Data is Beautiful

Also organizations like hunting lodges put a lot of effort and money into wildlife conservation and wilderness preservation. There's a lot of natural habitat that is protected today specifically because of the work of groups of hunters. Without them that land would have been used for something else. It's obviously self-interested, but it benefits more than just them.

I agree but I do have a little issue with the "wasting resources" part, that's a very anthropocentric view to take. There's an entire ecosystem of organisms that would love to use those resources, and in many cases leaving the carcass behind is better for that system than taking it away and depleting it of that biomass. There's obviously a lot of "ifs" involved but I wouldn't generalise by saying that because a human didn't get to eat it the resource was "wasted".

It's unfortunate that our ancestors have left us with this kind of ecological trolley problem, where in order to keep the system balanced and prevent collapse we're obligated to go out and kill a lot of creatures, but such is the world we've inherited.

Chronic Wasting Disease is a particularly scary prion disease that is highly dependent on deer population density.

I wonder now, what happens to the results if you put the question about factory farming at either the beginning or the very end?

My guess is that when at the beginning, the percentages would shift significantly into the acceptable range because of the not wanting to look inconsistent.

They're also quite intelligent and are likely to be extremely aware of their captive situation. It's basically slavery.

The MD renn fest had an elephant.

There was a divide between the folks who thought “ohhhh it fine” and the rest of us who thought “elephants don’t live in Maryland and definitely don’t give rides to screaming children, willingly”

The MD renn fest elephant was also used as Trump advertising at other events, which did NOT help the communities view here in MD.

There was a noticeable boycott until they stopped abusing the elephants at the MD renn fest.

I went to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. They explained that riding elephants is incredibly stressful for the elephant's back, and that in order to train them to obey, torture is usually involved.

I'm against zoos as well. I know some do good work with rehabilitation and such (and we should support them), but a lot just capture animals for our enjoyment. Even if they're not explicitly mistreated, it's pretty cruel to just keep them in a cage for the rest of their lives.

It makes more sense as the survey was conducted on British adults.

I wonder if this odd result is from the question not specifying trophy hunting vs. food hunting. If you eat meat it wouldn't make sense to be against food hunting, but it would make sense if you think they're hunting deer just to hang a big antler head on your wall

1. It’s British adults, not Americans. Private gun ownership is uncommon-to-rare, and hunting even less so.
2. It’s British adults, so you need to read almost everything through the lens of classism and/or class jealousy. Most hunting in the UK is done by the upper class - there are genuine outdoorsmen hunting types but the norm is posh folk hunting for sport.

Note they merge 'somewhat unacceptable' and 'unacceptable' into the bars, which is.... a choice.

Dog races are worse than horse races, mostly because the dogs are trained to be more-or-less psychotic. Horses, you can see as understanding the competition they're in and being (at least mostly) willing participants.

Sounds like they need fur.

Winners of dog fight bets probably

Some people see no inherent value in animals aside from the utility they have for humans. It allows them to justify whatever we do to animals as long as it provides some perceived benefit to us.

I would suspect this train of thought leads some to conclude that dog fighting is ok since it provides entertainment to people, in the same way that farming animals is ok because it provides food that people enjoy eating.

Now you and I know that dogs, like most other animals, are sentient. They have a subjective experience that allows them to feel fear, loss, pain, happiness and love. This is why I (and I suspect you) believe dogs should not be forced to fight each other for our amusement.

As pointed out in the graphic, most people feel that at least some commodification of animals is morally justifiable. It's up to you where you would draw the line.

I don't think you've missed anything. Reptiles are particularly good for mobile zoos as many don't stress easily and don't require (or in some cases actively hate) large enclosures. Tegus, Monitors, and more intelligent lizards actually seem to enjoy, or at least show interest in, people and new places.

As long as the keeper is responsible and takes good care of the animals I don't know what exactly the problem is

The demographics sampled are adults from the UK.