14 DAY TRIAL // In 2014 alone, well over 1,000 rhinos were butchered by poachers in South Africa. Then, earlier this month, around 250 whales were massacred by fishermen in the Faroe Islands. News of these killings did make headlines but failed to spark global outrage.
The death of Cecil the lion, on the other hand, triggered widespread rage, indignation, even disgust and horror. Animal rights group PETA has even suggested that the feline's killer should be hanged.
“Hunting is a coward’s pastime. He needs to be extradited, charged, and, preferably, hanged,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in an interview with US Weekly.
The 13-year-old lion was killed by an American dentist by the name of James Palmer who, together with a couple of professional hunters in Zimbabwe, lured him out of the Hwange National Park and first shot him with a bow and arrow.
When this didn't work, they tracked him down and put a bullet in him. They then skinned him and James Palmer returned home in Minnesota with his head as a hunting trophy.
As awful as Cecil the lion's death was, the fact of the matter is hundreds of thousands of other animals have met an equally horrifying fate at the hand of hunters over the years.
Take the over 1,000 rhinos slaughtered in South Africa last year and the 250 whales killed just days ago in the Faroe Islands for instance. Equally horrifying, not quite as publicized and debated.
In an interview with Think Progress, biodiversity expert Ernest Small explains why it happened that Cecil the lion's death got as much attention as it did. Point-blank, it all comes down to human nature.
Cecil wasn't just any lion
There is a poaching crisis that's playing out in Africa these days, and rhinos, elephants and lions are just some of its victims. The thing is that, while the majority of the animals that poachers target all look the same to folks at home, Cecil was quite a celebrity.
Oxford University researchers had been monitoring him for years via a GPS collar fitted around his neck, and visitors to the park had grown quite fond of him. Mind you, this lion in Zimbabwe even had a name, and not just any name but a human one.
Being as popular as he was and also enjoying human attributes such as having a name, Cecil was not just another lion roaring the Hwange National Park. People had come to care about him, so, naturally, they took it personally when the American dentist shot him dead.
“We are blind to so much suffering that goes on with so many animals yet so cognizant of this,” said biodiversity researcher Ernest Small in his interview.
The fact that he was a lion also made a difference
We humans play favorites. We can't really help it, it is in our nature. Surprise, surprise, we do the same when getting upset over the death of some animal or another.
Not many are aware of it, but the fact of the matter is, at least in this day and age, it's amphibians that have it way worse than all other animals when it comes to being on the brink of extinction.
“Amphibians are the most threatened of the groups of vertebrate animals with perhaps one-third of species on the verge of extinction,” explained Ernest Small. Even so, we've yet to see the day when the death of a frog or a salamander sparks global rage or at least indignation.
Why? Because frogs look plain nasty, as do most amphibians. Lions and all the other animals that we hold dear, on the other hand, are, well, gorgeous. Hence, we can't help but love / admire them and so we find ourselves doing our best to protect them.
As Ernest Small put it, "The public, politicians, scientists, the media and conservation organizations are extremely sympathetic to a select number of well-known and admired species, variously called flagship, charismatic, iconic, emblematic, marquee and poster species."
Mind you, all this doesn't mean that the fact that the entire world went bananas over the death of Cecil the lion is a bad thing. The feline died a most awful death and so the outrage is perfectly justified.
Here's what we should keep in mind though: we shouldn't stop at condemning hunting enthusiast James Palmer and demanding that he be hanged or anything of the sorts. We should instead commit to supporting conservation organizations and help keep things like this from happening again.
