# How many animal lives is one human life worth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 19, 2009, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662 "2009-04-19T22:45:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mutantmoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a87d85/32.png) [@mutantmoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mutantmoose)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/21 "2009-04-20T03:40:02Z")
> [@](#): > > That’s just factually false. And while I could dig up some internet videos of hippos fighting, or a biology citation about monkeys killing each other for territory, or a simple wilderness guide about the lethality of randy moose, Yeah there’s obviously going to be loads of footage of animals fighting. But I’m talking about the normal course of events, in the generality of animals. Some animals do die in some of those fights but there is no animal where that is the norm. Most fights with most animals end up in a strange truce (unless it’s over food or self-defence). Even monkeys - most of their fights are all show. > [@](#): > > let’s do something else instead. Let’s explore why it is important to you that animals be these benign creatures. Shall we? Did you have pets as a child? They’re not benign creatures. They’ll kill you in a second - if they think they can eat you or if you’re a threat. I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial, just generally accepted fact. Maybe one of the more animal knowledgable people on here will come along and confirm? ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/22 "2009-04-20T03:45:41Z")
> [@mutantmoose](#): > > I would. In fact I’d go further and apply it to all animals, even the simplest mollusc. …\… Conflicts between animals generally involve courtly dances which have evolved so that a winner can be found without anyone actually getting hurt. \ These majestic clams, splendid in their shiny new calcium carbonate edifices, will often battle ferociously over territory. Of course, the mighty clams rarely fight to the death. Indeed, the loser of this battle now retreats into the surf, hoping to fight again another day. \ ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/23 "2009-04-20T04:00:12Z")
> [@mutantmoose](#): > > Even monkeys - most of their fights are all show. Chimpanzees actually practice a primitive form of warfare. Patrols of young, male chimps will circle the perimeter of their territory, and kill chimps from another pack if they can catch them alone in the border area. Having done so, they’ll patrol that border more aggressively, hoping to catch more stragglers, occasionally penetrating the other pack’s territory to do so. If they’re successful a few more times, they’ll mount larger, more aggressive patrols that will take on larger groups of enemy chimps, until they mount a full scale invasion of the core the other pack’s territory. They’ll kill the males and take the females. [Gwynne Dyer, War]. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/24 "2009-04-20T04:16:17Z")
Back on topic… > [@glee](#): > > I’ll generally go with Buddhist respect for all life. Equal respect? As in all life is as worthy as saving as a human’s life? > [@](#): > > Now I will kill mosquitos before they bite me. (Given malaria, that counts as self-defence.) Rationalization. You’re probably aware that your odds of getting malaria due to a mosquito bite in England is almost zero. You most likely kill one that is about to bite you because a little itching for a few days is something you find not worth saving a mosquito’s life over. > [@](#): > > However if some Darwin Award candidate wishes to tease or annoy an animal as dangerous as a polar bear or an elephant, I’m not putting myself at risk to help them. But if you were a sniper, how many polar bears or elephants would you be willing to shoot to save the life of someone that is a potential Darwin award winner? I believe that’s the sort of hypothetical the OP is getting at. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/25 "2009-04-20T04:34:30Z")
Anyone who has any doubts about the danger of chimpanzees should ask [St. James Davis.](http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=st.+james+davis&btnG=Google+Search) Warning - very disturbing photos. Davis thought that chimpanzees were kind, loving, harmless animals that would make a great pet. He found out the hard way how wrong he was - when the chimp ripped off his lips, his foot, his fingers, one of his eyes, and his testicles. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/26 "2009-04-20T04:56:30Z")
Wow. Quite a story. [Worst Chimpanzee Attack Story Ever - Moe the Chimp Owner Attacked](http://www.esquire.com/features/chimpanzee-attack-0409) ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/27 "2009-04-20T05:10:37Z")
