Neanderslayer - On Intentionally Killing Innocent Animals

Theoretically, you can kill any animal. There are varying levels of legality about it. Dec.3 is the start of firearm season for whitetail deer in Kansas, which TAE is very excited about. Other animals also can be hunted for sport or food: ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, coyotes, feral hogs, bear, elk, moose, groundhog, some fish, etc. A laundry list can be found here.

There are also a large volume of animals that can be killed without punishment, like purple starlings, insects, many fish, many amphibians, and others. These animals make up the bulk of the animal kingdom: unusable as a food source, too plentiful to be remarkable or protected.

There are also a large variety of animals that you can kill but will face fine or imprisonment for doing so. Kill a Peregrine Falcon, for example, and you face up to $1200 in fines. Kill a California Condor and you may go to prison.

Anyway, the point is, whatever animal you killed, by and large it is called hunting, or poaching, or furharvesting or fishing. It is only called murder if it involves killing another human being.

So when I saw a few weeks ago that scientists speculated they could bring a Neandertal to life, I had to wonder: if I shot a Neandertal, am I a poacher or a murderer? At what point are we separate from animals? Or even from our ancestors? The problem here is that it is virtually impossible to name a single trait that humans have that they don't share with some species of animal. Is hunting other animals not murder because of our superior weapons? Is hunting not murder because we aren't killing our own species? If we grey the line between human and animal, how will we separate ourselves ethically?

If we resurrect a Neandertal and it turns out to be a highly intelligent, compassionate, witty character with a well-developed sense of humor and an ability to grasp advanced concepts (Neandertals had the same size brains as modern humans) will we say "oh my god, cloning this creature was an ethical 9/11" and throw ourselves to the wolves, or will we refuse to acknowledge the "humanity" in the Neandertal, or in any animal, and consider ourselves still superior by some mystical, unnamed force? Will we suddenly realize we can't ever really come up with the definition of "humanity" and lose our Selves? Would we still laugh at Geico commercials depicting a Neandertal frustrated by the humiliation of his race if a real Neandertal acknowledged and felt those humiliations?

And what of our Selves? Could we go on considering ourselves a holier-than-thou species, meant to hold dominion over the animal kingdom, if a Neandertal could win arguments against us? What would Creationists say, if instead of ignoring fossil evidence, they had to ignore a walking, talking, college-educated living fossil that could argue on its own behalf in a court of law, and demanded reparations for 65,000 years of genocide and discrimination against its species?

This all goes back to hunting, amazingly. I have noted before that fossil evidence suggests that modern humans partially arose because of our tenacious ability to wage cruel war on ourselves and our Neandertal neighbors. Could it be that the ethics of Neandertal rights was settled in lower Africa thousands of years ago? Could it be that a highly trained hunting party of humans stumbled upon the last vestiges of the Neandertal race and cunningly pushed them into exctintion?

Or has modern society made fundamental leaps of morality and now we could understand the basic tenants of every creatures' right to life and freedom on this planet? I suggest, sadly, that humans are not meant to share this earth with an equal. By our nature we subjugate, destroy, conquer, and enslave, kill, and eat. Although we do have a moral compass, and although we do have amazing bouts of altruism that inspire, we also have a sense of self-protection. Although we have the ability to put our own needs aside, we are just as likely to put others down to satisfy our wants. I don't particularly believe that were we faced with a sudden population of Neandertals today, we would reach out and shake hands and greet them as equals. For we do not do that with ourselves.


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