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But really, in my experience it's not, I can't even put into words some of the injuries I've found when skinning or just picking up the bodies. There's been multiple times I've had to kill foxes, rabbits, birds because they were still alive despite having their organs spilling out their body or their bones were breaking through the skin. I've found juvenile foxes that were just skin and bones, I've found pregnant vixens dead due to disease. Just because it's in the wild and mostly due to "natural causes" , doesn't mean it's not cruel, it just means they died with minimal human interaction in most cases.

I'd much rather have an animal die as quickly and painless as possible for fur, instead of laying on the side of the road or in a ditch suffering for hours before dying.

Couldn't agree more. It always annoys me when i see things like roadkill listed as 'ethical', even though it's likely that animal suffered a lot more than one humanely culled on a farm or shot in the wild. A common reasoning is that it's because the death was accidental, but even that's not always true. It's way more common that people realise for animals to be hit deliberately. It's been estimated that up to a quarter of fox road deaths could be on purpose, with people deliberately swerving or speeding up to hit them. I've seen people hit animals on purpose, including one instance where a guy sped up on an empty road to hit a cat. What's ethical about that?

I've also seen foxes die in horrible ways. A fox with mange so severe it was barely recognisable as a fox. The fox died while biting onto a stick, a sign that it was in immense pain as it died. A heavily pregnant vixen dead from suspected poisoning. A two month old cub with it's stomach and half it's face ripped off by a dog. I have the skeleton of a fox cub killed by a car. The damage to the bone suggests she was hit on her backend. There's no damage to her front half, so it's possible she didn't die right away but may have lay there in pain for hours.

Hemphill's file shell (Limaria hemphilli)

An update on the problem dolphin rescued in Texas.

She was dubbed “Izzy,” short for Isla, and spent time in intensive care at both the Texas State Aquarium and Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network’s rehabilitation facility. After an evaluation by NOAA and independent veterinarians and marine biologists, Izzy has been deemed permanently non-releasable due to her habituation to humans, chronic injuries, and lack of dolphin “social skills.” Now in better health, she is currently being housed at SeaWorld San Antonio while a permanent home is found.

Let Izzy’s story be a lesson. She was a wild dolphin who was repeatedly harassed by beachgoers—petted and fed and posed for social media views—for nearly two years, despite multiple warnings from authorities to leave her be. And now these same people whine and gripe that Izzy was “stolen” from the wild, when in reality they are the only ones responsible for stealing her freedom. Izzy will have a safe and loving home in human care, but it didn’t have to be this way.

If you want wild dolphins to stay wild… LEAVE. THEM. ALONE.

it was a bad situation with no good outcomes, but I think it was the only thing they could have done.

see, walruses are a weird combination of "absolute juggernaut" and "surprisingly delicate"- even female walruses regularly clock in at the double-ton range!

they're also SHOCKINGLY fast on land when they really want to be, and are entirely capable of rushing down and killing a human via horrific blunt trauma if they decide they've had enough.

and the whole "surprisingly delicate" thing- walruses are difficult to sedate and transport properly even when they're in good condition and not half starved, so there's no way they would have been able to safely capture Freya and take her back to the Arctic circle where she belonged since it was over 3,000 miles away. she would have just died of stress en route.

walruses also require very specific and intensive care when they're in zoological institutions, meaning that you can't just go around calling up every random aquarium in the area asking if they can take a walrus! any aquarium that has a space for a walrus... already has a walrus.

and to cap it off, due to the constant media storm and hoards of gawking tourists invading her space, Freya was starting to be very concerningly habituated to people! which is a recipe for absolute disaster when you're talking about an animal of this size and temperament. if the authorities had ignored the issue and allowed people to continue to approach her, she absolutely would have eventually injured or killed someone.