The amount of wild animals caught or eaten each year is close to or possibly even exceeding the species’ maximum yield levels. One day, they’ll be driven to extinction due to human intervention. The extinction of these animals will cause us to lose our rich biological system forever. As a matter of fact, these could be the end of the animal world! Shall we allow this horrible thing to happen on our lovely earth?

There seems that only public pressure, intertional protest and stringent regulations enforcing in every country will help ensure these animals remain protected in the years to come.

Snakes

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The wild snakes on land have become easy prey for hunters for their meat. Worldwide, people have eaten around thousand tons of snakes annually. If trucks are used to accommodate those snakes, then only 2,000 trucks can pack them up. In both Japan and Philippines, snake meat is sold as a delicacy in the markets. In America alone, rattlesnakes are always available as the foodstuffs in the markets and in Texas’s restaurants snake meat is cooked like roasting chicken or grilling shrimp. In China and other Asian countries, the main menu of snake meats also include cobra, king cobra, Bungarus fasciatus, Bungarus multicinctus which are now at risk of extinction.

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The recent data shows that there are thousands of parasites dwelling in the snake’s body. According to the restaurant owners, the flesh and skin of the snakes are always directly cooked even though they’re still carrying along with parasites. The critical question here is that these parasites are still alive even after boiling or cooking, and then they’re eaten alive through human’s mouth before reaching human’s intestinal tract.

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There are basically several types of parasites surviving in snake tissues, but the commonly seen one is called Spirometra mansoni. It’s primarily a sparganum (or called plerocercoid) which is developed to the third phase and parasites in snake’s body.  Under normal circumstance, as like boiling, steaming, or cooking in a short period of time under high temperature, can’t be effectively killed the sparganum. It can tolerant to high temperature to a low temperature of minus ten degrees and it can even survive in the refrigerator.

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The sparganum usually resides under the skin of the snake where it develops into a nodule. Its larva can be harbored by birds, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals such as insectivores and rodents. Its infection has known to cause wounds, fever, itchy skin, vomiting, intestinal discomfort, ulcerations, stomach discomfort, bruises, ocular sparganosis as seen in sore eyes with the symptom of painful edema of the eyelids, subcutaneous sparganosis  (cause the appearance of nodules on the surface of the body and its lesion is always painful), cerebral sparganosis (resembles brain tumor and its common symptoms are headache, seizures and focal neurological sign) and these parasites can also migrate to other tissues in human, where they invade the vital organs of the host. 

Do Do Birds

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The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) bird was a flightless bird that was once a native species of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius discovered in 1598. It was documented that a tree called tambalacoque or “dodo tree” must first have its seeds eaten by Dodo bird, passed through the digestive tract of the Dodo bird before they could germinate. Following the extinction of Dodo bird in 1681, the tambalacoque was completely extinct too.

Whales and Dolphins

Stepping into the 20th century, the advanced equipment and hunting methods have killed over 2 millions whales; the captured was so huge until blue whale hunting within the Southern Hemisphere was banned by international agreement in 1966. Whales are increasingly threatened with extinction, therefore eating whale meat and other threatened species isn’t the good way to protect our environment. Further, due to the fuel used by whaling vessels, every kilo of whale meat is equivalent to 1.9 kilos of carbon dioxide emission to the air.

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Up to now, blue whale populations, the largest mammals on Earth, are estimated to be as low as 1000-2000. Besides blue whale, the Pacific grey whale, the humpback whale, the fin whale, the bowhead whale, Maui’s dolphins, the Baltic harbor porpoise, the northern right whale and the Antarctic blue whale are considered as the most critically endangered species. In most cases, those whales that contain the most abundant perfume and oil ingredients are rapidly becoming extinct in that regard. Then again, the Japanese and the Russians still use products made from whales by ignoring whale hunting ban enforced by the United Nations.

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The above photo shows that in just one day, Japanese fishermen killed 10,000 dolphins at one bay until the water was drenched in blood of dolphins.

