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Number Fallacy
The number fallacy is the mistaken belief that because some creatures, eg foxes, coyotes, kangaroos, are numerous it is all right to kill them.
. Some animals are plentiful, like foxes, pigeons and kangaroos. The number fallacy says that because there are lots of them it is all right to kill them. This mistaken belief is especially entrenched among conservationists and hunters. Foxhunters say it is all right to kill foxes because they grow like weeds. The hunters do not notice the suffering they inflict on individual foxes or the immorality of cutting short a potentially long life. Wild foxes (Vulpes vulpes) can live for seven plus years but few live beyond 18 months of age where humans persistently kill them.
Even the existence of vast numbers of animals is not an infallible guide for their sport killing and conservation culling. The bison (Bison bison) in North America covered the plains in their millions and overhead the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) flew literally in their billions. There were so many bison and pigeons that they seemed without number and people killed and killed them. The bison and the passenger pigeon are two of the most powerful symbols of humanity's destruction of nature and indifference to the animal world. Belated thinking eventually saved the bison from extinction when down to the last few hundred individuals. Early European settlers described the bluish-grey passenger pigeon as countless and infinite and that their migratory flights. Speeding along at 100 kilometres per hour (60 mph) flocks of the bird darkened the sky overhead for days. Estimates at the beginning of the European settlement of America put the passenger pigeon at three billion to five billion individuals, possibly numbering over a quarter of the total number of individual birds living in America. One nesting site in Wisconsin was said to contain 136,000,000 birds covering 2,225 square kilometres (850 square miles).
However, the birds could not withstand hunters shooting them and the destruction of their habitat. Their use as bushmeat for city markets was especially severe. Bird collectors at one nesting site in Michigan slew 50,000 birds every day over three months for the meat trade. The fate of the passenger pigeon was a tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons is a resource that everyone overuses but no one looks after so that ultimately it is severely degraded. Laws to save the passenger pigeon were too late and ineffectual. The last bird died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914 aged 29 years of age. Several searches and rewards for survivors came to nothing. Taking the number fallacy to its logical conclusion, you would have to apply it to the human species, because it's members outnumber even the once teeming passenger pigeon. ›› To Entries & Home |
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