Myth #62: “But lions eat meat.”
(also heard as “But animals eat meat, and humans are animals too.”)
Please allow me to immediately concede that lions do indeed kill other animals and that lions do indeed eat meat. Of course, this makes perfect sense, as lions, unlike humans, are obligate carnivores. Lions eat other animals for need — whereas humans do so for greed.
More importantly, just because a behavior exists in nature does not per se make it morally acceptable or even pragmatically beneficial (indeed, neither is the case with regards to humans eating meat) … Lions regularly engage in murder & infanticide & rape — atrocities which any psychologically healthy human would openly & vehemently denounce, and yet no one in their right mind can argue that the mere presence of these acts in the lion community makes them ethical or desirable for us humans to emulate.
Lions are not our role models, my Friends … Lions are lions.
Current status of this Myth: Decimated
Justification it provides for eating animals: NONE
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