Animals…Seriously, It’s All About How Cute They Are
The recent tragedy in Sea World brings to light the issue of animal cuteness. If you think about it objectively, animal conservation/activism/attention seriously boils down to how cute an animal is. A couple of weeks ago, I posted my somewhat failed attempt at buying discount caviar, and I uploaded a picture of a lumpfish (see below). Now after looking at this fish, even the most PETA-minded individual would be inclined to be overwhelmed by terror and rage, and proceed to grab a handgun and squeeze off as many rounds as they could in the fish’s general direction. Lumpfish provide a sustainable food source and are a vital part in the ocean’s ecosystem (also has a killer personality), but you’d never know.
[“A lumpfish will never be the subject of a Disney movie…”, Bob Iger - President and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, “…(blurghh…)…I need a napkin. Circa 2007.]
But objectively speaking, this lumpfish is no different than puppies, Bambi, Warthogs, or whatever Disney or Dreamworks have anthropomorphic-ally trained us to find adorable and worth giving a crap about. Because of its looks it’ll never receive as much attention something with fur or big eyes would receive. And secondly, our idealized anthropomophisms are completely contrary to the way nature actually works. Nature’s pretty harsh if the life of animals were accurately made into a movie, The Lion King would look like The Departed or Deathrace 2000.
[Figure 2a: “Happy Feet was awesome. Nature’s the best.” Anonymous 5-year old, circa 2006.]
[Figure 2b: “Noooooooooooooo~!! [sobs and incoherent mumbling] I hate nature.” Same anonymous 5-year old from figure 2a, circa 5 minutes after viewing Fig. 2a.]
So back to the Killer Whale debacle. The killer whale is a 14,000 pound carnivore that eats seals, squid, penguin, and fish to survive, usually. So their diet consists of eating animals that weigh anywhere from a couple of pounds to a couple of hundred pounds. Deadly. But Free Willy and the killer whale’s disarmingly cute eye patches turned it from an adept predator into one of our best friends. I’ll show you that by alter the killer whale’s appearance ever-so-slightly, I can turn him back from a cute and lovable animal into what he really is: Cold. Blooded. Killer. (Actually, he’s a mammal, so he’s technically warm-blooded, but you know what I mean.)
[Figure 3a: Unaltered picture - adorable, looks completely harmless.]
[Figure 3b: Eye patches and underside were filled in - pretty scary, people would be locking their car doors and quickly speed away from this beast.]
[Figure 3c: Glowing red eyes from Terminator, mouth grill exposing its teeth, holding a bottle of Mickey’s Malt Liquor and a Smith&Wesson .40 - Let’s nuke the whales.]
It sucks that that trainer died earlier this week, but training a 14,000 pound predator to shift from eating seals to catching rubber balls would be like telling Ike Turner to turn from pimp slapping his wife to juggling for the amusement of 6 year olds. In both cases, it’d be nice if it worked out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone got hurt.
