Why I am not a vegan

[AngelofDeath]

Not to mention, carnivores don't just go for old and diseased, they go for whomever falls behind the bigger pack which in many case is perfectly healthy YOUNG animals. Babies and children are constant prey in the animal kingdom. There are some creatures which even live primarily on the young of other creatures.

There are 2 survival behaviors at work here: culling the weak, and the alpha male asserting dominance. I'm not sure which creatures you are referring to who live primarily off the young of other creatures. Are you relating this to the way humans behave?

No I was commenting on the idea that carnivores only go for weak and diseased.

Sure, you can say that, but that is a human label of behaviours. If you went to those animals and explained that their behaviours are because they are culling the weak and the alpha male asserting their dominance it would be quite meaningless to them. I think humans get so caught up in their descriptions and identifiers we forget that we are reasoning and rationalizing things which occur automatically in nature.

I was thinking in particular of creatures that eat the eggs of other creatures, although really, the young are ideal prey for many predators. The example I had in mind was the egg-eating snake whos primary source of food is bird eggs.

My point here is really that animals eating other animals isn't always just survival behaviour such as culling the weak, although of course it is always survival to eat food. Animals hunt for food (sometimes just for fun), they don't care about culling, that is a human assessment of the ecosystem. I guess I want to divide the human categorization of behaviours from the actual life-state of the animals themselves.

I think it's hilarious that humans are trying to justify the behaviours of animals through complex explanations of 'mechanisms'. I'm pretty sure the ecosystem is not a robotic machine and there are variations and blips and mutations that happen all over the place.