During a conversation and my attempt to highlight how cruel and unnecessary it is to test on animals, I was met with the response "but nature is cruel".
Visions of wildlife documentaries came to mind of whales killing seals, poor baby wildebeest being separated from their mothers and brought down by lions or even worse, being eaten alive by hyenas. Elephant calves dying of thirst during a drought. I even witnessed a horrible incident involving my own pet dogs where Luki's ill-fitting muzzle came off when she took a tumble while she and Finn were chasing a young deer and Luki brought the deer down. She had clamped her jaws round the back of its neck in an attempt to strangle it (had she got it by the throat she may well have succeeded). The horrible noises the young deer was making in its feeble attempt to escape and cling on to its life. Had Ian and I not managed to get to it on time, that poor little deer would have died. Luckily we did and it ran off without a mark on its neck. (We have since replaced the muzzle and don't allow both dogs off the lead together, otherwise they do go off hunting).
Yes, it would appear nature is cruel. Nature is also a force outside our control.
For a split second I saw an argument FOR humans testing on animals ..... i.e. we have been allowed by nature to evolve and develop into what we are, and as a result of "progress" we have become a race that conducts horrible experiments on lesser species, which results in immeasurable pain, suffering, maiming and killing, in the name of beauty, hygiene, nice clean homes, etc. Call it evolution if you like.
That argument was soon thwarted when I compared why animals kill animals and why humans kill/maim animals. Animals kill animals to survive, in the animal testing industry, we kill animals not to survive, but to make ourselves look better, smell nicer, spend less time and effort cleaning our homes. That is not justifiable. That is vanity and laziness. And considering there are plenty of products on the market that do the same job cruelty-free*, it is downright sadistic.
Not only that, in nature, animals act instinctively. Going back to my dog Luki and the deer, she was acting instinctively, clamping her jaws around what should have been its throat, waiting for it to die, her front legs were wrapped round its body, holding on to it. I was surprised when I momentarily marvelled at the visceral behaviour she was displaying, almost like a proud lioness watching her youngster kill for the first time! Survival of the fittest.
You can forgive cruelty in nature for the sole reason that each creature is acting instinctively in a bid to survive.
We humans have lost all animalistic instincts as we've evolved, we do not act instinctively in a bid to survive and we can't be forgiven for deliberately and knowingly inflicting pain on animals in the name of vanity and hygiene. We don't need to look good to survive. We don't even need to eat meat to survive (as a carnivore, I'm struggling to commit to that or to put a case together to support that), but that's another blog!
"Nature is cruel" is therefore no reason to ignore, accept or condone animal testing. In my opinion it's saying you don't care enough to make some small changes to your shopping list and I can't understand how anyone, who has followed my blog, can continue to buy products from companies that routinely test# on animals. Can you?
* http://www.gocrueltyfree.org/shopper
# See "China" blog.
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