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From: bryans@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (B. Charles Siegfried)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Killing for fun
Message-ID: <1991Feb26.233912.22132@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 91 23:39:12 GMT
References: <1991Feb26.202248.26171@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 24

milt@sgi.com (Milton E. Tinkoff) writes:


>I've been told that there is only one animal (besides
>humans) that kills for recreational purposes.  If this
>animal exists, what is it?  Toying with prey and then
>eating it or leaving it as a gift (house cats) doesn't
>count.

	Seems to me that this question has two big fallacies:
One, it assumes that there are other animals smart enough to 
actually separate recreational activities from its daily
life or that we can determine such recreational activity.
We discover how behaviors are integral to behavior all of the
time.  I doubt we can conclusively determine whether or not
any animal activity is recreational.  Secondly, you discount
any playing with unwanted prey.  doesn't it seem like if a 
cat kills a mouse when in fact it isn't hungry, that might be 
a recreational activity?  Maybe its just instinct - maybe its
recreation - how can we tell? (See above).  


__
Bryan Siegfried						   zig@uiuc.edu