Meatless Mouthful–Graham Hill On Saving Cute Animals
Written by Vegetarian Star on March 18th, 2011 in Animal Issues, Celebrity Tweets, Flexitarian.
“Cute animals are treated better than uglier ones. What gives? It’s not like we’re sleeping with them. Most of us, anyway.”
—Graham Hill, founder of green site Treehugger.com and Weekday Vegetarianism, a flexitarian eating plan that only allows meat on the weekends.
Besides being “saved” in terms of adoptability at shelters and not ending up on the dinner plate, depending on the country’s culture, cute animals may also be hogging all the conservation dollars meant to save all threatened species. In the past, the cuter ones have received protection from more non-government organizations and more funds from the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
Slate discusses a paper in Human Biology by David Stokes that examined the cute traits of penguins and found small differences like a shading around the eyes determined what animal walked the cute and ugly line. Stokes suggested that conservationists take the “ugly” animals and focus on their cuter parts to draw attention to them and hopefullly, generate efforts and funds to protect the species.
Sounds like a good, simple idea. Let’s start practicing with one of the uglies. How many cute features can you find in the adorable Aye-Aye below?
Photos: PR Photo, Slate
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March 18th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Looks like a cutie-pie to me-sort of. Either way,it desreves to live.
March 18th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Awww he’s so awkward looking, THAT actually makes him adorable. His ears are so cute and his eyes are piercing. Even if aye-ayes were not cute, they are a nearly threatened species and need to be protected ASAP.