Disgusting.
Cars actually have killed people in Ohio, but you don’t see police rounding up and destroying all cars “before they kill someone.”
That’s pretty much how they handle the much more dangerous “crazy person waving a gun” scenario – cover him with real guns while trying to resolve thing peacefully.
Every year 10,000 are killed by lightning–when are we going to climb Mount Olympus and wrestle the bolts away from Zeus before he kills again?!
Latest report is that they have all but 3; they are missing a mountain lion, a grizzly bear and a monkey.
If I had to face off with a grizzly I would prefer the rifle to a tranquilizer gun. As noted it could take a few minutes to knock it out, and you probably need to be closed to the bear than I would be comfortable. Plus, bulletproof vests don’t protect you from claws and teeth.
Also, these animals have been raised on a private farm; we have no clue how they have been treated and how they act. They might not even be fit to live in a zoo. Finally, grizzly bears, mountain lions, giraffe, and camels aren’t endangered anymore and cheetahs are even in the lowest “threatened” category these days. They aren’t out shooting escaped dodo someone had hidden in a basement.
Eh, humans are the most populous large animal on the planet, and we’re allegedly doing this to prevent the possibility one of them might come to harm.
The giraffes can come at you with their prehensile tongues if you don’t stay out of range. 
I keep my Toyota Sienna caged up at night so that it doesn’t get loose and go on a rampage. Which it will absolutely do, given the slightest provocation.
Cars are not sentient beings capable of independent action, fear, panic, and rage. Lions, tigers, and bears are.
It depends.
When we want to eat or experiment on animals, we tell ourselves they are NOT sentient beings capable of independent action, fear, panic, and rage.
When we want to shoot them with cheap, widely-available bullets instead of somewhat-more-expensive, less-common tranquilizer darts, we argue the reason is that they ARE sentient beings capable of independent action, fear, panic, and rage.
We like to have it both ways.
edited to add: the system “cars controlled by human drivers” certainly make some decisions out of fear, panic, and rage.
No. Cars do not make decisions. Not even cars controlled by human drivers.
Human drivers make decisions.
I seem to recall that a giraffe can kick a lion to death. It would surprise me if one could not do the same to a human with ease.
[Tonto]
What’s this we shit, white man?
[/tonto]
I tell myself no such lie when I am eating meat, or hunting an animal I intend to kill and eat. (I’d not hunt an animal unless I was going to eat it, and I’m not a biologist so experimenting is not a live issue for me.)
Again, please lose the we shit. I’m not trying to have it both ways. I would have preferred that the animals be captured by non-lethal means, but I’m not willing to risk the lives of the public or the officers charged to capture them to wait until tranq guns and persons trained in their use were available. Non-human animals are less important to me than human animalsl, because I am the latter.
Also, please note that I called lions, tigers, & such sentient, not sapient. That wasn’t an accident.
Somebody has been playing Jumanji again.
Which isn’t a bad thing depending on your preferences.
I bet they were upset about the ethanol.
Another great example of why states should have, and enforce, exotic animal possession laws.
Everybody can help: just don’t patronize zoos unless they are AZA-accredited.
Mencius Moldbug already covered this issue:
Nice metaphor.
Just saw Jungle Jack Hanna on the afternoon news giving a press conference along with the sheriff of the county I grew up in. (This whole thing is so surreal.) Hanna was clearly very broken up about the whole thing, and was in tears a couple of times, but seems to strongly support the sheriff’s “shoot to kill” decision.
Someone on my Facebook feed posted a photo showing dozens of the dead animals laid out in a field, and it kind of sucked a lot of the humor away for me. (Though, OK, not all.)
That was so awesome! The inside kitty cat was all “HA! I WIN!! LOLZ!” And the mountain lion was all “How YOU doin’ sexy little thang?”
The reason so many were killed is because they were loosed in the night. Police and zoo officials were afraid that an animal, if shot with a tranq, would run into the night, get lost, pass out and then eventually wake up pissed off.
Today Columbus Zoo officials have managed to capture 6 animals alive. They didn’t say which animals were taken to the zoo.
Here is the latest breakdown:
Killed
18 Bengal Tigers
17 Lions
8 Bears
1 Wolf
Still Loose
1 Wolf
1 Monkey
The monkey may carry disease and will, therefore, be killed when found.
There’s only about 2000 Bengal tigers in the whole fricking world.
I still support the sheriff’s decision to kill 'em, but if the idiot who loosed them hadn’t killed himself already, I’d be tempted to.