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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

I can't wrap my mind around.......

the fact that there are only an estimated 3,000 or so tigers left in the wild in the whole world. Especially when you couple this with the fact that there are an estimated 30,000 Mcdonald's worldwide.

This means that for every tiger living in their original habitat, there are 10 Mcdonald's spewing out colored sugar water and cholesterol. One tiger......ten McDonald's.

The wikipedia article also notes that at the beginning of the 20th Century there were an estimated 100,000 tigers living in the wild.

Estimates for the lion population are a little more variable but a likely high guess is 20,000 or so left in the wild......again there are many more of the golden arch places than there are lions. In 1950 the estimated wild lion population was 400,000.

I am not particularly interested in a world where fat calorie factories outnumber tigers. I do believe we human animals are totally out of control....in many many ways.

7 comments:

Christina said...

They are poaching tigers in Russia and selling them to China for their ridiculous habit of taking organs from animals to boost their sex drives. Russia is supposedly starting to really clamp down on this. I can imagine killing this beautiful creature for one more hard on. (sorry you dont have to post this tackey comment)

Krissa said...

Well, this is going to make me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I don't believe any official statistics when it comes to this (the tiger or any endangered population) and many other things. Even if the powers that be who put out those numbers would be as honest as they can, there's still no way for them to know these things for sure. The only thing we can know for sure is that the human race IS out of control. And now I will sound like a misanthrope on top of a conspiracy theorist, but it seems to me like humans are a cancer on the planet. If one thinks of the earth as a body, like their own, and considers all the parts big and small to be like the parts in their own body, I'm sorry to say that human beings pretty much do qualify as cancer. I guess some are benign tumors, but overall we're a malignancy. There are plenty of good people out there, I know. And I love my human family and friends dearly, but as a species, I am disgusted by my own. And ashamed of us.

Krissa said...

It's a while since I left that last comment and probably it goes without saying, but I want to clarify that I think there are likely *less* than 3,000 tigers left on the planet. :(

veganelder said...

Thanks for commenting Christina. With the exception of possibly self-defense I can't imagine killing a tiger for any reason...much less for some triviality.

veganelder said...

Thanks for commenting Krissa, I too have doubts about the veracity of the numbers.

I sort of look at our species like a five year old with loaded automatic weapons. We seem to have taken some sort of quantum leap in terms of our ability to impact the planet but no accompanying quantum leap in our wisdom occurred. We are technologically smart but woefully deficient in foresight, compassion and wisdom.

We...and all other beings...would likely be a lot better off if we were geniuses in terms of wisdom and compassion and dumb-asses in terms of technology.

Bea Elliott said...

I'm absolutely with you about our out-of-control technological abilities... We (and our machines) have made us into "gOds". And we are drunk on our own power and seduced by our every want.

It IS like a 5 year old - We have no "emotional intelligence" whatsoever. Our culture needs a "time out" in a corner --- Before our world is too damaged to repair. Woe is us. :(

veganelder said...

Thanks Bea for commenting. Time out for human animals is an excellent idea. We need to sit in the corner and do some clear thinking.