Polar bear is a random example f sakes. SMH. Replace polar bear with "X" animal. Happy? Now you get the point? ANALLLLLLLLLL. Either way, my point being, we are part of the problem no matter how small the scale is, so this thread is a pure joke.
Yes. We are part of the problem. I get that, and no one is contradicting you. I strongly agree that we are destroying the planet. This thread was created to try and notify some less knowledgable people on the fact that honeybee populations are going down, likely because of human intervention. We're not argueing over that, we're arguing over the fact that you get mad and call us all a bunch of hypocrites and say that no one cares for the animals. that's a pretty cynical view, and its not at all true. No one here is arguing that humans are a bunch of higher beings above the fray, we all agree that we have caused at leats some damage. I just don't like how you start ranting about how the hobby is a bunch of animal hating hypocrites enslaving animals without a care about our effect. The number one rule among antkeepers is honestly to limit your colony number. While we do take them from the wild, we keep in mind how many queens we can take, or how many other animals we can legally take before it harms the environment.
I never said animal hating. Selfish would be a better word though. I am embracing it though. Funny though, many here try to find some sort of justification or excuse to their hobby. Sorry, but "keeping in mind how many queens we can take," is the ideal example of bs. It's like trying to be "considerate," but not really. Embrace what you don't want to be. Embrace it.
I don't understand you at all, but sure. I'll admit I participate in this hobby this for myself, just like most people with pets. But that's not the point. The point is not that some people try to justify the hobby which has no justification and no need of justification(Its just a hobby. Does fishing require justification?) The point of this argument is that you barge in calling us hypocrites and refusing to believe that we actually care about the conditions of these animals which are dying out. "Why are we even talking about how we care about insects?" because we do care. Your evidence for your cynical claim that we just sit back and pretend to feel sorry is that we take queens from the wild and attempt to raise them. That proves absolutely nothing besides the fact that we like the ants for one reason or another. While we have no strong emotional connection to the ants, we still care for them, and try to make them happy, or at least content. Sure, bad stuff happens, but we never turn a blank face to that. I'm not a very emotional person, but I hate watching the queens I tried to raise die slowly in front of me because of mold or something else. Yes, I've already accepted that we are selfish, we do this hobby for our own purposes, but your claim used to be that we don't care for the insect populations. Read your own post. Now, for whatever reason, you're ranting about us giving false noble justifications for keeping ants, "to understand them" or whatever. Sure, some people give those reasons, and for some people, that may very well be the reason. I don't think scientists go spend days in thee jungle suffering constant risk of danger and thousands of dollars to bring back ants "just for entertainment." In their case, it is for understanding. Maybe not our case. But then, I already stated that. Its true for a lot of us. But, I'm repeating myself here, that's not what this is about. This is about you saying that we don't care about the insect populations, calling us hypocrites, getting mad at us, and just making false assumptions. You can make assumptions, but don't try to keep pushing on them even if its been shown to be wrong. It makes us feel like you're just here to insult us, which is basically what you're doing at this point.
FYI, I didn't call everyone in this forum a hypocrite. I think that is too strong of a word. Delusional without the mental disorder part sounds better. Haha. But, I gotta say, if you claim you "care" for ants, yet capture one for a hobby's sake, and assuming it isn't a conservation effort to capture and release, as offensive as it might sound, you just might fall under the delusional category. It is what it is. You can't deny it. I can't deny it. I know I am no saint. If I was to say "We got to do something to save these species," I'd probably think back at what I said and laugh at myself. Either way, if you're offended, I apologize, but I am just trying to instill the truth to those might disagree with my notion.
You really don't get my point. First, yes, you are calling everyone on this forum a hypocrite, even if you didn't mean to. The tone and wording of your comment is just asking why we are pretending to care for the animals when we capture ants. Definition of hypocrisy is doing or saying something that contradicts an earlier action, so what you stated. Second, we do care for the ants. If we didn't care we would be like some of the other ant keepers in the hobby, those that put a semi claustral queen in a bare bottom plastic tub and expect them to lay. Again, while we usually have no emotional connection to the queens, we still concern ourselves with the ant's welfare and go out of our way to try and meet their needs. That's still a form of care, no matter how small. While we don't treat them like our cats and dogs, we still treat them with care. No one wants their ants to die, we all hate that experience, so thus we care for their health. We love it when the colony has successes, and we hate it when something bad happens. Third, again, caring for the animals does not mean going out and dedicating your life to them by "capture and release", mostly because, again, they don't need that level of care. Ants are not in danger of loss of habitat or human competition, so there's no need to relocate the ants. If ants for whatever improbable reason stopped being so successful, I would personally slow down the hobby, and I think most other people would too. While yes, there are uncountable irresponsible ant keepers out there, they usually get kicked out by other keeper's criticism or learn from the more experienced peoples examples. I still don't get how you haven't understood that yet. Ants are probably not going to be affected by losing 3% of their reproductives to ant keepers from a population that pretty much doubles every year, or at least repopulates all losses. and yeah, we do gotta try to save these species. Just the species that actually need saving. If ants eventually fall into that category, the worlds pretty much already dead. But if that does happen, ok, we'll stop ant keeping. Actually, we could just raise reproductives of easy species in captive then release mature colonies. Like your capture and release. Fourth, you think hypocrite is too strong of a word but then you say everyone on the forum is short of a mental disorder figuratively.
