[cheese_goddess]

> Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary

Nope:

> Surplus killing, also known as excessive killing, henhouse syndrome,[1][2] or overkill,[3] is a common behavior exhibited by predators, in which they kill more prey than they can immediately eat and then they either cache or abandon the remainder. The term was invented by Dutch biologist Hans Kruuk after studying spotted hyenas in Africa[4] and red foxes in England.[5][6] Some of the other animals which have been observed engaging in surplus killing include orcas, zooplankton, humans, damselfly naiads, predaceous mites, martens, weasels, honey badgers, jaguar, leopards, lions, spiders, brown bears,[7] american black bears, polar bears, coyotes, lynxes, minks, raccoons and dogs.[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing

[mthoms]

The wiki passage lumps "saving for later" (caching) and abandoning the food completely into the same category. Which doesn't support your point as well as you think — the cached food may well be "necessary" over a longer time frame.

I'm not saying your point isn't valid, just that the passage quoted is too broad to be a strong support of your argument.

At any rate, there are always outliers, no? When someone makes a generally true statement, is it really that useful to reply with a rude "
Nope" and point to outliers?

I took the parents' comment to mean that it is a general truth, not an absolute truth.

[cheese_goddess]

> I'm not saying your point isn't valid, just that the passage quoted is too broad to be a strong support of your argument.

What is my argument? You're making some assumption there that I'm not privy to.

The OP says "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary". That's a very broad statement that obviously ignores surplus killing even for the purpose of storing more food for later (which is often also abandoned when the animals move away or find something better to eat). Anyway, killing more than you can eat right now and storing it "for later" is exactly what humans do, that the OP is trying to say animals don't do.

Hence, "nope".

I agree my reply is rude. I apologise to the OP, but it's frustrating to see how popular opinions seem to be shaped by the behaviour of Disney animals, and yet are expressed with great certainty. It's very frustrating.

[mthoms]

Would you agree that "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary" is a generally true statement then?

>Anyway, killing more than you can eat right now and storing it "for later" is exactly what humans do, that the OP is trying to say animals don't do.

The OP was referring to hunting for sport (and other similar excesses)[0]. That is, they were making a moral argument. "Saving things for later" is a weird thing to be hung up on and has nothing to do with the article or this thread.

[0] Yes I know some animals have been known to do this, but they are the exception.

[cheese_goddess]

> Would you agree that "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary" is a generally true statement then?

See: "Nope".

> The OP was referring to hunting for sport (and other similar excesses)[0].

You are putting way too much interpretation on what the OP actually wrote: "Animals will catch what they eat, and catch no more than necessary".

That's not true: many animals will "catch" (really, savagely kill) more than necessary, much much more. In case you consider food stored for later "necessary", that also doesn't work: animals will kill much more than they can ever eat in an entire lifetime, much more than can be expected to stay in the ground without rotting away. Not to mention, many animals will just kill, without any attempt at storing or returning to the kill.

The OP also said nothing at all about hunting. They talked about over-fishing:

> Humans will over-fish and dump shit all over the place killing marine life and filling oceans with oil.

And also about ripping "mother cows from its children to mass produce milk and beef" and other things like that. Nothing to do with hunting, for sport or not.

> "Saving things for later" is a weird thing to be hung up on and has nothing to do with the article or this thread.

I don't understand what you mean. Can you explain?

[mthoms]

If you're going to insist that hunting is somehow different from fishing (literally: hunting under water) in this context, I think I'm going to disengage. You just don't seem genuinely interested in honest discussion. Have a good day.

[cheese_goddess]

Thanks for accusing me of dishonesty.

The OP talked about overfishing. You said they were referring to hunting for sport. Overfishing is relevant to commercial fishing, wich is practiced not for sport, but for food.

So it really doesn't look like the OP and you were talking about the same thing and I can't see that you should expect me to automatically understand what you meant when the OP said "over-fishing" and you said "hunting for sport". If you meant "hunting under water for sport" you should have said that more clearly, because it's not the first thing that springs to mind when someone speaks of "over-fishing".

Edit: here's the relevant quotes from earlier comments.

OP: "Humans will over-fish and dump shit all over the place killing marine life and filling oceans with oil."

You: "The OP was referring to hunting for sport (and other similar excesses)[0]."

Can you see why it's not immediately obvious why you think you're talking about the same thing as the OP?

Also, can you see why these discussions get derailed so easily? The OP said one thing and then you joined the conversation to explain what you thought the OP meant. But how could you know what the OP meant any better than me, when neither of us is the OP? If there are different interpretations to what the OP said, then your guess of what they really meant is as good as mine. So when you insist that, no, your interpretation is correct, and here's what they really meant, even if they used different words (words that may be stretched to mean what you want to say they meant "literally", like "fishing = hunting undewater") there is inevitable confusion and the discussion is derailed.

Why not just let the OP respond to my comment, if they think they should? And what exactly do you think we have both achieved here, with all this back-and-forth about exactly how much animals or humans kill and why? We have just both wasted each other's time. You're happy with that?

[smegger001]

Yup, just last week guy I know that had about half his chickens killed when a mink got into his chicken coup.