Isn’t this picture amazing? The newspaper running this story claims that this is the first time an orangutan has been spotted using a tool to hunt.
If you read the article it turns out that he’s not very good at it, but it’s pretty impressive none the less.
There are a lot of areas in philosophy where it is sometimes useful to think about non-human animals that are close to us in the evolutionary chain (e.g., metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and ethics)
With that in mind, I thought people would enjoy this article and the photo.
[HT: Daily Mail.]
Andy, I was just going through some of your old blog posts and I never noticed this one before–it’s definitely a sight to see!
It also seems to yield some good philosophical perspective; a lot of people talk about humans hunting for sport to be ethically wrong because hunting for sport doesn’t have any sort of factor that helps us survive (other than I guess aesthetically-pleasing aspects, but those aren’t really required for survival).
As I was looking at this, I started to think about whether or not Orangutans actually eat fish; I never thought they did, but I figured I was mistaken. So, I did some research, and it turns out that they don’t eat fish!
(EXCERPT FROM ORANGUTAN REPUbLIK EDUCATION INITIATIVE):
“ecause over 60% of their diet is fruit (based on averaging thousands of observations), they are considered frugivores; however, orangutans also will eat young leaves (approximately 25% of their diet), flowers and bark (approximately 10%) and insects, mainly ants, termites, pupae, and crickets (approximately 5%). Wild orangutans are selective but opportunistic so if there is an emergency of tasty and nutritious insects, they may feed all day on them. Likewise, if fruit and insects are unavailable, they may eat bark, leaves and foods of lower nutritional value to satisfy their hunger. Wild orangutans learn to eat hundreds of different food types as youngsters by observing their mother and being allowed to take food from their mother’s mouth or hands.”
They eat some small insects, but NO talk of fish! So does that then mean that the orangutan in the picture is hunting, not for the sake of necessity, but for the sake of sport? I wonder what could be said about the ethics of this?
Oh, oops. URL:http://www.orangutanrepublik.org/ourei/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=28