturally and naturally have a sense of justice and vengeance, we are not the only species to have such tendencies. Crows are known to seek revenge against people who slight them, so do elephants, apes, orcas and dolphins to name a few. They do not seek revenge because they need the food. The do it to get their pound of flesh.
So you see us hunting an animal down that killed one of us isn’t an unnatural action taken. “Morally ethical” doesn’t really apply here in this sense as it’s generally a natural instinctual behavior. We are also a species that buried our dead whenever possible regardless of circumstance, this is also not unnatural behavior as animals like elephants do this as well!
It’s morally ethical to kill just the one alligator to retrieve the body, it stops being ethical if you start killing every alligator because one killed the boy.
It’s less “we want the child’s body” and more “we don’t want an alligator that’s in the habit of killing and eating people just casually wandering around”. The alligator met the grim reaper solely because it was too dangerous to leave alive.
I mean, they also put down domestic animals that kill people because “we can’t have an animal around here that thinks killing humans is an option”.
If it’s okay to kill a dog that mauls a child to death, why not an alligator?
The fuck sort of nonsense is this? Lol
Would that logic apply to serial killers? Like I get it from a purely nature is nature perspective, but you justifying it through “right to own” falls apart under some scrutiny.
>Wouldn’t the boys body be better off inside of the alligator, then buried?
How would we then burry it if we leave it in the tummy?
I mean I think it depends if the gator in question is overpopulated yeah? Places like Louisiana are trying to expand alligator hunting because there are simply too many alligators and not enough natural predators, it can have ecological ramifications.
If it’s ethical to kill any gator, why not one that endangered a human?
To your point about food- I’m kind of sympathetic but shouldn’t in that case any human or pet that doesn’t die of either poisoning or illness then be eaten to not go to waste? Wouldn’t that do more good, just like your alligator example?
You had us up until the last paragraph
Your logic is similar to some tribes that practice cannibalism; Some tribes consume the meat of their dead to take on traits of the deceased, but some other tribes eat their dead to absorb the life essence of their loved ones so they (the dead) can continue to live, in some form
This reads like it was written by the alligators’ family
Apologies if I read anything wrong and including my spelling mistakes, as I can’t see right now; but this is one opinion I hold strong.
A wild animal does what it does. If it gets a loved one, I would consider that it’s ‘burial’, and we would hold a memorial.
Similar issue; if a neighbourhood animal harms someone, they shouldn’t be killed, just extra supervision.
This is just an insane take. Fuck that animal. Given the chance that thing would have absolutely kept killing humans. It ate a child. Of course, it’s correct to put it down. Would you have asked the alligator if it was morally ethical to eat an adolescent human? No, but you’ll ask the human if it was okay to put down a dangerous animal.
Uh if my child got eaten by a prehistoric monster I’d want his eyes to see the sun again, even metaphorically. And I would want that thing dead. It’s an alligator. There are thousands of them. They have no souls. Kill the one that ate my child, please.
Also the idea of my baby’s final destiny being a pile of alligator shit does not exactly fill me with joy even if the alligator got wicked gains from all that child protein. Retrieve my baby before he can be digested please
Gators don’t have rights
A list of people killed by alligators.
I wonder is the OP is referring to Adam Binford. Died 3/21/97
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_alligator_attacks_in_the_United_States