Somebody needs to show **mutantmoose** the footage of the Orca pod toying with the baby seals and torturing them to death (David Attenborough’s Blue Planet IIRC). Noble animals indeed. That said, I don’t think there is anything special about a single human being while creatures like polar bears are relatively rare and may be getting rarer. We should do what we can to protect the polar bears life if at all possible, even in cases where a Darwin Award winner wannabe decides to give the bears a coke… Heartless, maybe; but I have never understood why people think human life is sacred. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/28 "2009-04-20T05:23:26Z")
> [@L. G. Butts](#): > > That said, I don’t think there is anything special about a single human being while creatures like polar bears are relatively rare and may be getting rarer. We should do what we can to protect the polar bears life if at all possible, even in cases where a Darwin Award winner wannabe decides to give the bears a coke… Heartless, maybe; but I have never understood why people think human life is sacred. Hypothetical situation: You have to choose if a random human or a random polar bear will be shot and killed. Your choice will have no legal or other ramifications. Would you choose the human to be killed because polar bears are few in number compared to what they once were? ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/29 "2009-04-20T06:13:15Z")
> [@L. G. Butts](#): > > . . . I have never understood why people think human life is sacred. And I have never understood why people don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/30 "2009-04-20T06:29:13Z")
Like you said, humanity is my team. Are you people saying you could watch someone be killed by an animal, if you had the power to save them by killing the animal? Think about that for a minute, because life and death is a pretty big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/31 "2009-04-20T07:00:22Z")
How many animals? Well, I guess I’d kill one - the first time Mr or Ms. Darwin jumps the fence to play with Smokey. I might even do it a second time if the same situation arose. After that I’d be looking for a new job. I wonder what I’d do in the reverse situation - if it were my job to protect endangered animals on a reservation, with lethal force if necessary, and some illegal hunters came through … I’d probably be looking for another job pretty quickly also. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/32 "2009-04-20T07:38:58Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Anyone who has any doubts about the danger of chimpanzees should ask [St. James Davis.](http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=st.+james+davis&btnG=Google+Search) Warning - very disturbing photos. > > Davis thought that chimpanzees were kind, loving, harmless animals that would make a great pet. He found out the hard way how wrong he was - when the chimp ripped off his lips, his foot, his fingers, one of his eyes, and his testicles. Erm… it wasn’t the chimp that had lived with him for 30+ years that did it to him. So, it appears that just like humans, some chimps are more dangerous than others. As to the OP, I’d shoot a person willing to kill an elephant for its tusks quite happily, I’d imagine; a polar bear, on its own turf, just being a polar bear, I’d be far from happy to kill. In the circumstances in the OP’s story, I’d _accidentally_ shoot the human. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/33 "2009-04-20T07:50:56Z")
> [@mutantmoose](#): > > Yeah there’s obviously going to be loads of footage of animals fighting. But I’m talking about the normal course of events, in the generality of animals. Some animals do die in some of those fights but there is no animal where that is the norm. Most fights with most animals end up in a strange truce (unless it’s over food or self-defence). Even monkeys - most of their fights are all show. Most fights between humans are all show and posturing and don’t result in the killing or maiming of any of the participants. Most fights between humans end in a strange truce with nobody being seriously injured, if any real injuries even occurred. > [@](#): > > Conflicts between animals generally involve courtly dances which have evolved so that a winner can be found without anyone actually getting hurt. > > Most animals will do almost anything to get out of a fight. Conflicts between humans generally are mostly posturing that have evolved to result in nobody actually getting hurt. Most humans will do anything to get out of a fight. > [@](#): > > Obviously animals will eat other animals as food but that’s a logical, sensible reason to eat something - there’s nothing unnoble or dishonourable about it. It’s a perfectly good reason to eat something. > > But fights, they don’t do them. Not unless there’s a specific reason. Food or self-defence. You’re assigning traits to animals that are simply untrue. Animals will kill interspecies and not eat the kill, and will kill intraspecies for territory, mating rights, or to eliminate infants of their own species who they did not breed themselves. [Goggle of lions+ infanticide](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=lions+infanticide) just as an off the cuff example. You could replace ‘lion’ with a great many other species of noble animals and find that mature adult males of the species kill defenseless infants of their own kind simply because they aren’t of their bloodline. The assignment by you of noble traits to animals that they simply don’t possess reads a lot like the concept of the noble savage, and hits the same flaws. The only time that humans will kill each other in large numbers is in organized warfare, and even then it involves overcoming the extreme ingrained reluctance of the typical human being to actually kill another human being. ---