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Annually, the Japanese whalers take about 1,000 whales under the pretense of scientific research; the Greenland, Russia and the United States still practice whaling within aboriginal cultures and both Norway and Iceland still continue to hunt whales commercially. If these illegal hunt of whales are not stopped, more and more whales will be killed, and finally the whale populations will be removed from the marine ecosystem. Since whales normally mature slowly and don’t reproduce rapidly, overhunting, undoubtedly, may cause the whale population to dwindle tremendously and that could be the end for all whale species!

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Whales are not only hunted for oil and perfume, but also for their meat and bones. Commercial whaling has been generally regarded as inhuman! Even though the whaling fleets are said to be equipped with sophisticated sonar, long-range explosive harpoons, helicopters and factory ships, the method of slaughtering whales are indeed barbaric. It was reported that the whale is killed by a 90kg, 2 meter-long iron harpoon with its head contains a time-fused grenade, shot from a 90mm cannon, and this killing doesn’t always kill the whale immediately and thus leaving the whales suffer in terrible agony for hours before dying.

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Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) or commonly known as the Yangtze River dolphin of China was one of the world’s most threatened and rare mammal species that faced a drastic extinction on the cause of human intervention.

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The population dwindled rapidly due to industrialization in China that made use of the river for fishing, hydroelectricity and transportation. Thereafter, its population dropped to 13 in 1999 as compared to 400 in 1981 and finally its population went extinct in the late of 2006.

Seals

The seal hunt for their oil in particular, has caused certain species of seals going extinct, and undeniably the commercial seal hunt has severely depleted the seal population.

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Thousands of seals are hit several times with a heavy wooden club called hakapik (this club has a hammer head and metal hook on its end. The hammer head is used to crush the skull of the seals while the metal hook is used to move the carcass across the ice) on their foreheads until their skulls have been crushed.

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Then, the seals are stabbed with metal hooks into their stomach before dragging them across the ice. The wounded seals are left to drown and to suffer in terrible agony after being clubbed and they’re skinned alive.

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And to others they’re being shot in the open water and dragged by hooks on to the ice towards the ship. This barbaric killing method can’t be considered as humane, because it causes seal population with unacceptable suffering, and also one can see blood pouring from their noses and jaws.

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It’s such a heart-wrenching scene to see the seal carcasses are left behind on the ice just after being skinned! Due to piles of seal carcass lying there steaming, patches of ice are drenched in blood too!

It’s also shocking news to know that Canada’s annual commercial seal hunt has killed at least 275,000 baby seals as soon as they’ve begun to mount the white hair during which the seals are only twelve days after birth. It was reported that 91,602 newborn harp seals of less than one year old were killed in the year of 2000. They were cruelly slaughtered for their fur to be made into leather shoes, cheap fur coats and tacky trinkets.

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Baby seals are cute animals but why humans cut their hearts out for breakfast? They’ve inherent innocence but why humans exhibit violence against them? I think people who did this barbaric act aren’t humans but demons instead. They must have a mentality problem.

Passenger Pigeons

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In history, one example of the most terrible mass slaughtering and the most tragic extinction of wildlife was blue, graceful and long-tailed Passenger Pigeons, the most populous North American species. They went extinction around 200 years ago. Before extinction, they were estimated about 5 billion of all birds across the eastern North America or the total number of birds found in the United States today. Their flocks could reach a mile wide and up to 300 miles long, and they were described to blacken the entire sky for 4-5 hours or even days as the flocks passed overhead during their migration in the early spring from the south to their breeding grounds in New York, Ohio, New England and the southern Great Lakes area. It was also estimated that more than 300 million pigeons flying along migration routes.

The large-scale commercial hunt of Passenger Pigeons happened in the 1800s and 1870s. In 1870s alone, approximately 250,000 Passenger Pigeons were killed due to human intervention. Tens of thousands of them were hunted with large nets or shooting by hunters and were then shipped in barrels east to restaurants or shipped by railway carloads for sale in city markets to be processed.

