Generally seeing predators catch their prey doesn’t really bother me when it’s in the context of just nature doing its thing. There was one instance that sticks in my mind, though. Not exactly “natural prey”, but here’s my story, from some years ago:
At home (northern CA suburbia), around mid-afternoon, I heard an odd wailing noise coming from somewhere outside, either in our yard or a neighbor’s. At first I thought it might be a kid playing outside, but it didn’t sound quite right. It persisted for a few minutes, getting louder, so finally I went outside to take a look. It turned out that a neighbor’s large dog (not sure of the breed, sorry) had gotten loose, chased a mule deer fawn down our driveway, cornered it up against the fence next to our garage, and was mauling it. The wailing I heard was the screaming of the injured fawn.
The dog stopped and turned to look at me when I approached, and I had a brief thought that maybe I hadn’t made the smartest decision ever. I’m not really sure what I expected to happen, but I grabbed a big stick and smacked it against the driveway and shouted “Get out!” and to my relief, the dog actually took off down the driveway and out to the street.
The fawn staggered past me, made it about a quarter of the way down the driveway, crawled behind a bush, and died.
So yeah, that bothered me a bit, although it was more to do with the carelessness of the neighbor and the fact that my kids were pretty small at the time.
I had a pair of dogs who would tag team on ground squirrels, which was the only way to catch them. One would chase them and the other would cut them off from their hole and grab them. Canids kill small prey nearly instantly, by shaking them until their necks snap. The ground squirrels were a terrible pest on that ranch and the rancher was grateful for any kills.
This is just like how wolves and coyotes hunt small game.
I also had a dog (a corgi, who would not have been fast enough for the ground squirrel hunt), who would mouse just like a fox, standing on her hind legs when she heard a rustle in the grass, then leap and pounce. She’d come up out of the grass already swallowing.
Cats ‘play’ with their prey because they are avoiding being bitten by batting them around until they are too weak to do so. Same thing dogs are doing by snatch-and-shake. Predators cannot afford to get injured.
Like the OP, my wife and I took a trip to Kenya a few months ago. We witnessed 2 kills, a lioness took a young gazelle and a cheetah and her cub took a 2 day old giraffe baby. We also watched a pride of lions chowing down on a zebra and the next day a lioness and her 3 cubs with another young giraffe. I thought my wife would be upset by all this but she was aware that this is normal in the wilds of Africa. She is already talking about taking another photo safari to Africa.
Yes, it would bother me somewhat. But I know Mother Nature is a bitch. It wouldn’t make me a vegetarian or vegan, and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
The series Life on Our Planet is very excellent, some of the best TV ever made. The one scene that stays with me is disc-shaped baby jellyfish popping off the stalk one by one, and immediately being grabbed by nearby sea anemones.
I understand wild animals hunt and kill. And most of the time even watching documentaries don’t bother me. I don’t like watching babies get killed but I understand it’s the way of things.
But other people have spoken on the sheer brutality. I once watched a video of a bunch of - I think wild dogs or hyenas - take down a huge buffalo like thing. The thing that stuck in my head and still sticks in my head is, one of the dogs bit off the balls and penis of the buffalo thing. The large creature flailed about desperately…and then lay still, clearly not dead, just giving in to the whole process. Very much alive. I couldn’t watch the rest of the video and sometimes I still recall the moment of hopelessness.
In your examples, I don’t care about any of these: seeing a grizzly snatch a salmon out of a stream? Or a hawk or fox grabbing a squirrel or a rabbit? Birds eating insects?
I do find it sad and disturbing when insects eat warmblooded creatures, like certain bugs big enough to get at hummingbirds, but that’s just personal.
I feel like the guest did fine? They didn’t complain about it or ask anything to be changed. They simply decided they needed a break for their own mental health and took it. Why are we judging him so harshly?
Wild animals can suffer immense pain when they’re injured or attacked—especially when they’re being eaten alive. Fortunately, nature has equipped them with some ways to cope. In high-stress situations the body’s “fight or flight” response kicks in, releasing endorphins—natural painkillers that can somewhat dull the sensation of pain. This allows the animal to keep fighting or trying to escape, even when it’s badly hurt.
How much pain the animal actually feels depends on several factors, including the species, the type of injury, and how its brain processes pain. Sometimes the shock of the attack may even cause the animal to become paralyzed or lose consciousness, which further reduces its pain. That said, animals likely do experience intense pain at first, though their bodies can help mitigate it to some degree.
Not many wild animals die of old age. It’s one of the harsh realities of nature and one that I don’t like witnessing. It’s especially sad when a mother of young offspring is killed, or a newborn who will never get to experience life.
Given their bad behavior in the garden, I would cheer seeing a rabbit or squirrel captured by a hawk. But not too loudly, for fear of the hawk being startled and dropping its prey.
The only time I’ve interfered in a predator/prey interaction was in Texas, when I heard a piteous queeping sound coming from the front porch, where a snake had seized a green tree frog. I rescued the frog before it could be devoured.
I find it disturbing to see mammals or birds killed, particularly the juveniles.
Of course I wouldn’t complain about seeing it in the wild, especially if I sought it out as a safari type thing. It’s nature after all. But it definitely wouldn’t be the highlight of my trip. There’s no rule that says we have to like everything we see in nature.
I remember a program about sea turtles, and they showed newborn turtles emerging from the nest and shuffling towards the ocean. Not one of them made it to the water; all of them were picked off by shore birds.
Lions generally are less efficient predators, eat more scavenged food than spotted hyenas and it is more often lions stealing from hyenas.
Spotted hyenas kinda get vilified a lot, but they’re really quite fascinating critters. Just as social as wolves or lions and probably more complicated in that respect than either, but also one of the few mammals where females are larger and stronger than males and dominate socially. Hyena ‘clans’ are usually fully matriarchal.
Ah, yes - the propaganda piece about a patriarchal absolute monarchy brutally oppressing both their own subservient females and the female-dominated society of the spotted hyenas. Poor, noble Scar saw the truth and tried to reform the system to make it more inclusive (albeit at the cost of the blood of tyrants, such is the price we pay for freedom!), but sadly failed in the end .
Of course in actuality spotted hyenas are even more dynastic than other social predators, with the cubs of matriarchs lording it over subordinate adults. But it does make for a good alternative narrative .
Don’t forget parasites. Internal, external. Plus disease. Rabies, distemper, mange, fleas, ticks, assorted helminths, lice, biting flies and so many, many others. Nature is not idyllic in the slightest bit. Every coyote I’ve seen in my area in the last few years has been visibly suffering from mange.
I saw that too. Was it the one which gave a name to one individual animal in each episode? To get the audience to identify with their struggles? I seem to recall that “Tessie the Turtle” or whoever was the sole individual out of a thousand who made it safely to deep water. I think the program never showed the named animals getting killed by predators.
In Life on Our Planet, the jellyfish-making stalks were growing upside down on the underside of a low rock shelf. The sea anemones placed themselves directly underneath so that their little arms grabbed the baby jellies as soon as they popped off the stalk.
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