Tim Zimmermann

Portraits Of Cruelty (and Stupidity) Sometimes it is hard to believe how cruel, and lacking in humanity, people can be (though sometimes I worry that it is all too easy to believe). The shark-dragging case is one of those times: While fishing in state waters near Egmont Key in Hillsborough County, Benac shot a blacknose shark with a speargun at about 3 p.m. Heintz took a photo of Benac holding…

https://twitter.com/NatGeo/status/939283476334895104 Watching this video will make you very sad (backstory here). It should. It is heartbreaking. But the real question is: what are we collectively willing to do about it, if anything? Is it enough to inspire changes in the choices we make and the way we live. Because how humanity lives (what it values and what it doesn’t) is what is starving this…

This is so beautiful, and so incisive: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of…

Tis the season. So this is a good time to revisit this story: It started with Christmas. And what happened was what always happens: I did no shopping. I have on one or two occasions experienced the slightly awkward moment on Christmas morning when the gifts are finally all opened and it becomes apparent that none of them are from me. This general awareness is something I try to avoid, and…

“FFS, leave me alone. How’d you like it if I barged in during your dinner hour?” So humpback whales off Australia are being disturbed by swimmers: Authorities in northern Western Australia are warning amateur boaties they are risking their lives by attempting to swim with humpback whales off the Ningaloo Coast. The coastal town of Exmouth is in its second year of commercial humpback whale…

Tooth Damage Is A Major Health Problem For Captive Orcas

Orca tooth problems. It has long seemed that one of the biggest challenges of keeping orcas healthy in captivity is dental care. Many captive orcas wear down and break their teeth by fighting, and chewing on concrete or the gates between pools. If the damage is bad enough SeaWorld and other facilities drill out the teeth and then flush them daily. Even so, the damaged teeth become prone to…

Is This Restaurant “Woke Vegan”?

Pilgrim’s: The last truly “woke” restaurant I encountered. “Woke” is a concise and excellent concept that comes from social and cultural activism. Woke means aware, and motivated to fight…injustice, racism, chauvinism. Without diminishing the central role of the “woke” concept in social activism (I would argue, in any case, that promoting veganism has important social justice and environmental…

Animal Cognition Update: Dog Urine and Startled Guppy Edition

“Dogs must think we are so stupid because we have to build fences, and can’t just do this, to mark our territory.” That Stinks: On one level, I think it would come as no surprise to dog owners that dogs recognize the smell of their own urine, and are more interested in urine from other dogs (When my dog works over a scent near our house I can almost see her thinking “Dammit, what was the jerk lab…

Does Wildlife Extinction = Human Extinction?

If it does, will we finally care about biodiversity and conservation? We should:   Three-quarters of the world’s food today comes from just 12 crops and five animal species and this leaves supplies very vulnerable to disease and pests that can sweep through large areas of monocultures, as happened in the Irish potato famine when a million people starved to death. Reliance on only a few strains…

The Link Between Dead Northern Right Whales And Fishing Entanglement Only Gets More Clear

You can’t see it, but there is some dead right whale in there somewhere. CBC News continues its invaluable and revealing series on the fate of the North Atlantic right whale. According to a post-summer, post-mortem, at least seven right whales got entangled with fishing lines in the Gulf Of St. Lawrence this summer. Two died, two were freed, two have fates unknown, and one freed itself: At least…

How To Address Overpopulation Without Talking About Overpopulation

“Stop hassling us about population growth. Instead help empower our women and stop consuming so much yourselves!” Rapid growth in human numbers is a key variable of any equation related to climate, conservation and stress on the planet. But you don’t often hear about it. Vox writer David Roberts explains why, and argues that it is far more constructive to talk about policies that can help address…

Finally, David Attenborough…

It’s hard not love the amazing and sublime depiction of the planet and all its species in David Attenborough‘s work. But the beauty and wonder he depicted rarely had a hint that there was anything going seriously wrong with the planet, that the beauty and wonder was under threat. Too much of a bummer for a TV audience, perhaps. But…

Maybe There Is A Bigger Issue?

Industrial manure lagoon: like a toxic inland sea. The Washington Post asks whether the deaths of workers in dairy farm manure pools puts the oversight of dairy farms into question: Alberto Navarro Munoz had been working on the farm for only two weeks when he encountered one of the most gruesome hazards that a dairy worker can face. His tractor tipped over into a pit of cow manure, submerging the…

The Military Commoditization Of Marine Mammals

“WTF am I doing here?” It’s seriously annoying when sea lions and dolphins in the US Navy’s benighted marine mammal program are referred to as “friends,” “capabilities,” or “systems.” They are autonomous (though not free) and sentient creatures, drafted into captive service for military purposes that have nothing to do with their lives or needs: “Actually, there is a long history of using our…