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Martha was the last female Passenger Pigeon which died at about 1:00 p.m. at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914. It’s now on display in the U.S. National Museum of Natural History.

Sharks

Shark species have existed in the world’s oceans for more than 400 million years, appearing roughly 200 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared on Earth. They have lasted 100 times longer than man and have also survived five major extinctions. Sadly to say, over the past 20-30 years, some of their species had been reduced by over 90% and in the past 8-15 years, they’d been declined by more than 50%. Approximately 90 % and 93-99% of all large shark species such as bull sharks, hammerhead sharks and tiger sharks off the east coast of North America respectively have been wiped out. Overfishing has undoubtedly put certain shark species in danger of extinction since they grow very slow, mature late (because they only begin reproducing between the age of 10-15 years old) and produce very few young (have 1-2 babies in a year). Nowadays, as sharks represent the largest group of endangered marine species, they’re listed on the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.

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The extinction of sharks is mainly linked to shark fin soup, a rare and extremely expensive (some shark fins can sell even up to US$15,000) delicacy usually served at weddings and business dinners in Southeast Asia countries and around the Pacific Rim. The world’s blooming shark-fin trade (or shark finning industry) has led humans killing up to 73 million sharks every year worldwide or about three times more than the official shark catch figures estimated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), causing a sharp decline of shark populations from many parts of the world.

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Sharks are always still alive when their fins are cut off from their bodies, while their remaining parts are then discarded overboard by fishermen. Imagine having your hands or feet sliced off and then left to die! Don’t you think this is a barbaric practice?

The recent report estimates that 50 million sharks are caught and killed in this inhumane way, with many of them left injured or left bleeding to death. In most cases, sharks can survive to this ordeal until they drown in the heap of other finned sharks under the fishing boat or are eaten by other predatory fish.

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Since shark fins are among the most expensive seafood products in the world, very few sharks are actually being released. Over the past few years, the surge in shark fins demand was beyond the sustainable levels for slow-to-produce shark populations, and the concern grows over decades, as most countries don’t have a strict regulation to protect sharks from being caught or killed. Scientists are now worrying that higher demand for shark fins will soon outpace the abilities of sharks to reproduce. This situation has already happened to the blue sharks which are threatened with extinction as the catch rate is approaching their sustainable levels.

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Since sharks are at the top of the marine food chain, they’ve fewer natural predators and they play a critical role in maintaining the health of the ocean ecosystem, including coral reefs and seagrass beds. That means as the top apex of the ocean, they regulate the oceans and maintain the equilibrium of marine ecosystem by feeding on the animals below them in the food web. They actually “control” 2/3’s of our planet. Removing shark populations, in other words, can cause destruction to the life support system in our oceans, resulting in the end of the line of most marine species, putting the resilience of coral reefs to disturbance, while reducing species diversity and abundance.

Final remark:

If we want to save wild animals from being hunted or killed to extinction, then we shouldn’t use or eat products made from them. When no one buys those products, no one will want to capture these inherently innocence wild animals. That means the killing stops too. Similarly, any products made from them should be banned from production.

Even though there is an initiative act to manage the dwindling stocks of wildlife, the catches are still remain unregulated at a time when demand for their meat, bone and products are rising. People should take examples of Passenger Pigeons, Dodo birds and Baiji dolphins as they’d been threatened by the horrendous killing and hunting. Now, you can’t even find one of them because they’d completely removed from our ecosystem. Do you want to see whales, sharks, snakes, dolphins and other wild animals experiencing the similar fate? I really would like to see products made from those animals being banned internationally. There should exist tough regulations and legislation to curb these animals from being hunting or killing commercially or illegally.

I therefore urge you don’t buy animal products of endangered species, stop killing and hunting endangered animals and finally, don’t eat dishes that contain flesh of endangered species.

You can read more of my content at ScienceQuest. Take care and have a good day!