Is there a world tradition somewhere for eating dolphins? How about our own, European traditions (or African-American, etc)? I suppose I’m asking, is there a point that we stopped eating dolphin for all of the reasons above, or was it never something that we ate in the first place. Most of the reasons above cite modern sensibilities rather than historical ones.
Dolphin fish (yeah, that’s the normal US name, although for some reason Mahi Mahi is becoming more culturally popular) is delicious. I find that it’s often sold as “dorado” in restaurants and stores, even though that’s the Spanish name for it (well, Mexican anyway – other Latin countries may have their own names).
We went dorado fishing a couple of years ago, but we ran into a pack of marlin and hooked a couple of those instead. We decided to throw them back, but man, if we’d gotten a dorado I’d have figured out some way to cut and pack it. They’re huge fish, and you can get some beautiful steaks and fillets out of them. Nice, white meat.
I got that when he said “I can’t be the only one who does not eat carnivorous mammals on principle. I consider them ‘my kind’” which to me, at least, suggests that “his kind” are the carnivores.
How do you get that? There is not much tradition in western societies of eating cetaceans, although plenty of other cultures do. But we hunted plenty of whales to (or almost to) extinction in the recent past. I can’t imagine someone in 16th century Europe deciding not to eat dolphins because of their brain to body mass ratio.
Note that “dolphin” and “whale” are not meaningful classifications in a scientific sense. Both are cetaceans, of which there are two main varieties: toothed and baleen. Dolphins are just one of the many toothed cetaceans out there, many of which are commonly called whales.
When I was living in Nunavut, I ate some interesting things. Seal was one of them.
To describe the taste of seal… imagine what a cow would taste like if it lived its entire life in salt water eating nothing but fish.
Seal tissue has a similar general appearance as other mammal tissue, but kind of slimy, lots of cartilage and an overwhelming taste of very rich, oily and fishy.
I imagine dolphin would be very similar in terms of taste and texture.
The Inuit who grew up with seal as a staple of their diet loved the stuff. Me - I will spend the rest of my life avoiding it.
I suggest that unless you were introduced to the taste of aquatic mammals as an infant that you do not have, nor will you develop the taste for them.
People probably don’t eat dolphin 'cause it tastes like crap.
That we don’t eat dolphins because we have no tradition of doing so. Same thing with seals, otters, beavers, and any other aquatic mammal for that matter. Postulating that we would eat dolphins if they weren’t intelligent makes no sense when there is an easier explanation. We (Westerners) don’t eat aquatic mammals. Dolphins are aquatic mammals. Therefore we don’t eat dolphins. Your analogy with apes is rather absurd since apes don’t occur in Europe, and they are considered endangered animals. Again, there is no tradition of eating primates of any kind in Europe.
So, why don’t we eat any of the less intelligent aquatic mammals?
Here’s the thing-- humans generally don’t eat predator mammals, whether they are terrestrial or aquatic. Maybe the taste isn’t right, or maybe we’re just used to targeting the more numerous prey species. But if you look at the mammals we do eat, they are almost all herbivore animals for food sources (with maybe a few omnivores thrown in once in awhile). So, dolphins are both aquatic and carnivorous predators, so we don’t need the excuse of their intelligence to explain why we don’t eat them.
Westerners don’t generally eat kangaroos (I realize there will be exceptions) yet they’re as stupid as a football bat and about as common as dirt in Australia. You could shoot them by the thousands and sell roo steaks by the ton but I’ve never seen kangaroo on a menu.
I’m inclined towards the “Emotional attachment” explanation. Pigs are smart, but they’ve been viewed as bacon on four feet for millennia so Westerners are conditioned to think of them as food. Kangaroos are kind of cute.
When I was a kid I once had canned whale meat. As I recall it was extremely dark rich meat. Whale is to beef what duck is to chicken. I didn’t like it; the taste was too strong. This may be due to high glycogen content as an adaptation to anaerobic respiration when diving.
I’m under the impression that pigs will resort to eating anything, even each other, but prefer nuts and things. Bears will eat a few berries and buds here and there but will starve to death without a source of animal protein. Am I wrong?
