Okay everyone. This is just sick. Seriously, no offense to anyone in Canada, I love Canada and I am by no means saying everyone does this, but honestly. Canada "celebrates" ( for lack of a better word ) an annual commercial seal hunt, which is an off-season blatant murder of seals, that the government won't stop. I won't post statistics for you or anything, but just visit this website and read some, please. I live in the US, there's little I can do, but you people in Canada can do so much more! Be aware of this! Do something!

About the Hunt

Sign the Petition

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Survival of the fitest? Really, that only works when something needs to get ahead and personally I feel no malicious threat from seals. Perhaps I'm underestimating the slippery little things, but for the moment I think we're safe.

I think you don't understand natural selection.

Anyone know the population status of these seals?

There are some things you can do. Many of those that hunt seals in Canada are also fisherman who supply the NorthWest and other parts of the US with seafood. The ASPCA has started a pledge drive to boycott Canadian seafood.

Survival of the fitest? Really, that only works when something needs to get ahead and personally I feel no malicious threat from seals. Perhaps I'm underestimating the slippery little things, but for the moment I think we're safe.

As for using them. Perhaps if we needed them for something that would be fine and even then, hunting them as products wouldn't bother me as much if it were more humane and it was something that couldn't be attained just as well through synthetic means.

However what the ASPCA was trying to hinder is fisherman and others who use it as a recreational passtime, just as you would hunt a deer or goose, however, perhaps I am wrong, but I don't think there are any standards or protections set up for seal hunting (in Canada)as there are for deer hunting in the US. I know, just from reading their site, that there are certainly no regulations to protect pregnant or nursing seals. Female with week old cubs are killed just the same, leaving the cubs to die unattended.

That to me is simply unneccessary.

I already have.

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Originally posted by Shade:

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We do... humanity.

That's vain.

but true, u cant deni it.

Yeah, I thought that, too, if they hit them hard enough, but that video showed me otherwise.

*bump*

I was thinking it over... and I still think hunting seals is right. Although, if they could come up with a more humane way to do it (which I doubt they can, a bullet is going to pretty painful... and I still stand by that getting hit in the head knocks them out) they should do it.

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Look! I got board of the day! That's never happened before!

Eh...that's been up there for more than a week now. :P

Hurray for you!

Look! I got board of the day! That's never happened before!

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We do... humanity.

That's vain.

I propose castration. We'll create a society of eunuchs instead of just exercising controlled human predation.

It will be the ultimate, crushing irony. People free to engage in wanton coitus with no worries about incidental love children, yet stripped of their sex drives.

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to Sydney. It's all about the balance, man. We need a predator for humanity.

We do... humanity.

I looked it up. You were right Finn. Here is what I found for those of you who were wondering...including me.

While the British economist Herbert Spencer is often credited with introducing the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his 1851 work Social Statics (relating to free market economics) or his First Principles of a New system of Philosophy of 1862, he actually did not use the phrase until after reading Darwin's Origin of Species. and introduced it in his Principles of Biology of 1864, vol. 1, p. 444, writing "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."

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I thought "survival of the fittest" was coined by Darwin.



It is. Well...at least I think it was. Gah! Did I just forget what I learned in my psychology class...

No, it wasn't Darwin.

on survival of the fittest: I don't know. Maybe someone could look it up somewhere?

to Sydney. It's all about the balance, man. We need a predator for humanity.

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I thought "survival of the fittest" was coined by Darwin.

It is. Well...at least I think it was. Gah! Did I just forget what I learned in my psychology class...

I thought "survival of the fittest" was coined by Darwin. Or did he just come up with the idea but no snappy term?

You guys didn't get my point.. what I meant is, we kill seals because we use them.. just like in any eco system... animals kill animals, animal uses animals, its really not that much different.

Thank you, finn.

The cycle of life is often seen at face value, and the darker aspects are either ignored or denied. This is unfortunate. People tend to either see all the bad or all the good in a given situation ( as I have proved by starting this discussion ). The cycle is no different. I'm glad someone else sees it for what it is.

"Survival of the fittest", in case anyone cares, is a phrase coined by H. Spenser, who used it to refer to his philosophy of allowing the poor and disabled to die so that the "superior" wealthy ones would have more resources.

"Fitness" in the biological sense refers to the number of descendents you leave and not to how strong you are. In other words, one can be very "fit" by sacrificing life span and health in order to produce more offspring.

The "cycle" that is so often romaticized is only real to those who see a priori ideals in the universe. Otherwise, it's just things destroying other things and not some Lion King "circle of life".