Think of an animal that is very popular to hunt. I bet what came to mind is probably a deer, bird, or rodent of some kind. Where I live the most popular thing to hunt are deer and sometimes turkeys. I personally don't take part in hunting and I probably never will. I have no desire to kill animals. I admit that I eat meat, poultry, and seafood and I don't actively take part in the killing of those animals but I do contribute to the cause because I consume them. If we lived in an age where hunting was our only means of survival in terms of food then yes I suppose I'd have to do what was necessary to keep myself and my family from starving. However, we are in the age of privilege where we have MILLIONS of options to choose from when it comes to being hungry.

I'm sure there are plenty of areas in the world were hunting is still very necessary but in a lot of areas it's not necessary at all if even practiced. The hunting that the first world experiences is hunting for sport and game. People shooting animals for the "wow-factor"and bragging rights. Most of the time if one of my hunting friends shares a photo of their kill it's just them holding a buck's rack or maybe a duck or rabbit etc... and the majority of people don't bat an eyelash at that. However, in the news if we see an article about someone hunting wild animals such as BIG game animals like lions, rhinos, elephants, cougars, etc... the world is in an uproar.

Today I saw a facebook article of a guy in Australia who shot a horse and apparently a ton of people are in an uproar. Now I'm going to be honest here. When people showcase their generic game kills I don't feel anything. When someone posts a picture of them shooting a lion or a tiger then I get really sad and slightly pissed off. When I saw this article about a horse I was a little confused as to why they would want to kill a horse but I didn't really feel any emotion such as anger.

So this got me thinking... when is it OK to hunt things and what is OK to hunt. What I think it really boils down to is your personal preferences about the hierarchy of animals. What animals do you classify as pets and companions versus animals you classify as food for consumption as well as animals that fall under the category of preservation and for show only.

When you think of cows, pigs, and chickens... most of us think farms and food. When you think cats, dogs, bunnies, and parrots... you think household pets and/or exotic pets. When you think lions, tigers, bears, OH MY! You think Wizard of Oz but you also think zoos and the wild. So why is it that if someone kills a lion we get angry but when MILLIONS of farm animals die every day we happily eat them without question.

Recently I watched a video about why is it permissible for us to eat a pig but not another human. I think that same video argument/analogy can be applied here. Why is it okay for us to kill and eat cows and pigs and chickens but it's not okay to hunt and kill a horse or a lion.

Let me put in my opinion for a second. I personally think it's wrong to kill wild animals such as lions, rhions, elephants, etc... because of a few small reasons. The illegal poaching industry is through the roof because thee skins and body parts of these animals are worth a lot of money. Because of this industry the animals can't reproduce as quickly and the populations are so small and they just get smaller each year. In fact, many species of animals we grew up with are going extinct or are endangered at the very least. Not to mention a lot of the wild animals are held in captivity at zoos or circus shows or other poorly managed facilities. Then you have famous people who buy these wild and rare animals for the sake of showing them off as a swag token and they don't even take care of the animals. These very animals rarely reproduce if given the chance because they're under so much stress that they don't even have the desire to breed and if they do breed it's really rare and/or they were forced to reproduce via human interaction of getting the male to ejaculate and forcing the semen into the female. These animals are in such small numbers that it's really scary to think that one day there will be no more tigers in the world.

How are you going to feel when you need to sit your child down and explain to them what a tiger is because all that's left of them are drawings, paintings, photos and skeletons because real ones don't exist anymore. Think back to when you were a kid and you saw dinosaur fossils. Dinosaurs are so freaking cool and they existed a VERY long time ago. None of us can witness their lives and one day the animals we love that live among us will be gone, too. Perhaps we will be gone before they will but we can prevent their disappearance longer if we stop senselessly killing them off and putting them in dangerous situations all for the sake of entertainment. I am hoping that eventually all zoos and educational needs will be executed via virtual reality headsets so that people can virtually experience a zoo and get up close to animals without actually being in front of the real animal or possibly getting hurt by the animal and likewise without having the animal in a cage or unnatural containment.

As far as generic game animals go and farm animals... these animal populations are so massive that the rate in which we kill them doesn't make a dent on the earth because they're being so forcibly reproduced to keep up with the food supply demand. I'm not saying that it is OK to kill these animals but I will say that killing so many while we have so many isn't as harmful as killing animals whose populations are almost nonexistent.

So as far as I know - the government regulates what you can hunt and when you can hunt it and possibly even size restrictions and quantities you hunt. I think that's a great way to maintain population control while also not going overboard and also not oppressing those who enjoy hunting game or hunting their own food etc...

So if you get pissed about someone shooting a lion, but you don't get pissed if someone shoots a horse or a cow like me... are you a bad person? Is the "value" of a life based off of its importance to nature and/or its population the reason why something becomes OK or not OK to kill? There's such a big grey area here for me.

If one kind is okay to kill should all kinds be okay to kill? If one kind is not okay to kill then should we just stop killing everything period? We obviously have the physical ability to not eat animals anymore because we've evolved enough to be able to consume plants & fruits OR meat. And for thousands of years we have survived off of both or one or the other.

As we progress into the future what kind of impact will all of this have on future generations to come.

In the video I mentioned earlier, a topic was brought up about how if aliens harvest us like we harvest chickens, would that be okay? Of course you're going to say NO that's wrong! Because you don't want to die let alone get murdered especially by an alien. Is it wrong for aliens to kill and eat us? No. It's not wrong. We kill things and eat them. So it's not wrong for things to kill and eat us. Do we want it to happen? Of course not.... then you can imagine that animals don't want us to cage them up and eat them either. Oh well we're more intelligent than them and we have opposable thumbs and fancy business suits and cars and we have systems set up. Okay that's cool and all but that doesn't make us better than them. We've learned to surpass the food chain and throw it on the back burner because science and technology is now our kitchen.

I expect that in the future we will have to find a balance between meat and veganism. I think right now it's all about personal preference and there is a push and pull between them but neither one of them seems like the ABSOLUTE truth on how to live. Of course that is totally subjective to how you feel about what is right and wrong but on a global aspect... the world is not transitioning to all meat or all vegan. Everyone is scattered. I believe we could be scattered forever but I also believe that eventually we will have to push towards Veganism if too many animals are killed and not enough are replenished to maintain balanced populations.

A small part of me almost hopes an alien race takes over us and shakes up the pot. We've been in control for far too long and we forget what it's like to be nothing in this world. We don't have to worry about sword fights and plagues. We do have to worry about terrorism and nuclear weapons and how many instagram followers we lost but those things don't really happen that often enough to really scare us on a daily basis. So dear aliens if you can see this... please remind the human race of what we are and give us a wake up call. I hope you'll remember me and be nice to me ^_^ but please open the eyes of people who are blind to the bigger picture of things.