I’m not sure, but it looks like, in the wild, black bears have a diet of 13± 17% animal matter and 87±17% vegitation. So, while it’s possible they do need animal protein to survive, the majority of their diet is plant matter (which makes them omnivores, relying on both plant an animal matter to survive).
Excuse me, but you are the one who is postulating. You are postulating that even if dolphins weren’t intelligent, that we still wouldn’t eat them. That may or may not be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that Americans, at least, have a cultural aversion to the idea of eating dolphins. Think about it - if the only reason were that we have no tradition of doing so, then the joke that Zoggie posted from Futurama would be nonsensical. Obviously, the joke was written with the expectation that a large portion of the viewing audience would understand the reference.
I suggest you re-read the OP, paying attention to this part:
The question was, “Why is it repugnant?”, not “Is there a tradition of doing so?” To deny that many Americans share a feeling of outrage from the idea of eating dolphins, because dolphins are intelligent, is to be unreasonably argumentative and deliberately obtuse.
Sorry, I still disagree. None of that is germane to my point. If it helps you to relax, I’ll agree that there certainly could be other reasons why we wouldn’t eat dolphins, besides their intelligence. However, these reasons aren’t mutually exclusive. Just because you can think up another possible reason for it does not mean my reason does not exist.
According to my Dad: seal and whale tasted nasty and fishy. More or less exactly like qwest posted. My Dad also said that bear- when it was on a salmon diet- also tasted nasty and fishy and few liked it. But when on a berry diet, bear meat was quite good.
So I think taste is a large part of it. We don’t eat seal and other than the Innuit (etc) we have rarely done so outside a survival situation.
Am I the only one confused here? The OP refers to dolphin fish which are not the intelligent dolphins that ya’ll seem to be talking about… ? I know it’s late but did I miss something?
Do you have any evidence at all for this claim? I can’t think of a single HG group that doesn’t or didn’t eat every damn predatory mammal they could get their hands on. That also extends to opportunistic agriculturists such as New Guineans or American Indians.
Dedicated agriculturalists generally don’t eat predator mammals, but that’s because it is inefficient to have dedicated predatory mammal farms. It is much easier and much more profitable to have a dedicated pig or horse farm than to have a dedicated lion farm.
I really can’t think of any data that supports a view that human generally don’t eat predatory mammals. Humans generally eat what ever they can get. With a few notable exceptions it is only with the establishment of dedicated agricultural communities that broad taboos like “non predatory mammals” are put in place. Before that taboos are only against specific species or narrow suites of species.
Having said that I still wholeheartedly support your point that we don’t; eat dolphins purely for reasons of tradition. Probably the biggest point in support of this is camels. Here is an easily domesticable species, more efficient than cattle in most locales, no more intelligent than cattle and tastes exactly like beef. Yet Americans don’t eat camels and would view the concept of eating camel exactly as they view eating dolphin. It is not because camels are regarded as pets. It’s not because of the taste. It’s not economic. It is purely and completely because of tradition. Europeans have no tradition of eating camel, therefore they don’t; eat camel. Same with dolphins.
I’ve seen Kangaroo meat being sold. My guess is that it isn’t more common simply because it’s unfamiliar to us, and people are afraid to try new things. I’ve honestly never heard anyone say they wouldn’t eat Kangaroo meat because they’re cute, but I’ve heard that a lot about dog and horse meat. I imagine we might not eat pork if it weren’t already so ingrained in our culture to do so. Pigs are intelligent, but not as intelligent as dolphins. After humans, apes and dolphins are really in a class by themselves as far as intelligence goes (or at least what we believe with respect to their intelligence, as imperfect as our understanding of the subject is).
He related a story where he ordered dolphin fish (which is a different, not-so-intelligent species), and observed that people mistakenly thought he was ordering dolphin (the kind like “Flipper”), and were offended. We’re discussing why people are offended by that idea.
“Generally” means not normally, which is the case in most human populations, except maybe the coastal, poler populations. Yes, primitive human societies will eat most anything they get their hands on, but generally that is not a predator species.