**Author:** ![Claptree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58f4c7/32.png) [@Claptree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claptree)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/34 "2009-04-20T08:04:59Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > In the circumstances in the OP’s story, I’d _accidentally_ shoot the human. Ah, a mercy killing. Putting her out of her misery. I like it. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/35 "2009-04-20T10:11:45Z")
> [@mutantmoose](#): > > Obviously animals will eat other animals as food but that’s a logical, sensible reason to eat something - there’s nothing unnoble or dishonourable about it. It’s a perfectly good reason to eat something. > > But fights, they don’t do them. Not unless there’s a specific reason. Food or self-defence. Are you aware that, in the wild, polar bears consider humans to be prey and will deliberately stalk, eat, and kill people? Healthy bears do this, unlike tigers and lions where the man-eaters tend to be injured, ill, or old. The bear that attacked the lady in the OP didn’t view her as a threat, he viewed her as _dinner_, because that’s what we are to polar bears. We are food. (Granted, we’re apparently not as tasty as seals, but clearly that matters little to a hungry bear seeing an opportunity) I’m rather surprised she survived. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/36 "2009-04-20T10:56:45Z")
There are two issues here. One of them is saving the human’s life, and the other is putting the animal down because it tasted blood. I’m going to say that in _most_ zoos, the zookeepers are capable of tranqing the critters fast enough to save Mr. “Hug The Panda” Darwin’s life, provided they have a minimal amount of bad luck. (I’m sure some case can be made involving multiple coffee breaks and a call of nature that’d allow it to fail.) And they should. Mr. Darwin is a complete moron, but if you can save him, you probably should. The question is, should you destroy the animal because it’s tasted human flesh? Now, I can understand the arguments for lions. There’s a long history of ‘man-eaters’. I’m not sure if the arguments are that solid, mind you, but I know they’re out there. Lions are apex predators, and they can generally get out of their cages _really well_ if they’re motivated. I’m not so sure about the other animals. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/37 "2009-04-20T11:50:56Z")
Actually I came into this thread hoping to try to answer the thread title, which is a bit different from the later introductory text. So to answer the title: Q. How many animal lives is one human life worth? A. As many animal lives as will make it significantly difficult for at least one other human (not the one whose life we are considering), as a summed total, to continue living. For example, one the one side of the balance we have the single human life, and on the other side we have X number of animals. It might be just a few, i.e., Muffy the seeing eye dog who has bonded with her owner since birth, the ox belonging to the family from deep interior Laos, and the stockhorse that poor cowhand Marty rides. Of course, life doesn’t work like that, but that’s my hypothetical answer. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/38 "2009-04-20T12:02:26Z")
It’s not a question that can be boiled down to a simplistic mathmatical equation. How many cows have died over the past year because I like steak (correct answer, not enough)? The zoo is responsible for the safety of all their visitors, regardless of how stupid they are. They would be expected to kill the animal if it came down to it. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/39 "2009-04-20T12:35:23Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > The zoo is responsible for the safety of all their visitors, regardless of how stupid they are. They would be expected to kill the animal if it came down to it. It’s not the zoo’s responsibility to psychoanalyse their visitors. If a person is nutty enough to want to feed the animals early, why should an animal suffer? I’d rather have one less fuckwit on the planet than one less polar bear. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662/40 "2009-04-20T13:14:19Z")
Individual vs. individual, humans should be saved at the expense of the animal. Individual vs. species, the human should be sacrificed to preserve the animal species. Species vs. species, I’ll favor human over animal here. Just my rule of thumb. Of course if it was my kid at stake, all polar bears can snuff it. But it’s easier to be rational with stranger’s lives. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-animal-lives-is-one-human-life-worth/493662.md?page=3)