From: usenet@delete.this.baradel.demon.co.uk   
      
   In message <1imkw8o.3hpzt318lf4viN%zeborah@gmail.com>, Zeborah   
    writes   
   >Graham Woodland  wrote on   
   >rasf.composition:   
   >   
   >> To me also.  For a less human perspective, perhaps we should turn   
   >> to observed animal behaviour.  Animals hunt and kill for meat;   
   >> they attack, drive off, or kill known predators when they catch   
   >> them at a suitable advantage; they encroach on each others'   
   >> territories, which in any case are chronically overlapping when   
   >> taken on a cross-species basis, all the time.  But do they take   
   >> trophies?  I can imagine something like that developing as a kind   
   >> of courtship behaviour, but I don't know of any examples.   
   >   
   >Cats, I understand, sometimes present their kill to their owner.  (Mine   
   >doesn't; she growls at me if she thinks I'm going to take it from her.)   
   >Probably from motives other than strict trophyism though I suppose.   
   >   
   Yes,  well-fed cats will hunt just for the thrill of it. Our Fluffy used   
   to murder moles and once left a neat row of 4 mole corpses by the back   
   door. Not exactly trophies, but neither she nor our Siamese would eat   
   moles or shrews, yet they still killed them and brought them to show off   
   to their humans.   
      
   >Though in general I think "Animals [don't] do it, therefore it's [not]   
   >okay for humans to do it!" is a rather useless argument.  Some animals   
   >eat their young, but I disapprove of the practice among humans; animals   
   >don't recount fiction as entertainment, but most humans accept fiction   
   >as a perfectly moral pastime.   
   >   
   Yes, I agree that "it's natural, animals do it" has a rather limited   
   validity.   
      
   Helen   
   --   
   Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk   
      
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