Dumb Animals

Tonight's Colbert-ism: “Now, isn't an agnostic just an atheist without balls?”


A few days ago I told you about a couple of wayward whales swimming down a river in California. Quick update: They made it back out to the ocean safely. Hooray. We can all relax now.

I made a suggestion that we should just let nature take its course and have the coast guard interfere by trying to get them back out to the ocean. I know. How heartless of me to actually concede that wild animals die? That wild animals die because of everything from predators to starvation to mere stupidity?

Well, here’s another side to the argument. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to reintroduce animals to the wild when they’ve gotten used to living in captivity. Here’s why I’m kinda cranky today:

A Great Panda that was reintroduced into the wild (from what zoo I can’t recall—pretty sure it was in China) was in a tree when other more aggressive pandas came over and knocked him out of the tree. The formerly captivated panda landed on his head and died as a result. Dumb animals killing other dumb animals. It probably happens every day.

But that was an inter-species attack. Whether or not it was provoked, I’ll probably never know and you’ll probably never care. Here’s an example of one dumb animal provoking an attack from another animal: Apparently some Chinese tourist got drunk, went to a zoo, and entered a panda cage in an attempt to “hug” the bear. I want to underscore the “bear” part of this. Recent DNA evidence suggests Great Pandas are more closely related to bears than raccoons. But who cares? Smart people wouldn’t want to hop a fence to hug a raccoon, so the “not really a bear” argument is both false and irrelevant.

The panda attacked him. It’s unfortunate the panda didn’t kill him, because if you didn’t think he was a complete dumbass for hopping the enclosure, here’s what he said after being rescued:

“No one ever said they would bite people. I just wanted to touch it.”

Really? You didn’t think a zoo animal might get feisty? Do me a favor and go try to hug a bengal tiger, okay. And his quote probably sounded more like “No run evuh say dey rould bite peopow. I just ronted to touch it.” I’m not being racist. If he was a tourist I’m just being dialectically accurate.

So what I’m saying is this: The whales and the tourist were dumb animals. If God or fate or whatever you choose to believe had taken them, it probably wouldn’t have been a great loss because their “stupid” genes would have been permanently discontinued. But no. Instead we put a panda out in the wild with other pandas and we’re short one more endangered species. I guess what I’m trying to say is this: there needs to be more parking structures in LA. The end.

peace sign,
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