When I was younger, I was obsessed with the movie The Amazing Panda Adventure. Every time I saw it at the video store or library we had to get it. The movie is about a boy who helps a Chinese zoologist save a baby panda from poachers. I remember sitting next to my grandma, who had agreed to watch this movie with me for the umpteenth time, watching in agony as the boy and the panda ran across a bridge, followed closely by poachers. I would cry every time, terrified of the nasty poachers, yet I watched it over and over again.
I think I loved this movie so much because it was really the first movie I had ever watched in which humans treated an animal with respect and portrayed animals as intelligent. From this moment on, I found myself head over heals obsessed with human interactions with animals. Its because of this love of animals that I am a vegetarian (and other reasons that I won't get into because no one likes a preachy vegetarian) and its because of this love of animals that I was so distraught by the story of Cecil the lion.
When I first read about the Minnesota dentist that paid to hunt the most famous lion in Zimbabwe, I was angry. Angry at the dentist, angry at the guides he hired, and angry at humans in general. How could someone consciously decide to lure a lion off his protected land and then kill him for sport? How is that even considered a sport? What makes humans decide that they have the authority to go off and kill any animal they want for their own enjoyment? I will never understand how or why this is okay in anyone's mind. My opinion is just one of thousands in a larger debate: Trophy Hunting. This is a tough subject to bring up because people have extremely polarized opinions over it.
The debate of the validity of hunting lions like Cecil got me thinking. What is it about certain animals that makes it wrong to hunt or eat them but not other animals? There is a fine line between animals that are slaughtered for food and animals that are loved and admired. For example, what separates a cow from a horse? Cows are killed for meat daily but a horse would never be killed for meat. I'm not making anything wrong or right, I'm simply pointing out that it is interesting how humans have grouped animals into two groups: Admired and Eaten. For example, in Hindu culture, the cow is a sacred animal and it is considered taboo to slaughter one. In 2008, however, 35,507,500 cows were slaughtered in the US alone for consumption. What really separates animals from one another? What makes humans qualified to decipher which animal deserved to be admired and which deserves to be eaten?
The emotions that have been brought up by the Cecil controversy gives me hope that one day we will rethink how we view animals. Maybe someday people will come around and reevaluate which animals are admired and which animals are eaten.
