580
decision making” that enables them to remain for extended periods of time in
groups at prime feeding locations, e.g., inside homes and throughout hamlets). We
earlier questioned the evolutionary effectiveness of quora, groups in general, without forming a conclusive judgment. It has been key to the evolution of certain social
parasites, and to ants, as has been thoroughly reviewed by Bert Hölldobler and
Edward O. Wilson in their examination of group “selection,” “recruitment,” and
“retrieval,” with no outsized judgment effectively relevant to the case of a large,
bipedal hominid.
26
But twenty-first-century mass industrial killing of animals, multiplied by a global
population increase from approximately 425–461 million in 1500 to 7.8 billion
presently, with far worse a hygienic landscape throughout most of the world, places
the biological burden that comes with human consumption into a domain scarcely
imagined in the worst Hells of Dante or Hieronymus Bosch. And we’re not speaking
of cockroaches.
Even by modern comparisons, the stakes have now radically changed at a level
not seen since the Spanish (Haskell County, Kansas) Influenza Pandemic of 1918,
caused by the H1N1 virus, of avian genetic origin,
27
while researchers currently
search for another “1.67 million unknown [but projected] viruses infecting the
animals of Earth.”
28
And it would appear all but certain that at the heart of this
global human tragedy is a singular, ecological verity: the likely vortex of this epidemic, and more to follow, is humanity’s most sincerely ill-advised obsession with
killing other animals and eating them. This is no “ecological (or inference) fallacy,” that confuses deductions based upon individual behavior being used to char26 See “Collective foraging decision in a gregarious insect,” by Mathieu Lihoreau, Jean-Louis
Deneubourg, and Colette Rivault, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 64 (10): 1577–1587,
doi:10.1007/s00265-010-0971-7. It is alleged that cockroaches were so rife in Renaissance Europe
that on a single Danish Naval vessel in 1611, “32,500” cockroaches were captured. See
“Cockroaches Through History,” by “Halt Pest Control,” January 23, 2018, https://www.haltpestcontrol.com/blog/2018/january/cockroaches-through-history/. Accessed July 18, 2020. See The
Ants, by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990, pp. 294–295, 276, 254, 388, 417, 212.
27 See “History of 1918 Flu Pandemic,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), https://
www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm,
Accessed April 1, 2020. For possible Kansas origins, see Kansas Historical Society, https://www.
kshs.org/kansapedia/flu-epidemic-of-1918/17805, Accessed April 1, 2020.
28 See “Why Scientists Are Rushing to Hunt Down 1.7 Million Unknown Viruses,” by Brandon
Specktor, L6veScience, February 23, 2018, https://www.livescience.com/61848-scientists-huntunknown-viruses.html. For a superb early overview of ecological epidemiology and zoonoses, see,
“Global Change And Human Susceptibility To Disease,” by Gretchen C. Daily and Paul R. Ehrlich,
Annu. Rev. Energy Environ. 1996. 21:125–44 ©1996 by Annual Reviews Inc., https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1996_dailyehrlich_globalchangedisease.pdf. See also,
“How Humanity Has Unleashed A Flood of Zoonotic Diseases,” by Ferris Jabr, The New York
Times, June 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/magazine/animal-disease-covid.
html?smid=em-share, Accessed June 19, 2020.
60 Human Cruelty and SARS-CoV-2
decision making” that enables them to remain for extended periods of time in
groups at prime feeding locations, e.g., inside homes and throughout hamlets). We
earlier questioned the evolutionary effectiveness of quora, groups in general, without forming a conclusive judgment. It has been key to the evolution of certain social
parasites, and to ants, as has been thoroughly reviewed by Bert Hölldobler and
Edward O. Wilson in their examination of group “selection,” “recruitment,” and
“retrieval,” with no outsized judgment effectively relevant to the case of a large,
bipedal hominid.
26
But twenty-first-century mass industrial killing of animals, multiplied by a global
population increase from approximately 425–461 million in 1500 to 7.8 billion
presently, with far worse a hygienic landscape throughout most of the world, places
the biological burden that comes with human consumption into a domain scarcely
imagined in the worst Hells of Dante or Hieronymus Bosch. And we’re not speaking
of cockroaches.
Even by modern comparisons, the stakes have now radically changed at a level
not seen since the Spanish (Haskell County, Kansas) Influenza Pandemic of 1918,
caused by the H1N1 virus, of avian genetic origin,
27
while researchers currently
search for another “1.67 million unknown [but projected] viruses infecting the
animals of Earth.”
28
And it would appear all but certain that at the heart of this
global human tragedy is a singular, ecological verity: the likely vortex of this epidemic, and more to follow, is humanity’s most sincerely ill-advised obsession with
killing other animals and eating them. This is no “ecological (or inference) fallacy,” that confuses deductions based upon individual behavior being used to char26 See “Collective foraging decision in a gregarious insect,” by Mathieu Lihoreau, Jean-Louis
Deneubourg, and Colette Rivault, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 64 (10): 1577–1587,
doi:10.1007/s00265-010-0971-7. It is alleged that cockroaches were so rife in Renaissance Europe
that on a single Danish Naval vessel in 1611, “32,500” cockroaches were captured. See
“Cockroaches Through History,” by “Halt Pest Control,” January 23, 2018, https://www.haltpestcontrol.com/blog/2018/january/cockroaches-through-history/. Accessed July 18, 2020. See The
Ants, by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990, pp. 294–295, 276, 254, 388, 417, 212.
27 See “History of 1918 Flu Pandemic,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), https://
www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm,
Accessed April 1, 2020. For possible Kansas origins, see Kansas Historical Society, https://www.
kshs.org/kansapedia/flu-epidemic-of-1918/17805, Accessed April 1, 2020.
28 See “Why Scientists Are Rushing to Hunt Down 1.7 Million Unknown Viruses,” by Brandon
Specktor, L6veScience, February 23, 2018, https://www.livescience.com/61848-scientists-huntunknown-viruses.html. For a superb early overview of ecological epidemiology and zoonoses, see,
“Global Change And Human Susceptibility To Disease,” by Gretchen C. Daily and Paul R. Ehrlich,
Annu. Rev. Energy Environ. 1996. 21:125–44 ©1996 by Annual Reviews Inc., https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1996_dailyehrlich_globalchangedisease.pdf. See also,
“How Humanity Has Unleashed A Flood of Zoonotic Diseases,” by Ferris Jabr, The New York
Times, June 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/magazine/animal-disease-covid.
html?smid=em-share, Accessed June 19, 2020.
60 Human Cruelty and SARS-CoV-2