I eat meat, but the more an animal’s personality is like a human’s, the less likely I am to eat it. My upper limit is cow, and that’s pushing it.
I can’t eat venison because . . . well, because of BAMBI, dammit!
I couldn’t eat dolphin any more than I could eat Golden Retriever.
Yes we are talking about the mammal ‘flipper’ type of dolphin.
Absolutely not. Same with Shark of any kind.
I was on vacation with my parents when I was 15 (don’t remember where, possibly in Nashville) and we went into this beautiful Aquarium type Restaurant. I should have known right then and there. We went in, sat down, looked at the menu, saw Dolphin Steaks, Shark soup. I looked at my parents and said…You guys can eat here, I’m going back to the hotel. I got up and walked out…they, of course, followed me. They knew I wouldn’t eat in a place that served stuff like that.
I have HUGE moral issues with that. The same reason I don’t eat veal, venison (which my ex mother in law tricked me into eating in spite of my objections to it) or anything else beyond the norm. I eat chicken, some pork and sometimes beef.
While I recognize and respect other people’s moral issues about meat, I firmly push them to the back of my mind. I KNOW where meat comes from, I prefer not to think about it. I am very good at self-delusion and as far as I am concerned, YOUR meat may have come from a poor defenseless animal, but MINE came from a factory complete with styrofoam tray and cling wrap.
As to the OP - I eat chicken, beef and pork, occasionally shrimp, and most vegetables (eggplant and zucchini excepted.) I am not an adventurous eater by any stretch of the imagination, and even within the boundaries of foods I will eat I am very picky (no dark meat chicken, for example, and no offal or miscellaneous non-steak shaped parts.)
Dolphins have the same brain to body mass ratio as humans. They are extremely intelligent animals. The main reason why humans not dolphins rule the planet is probably because we have hands with fingers, and fire doesn’t burn underwater.
I wouldn’t even consider eating dolphin meat, because of their intelligence. IMO it isn’t right to kill an intelligent being for any reason, including for food.
1.) Sure
2.) Of course not
3.) Pffft
4.) Human meat… ridiculously endangered species perhaps… depends how hungry I am.
1A. I’ll stick to meat raised for consumption. While there is not a shortage of free range rats, I don’t particularly care to eat them.
Not really. I guess I answered that in 1A, if I stick to eating animals raised to be eaten, I’m not going to contribute to the extinction of anything (hopefully). However, like in 1A, there are some things I don’t care to eat. Rats mat be as yummy as dolphin or foie gras, but I don’t care to eat them.
No
Yes. Simians, house pets, endangered species, I guess any wild animal which could become extinct if it became a food craze. I don’t think we should eat anything off the face of the earth if we can raise them to satisfy demand.
I really think everybody should watch Denis Leary “No Cure for Cancer”. It has a great skit addressing the dolphin/tuna paradox. I won’t spoil it here.
1 - Y
2 - N
3 - N
4 - Human and endagered species.
Mangetout whale meat does not taste like " mixture of fish and diesel, like whalemeat (is reported to)" and I have eaten whale meat so believe me.
Brain to body mass ratio is not an indicator of intelligence - there are animals with a higher ratio than humans. Dolphin brains are probably as big as they are because they need a lot of brain to process and translate sonar information, and possibly because they may have evolved from a larger animal and kept some of the brain size. Intelligence should be judged by behavior, and dolphins don’t seem to be any more intelligent than any social predator. Their intelligence is comparable to that of wolves, which are really intelligent animals, but not comparable to humans in intelligence.
Meant to say ‘any other social predator’ - it does read like they are the dumbest of the social predators, when I meant they are typical of social predators.
1a. Just not hungry enough to break down that taboo.
Yep - rather creepy actually
Nope
Not eating waste products or placenta - ick ick ick. Done alligator, snake (various), squirrel (ick), etc.
I’m from the country - I don’t have problems with eating animals that were raised to be food. Everything else, depends on how long I’ve gone without food. (And yes, that has been an issue at one point in my life.)
1.Yes
2.no
3.no
4.dog maybe? I don’t know. Depends on how hungry I was.
I would never patronize a restaurant that served dolphin, nor would I buy products from a company that sold dolphin meat.
If I was desparate, i.e. starving, I would eat dolphin meat.
But then if I was starving, kanicbird, I would barbecue you. 
Perhaps not diesel, that was hyperbole, however, there are many reports (from when whale meat was offered for sale here during WW2) of it being unpleasantly oily and fishy in flavour (it may be that this varies considerably with species and the particular cut of meat.)
**URP. **
Yum. Can that be served with a side of veal?
I know this is a poll not a debate. But i just had to question this.
Humans have the highest brain-body mass ratio of any animal. There aren’t any animals with a higher ratio. I’m not sure where you got this idea from? Dolphins ratio is a bit lower, than below that there are other primates like chimpanzees. I’ve tried googling for a cite, but this was the best i could come up with:
http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution/docs/text/text_cult_7.html
Look at figure 7.32 - higher brain-body mass ratios will be towards the upper left of the graph. Its not an ideal cite, but its the best i can do with limited googling skills!
Brain-body mass ratio does seem to be an indicator of intelligence, as least for every animal alive today.
Bats use sonar - they don’t have big brains. And dolphins wouldn’t have kept their big brains unless they used them, otherwise there would be an evolutionary advantage to making them smaller and using those precious resources elsewhere.
I agree - intelligence should be judged by behavior. And dolphins behavior is incredibly complex, far more so than wolves. We still haven’t figured out the sounds they make to one another, and it may be a form of language. Some researchers believe dolphins in captivity have been trying to communicate to us for years.
Although non human intelligence is very hard to judge, it is thought dolphins are somewhere between humans and chimpanzees on the intelligence scale.
1.a. All of these have intelligence at the level of some humans. Would you eat a human of low IQ, or an infant? Dolphins and great apes have about the same intelligence as a 1-2 year old human. So,
Yes, I have moral issues with it, tho
I have no problem with “regular” meat, or exotic meat for that matter, as long as it can’t beat me at chess. (NB I’m not very good at chess.)