Well, sometimes that’s true. But since the notorious “food chain” is shaped like a steep pyramid, with prey far outnumbering predators, and predators often going hungry, most animals in the wild live much longer and more enjoyable lives than popular documentaries would have us believe.
For animals bred, confined, and slaughtered by humans, on the other hand, life is usually a hell of constant and severe pain, fear, boredom, torture, and terror. Further, unlike predation in the wild, where nonhumans kill almost only for survival reasons, humans kill for the trivial reasons of pleasure, amusement, convenience, and blind tradition.
One might wonder how many innocents are unnecessarily and intentionally killed annually by humans. Statistics published by the United Nations claim 56 billion annually, and that’s only those who live on land. Add sentient beings from the water and you can at least triple that number to 168 billion.
So, that’s 3.2 billion weekly; 460 million daily; 19 million hourly; 319,635 per minute; and 5,237 per second that humans intentionally and unnecessarily kill innocents.
When we say that “Nature is red in tooth and claw,” we’re ridiculously overstating the case. But it’s an understatement to say that “Humans are red in knife and gun.” No species is more violent than us, and the vast majority of our violence is unnecessary.
You can opt out of this moral and cultural imbecility: Be vegan for life.
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