Originally Posted by Socks

Huggles, ben.. That's my point really, I said funny how *we* work.. I have a dog too, I love him to death, it sickens me to see this picture.. Yet I'd gladly stick a hook through a fishes head for the hundredth time like it was nothing..

Why do we value certain animals much more than others? Is it solely their ability to be cute? If I picture a vicious, angry dog in my head.. I still don't want to see it with a hook through its nose, and wouldn't wish it upon him.. Is it just that we've become close to certain animals?

Just interesting how the nearly exact same thing can elicit two entirely different responses from the same person. It's still an animal on a hook, yet it's so completely different.

For this reason, I think it's ridiculous to judge people from halfway across the world for things like this. To them, this just made sense. They don't view dogs the same way we do, they are street scavengers. Even if you have a dog there, it's not a pet, it would never be allowed in the house, etc. (generalising, I'm sure someone there has a pet dog) but y'know what I'm saying? My wife used to really dislike cats, because she's from Mexico and they never had a pet cat.. To them cats are kinda scary, since they only encounter them wild on the street.

Anyways my point is that it's quite often we find ourselves outraged at the acts of someone from another culture, because all we do is compare that same situation to our own life and those around us, and say "that's barbaric".

However many of us do VERY similar barbaric things on a regular basis, but they're considered normal because it's customary and common. What right do we have to say the fish's life is any less valuable? If we watched it hatch from an egg, survive as a minnow, and grow to a big fish.. We might care about it.. And then to see someone just net it up and stick a hook through it's head just for the chance of catching an even bigger fish, might make us upset..

But alas. I'm not against people putting fish hooks through heads, just sayin.. I gotta go to the store, I'm mixing vegetables with dead pig and dead chicken to make soup.