Sharks
Added 2017-07-12 09:32:14 +0000 UTC Many people go around defending cetaceans and wolves, saying they are misunderstood and endangered. While some cetacean and wolf subspecies/species are in fact endangered, people only focus on the american grey wolf and iconic cetaceans like the bottlenose dolphin and the humpback whale. Considering how none of said animals is in fact endangered, it seems rather silly to me that they're the icons of preservation.
On the other hand, there's a decent, intelligent predator that is largely ignored: the shark. Sharks are about as intelligent as mammals and birds, and are very far from the antisocial, mindless machines they are portrayed in media as. Sharks show complex behaviors like playing and are generally quite curious by nature. Not to mention that the vast majority are harmless. Less people die each year by shark attacks than people killed by horses or cows.
In ecological terms, are even more important than cetaceans, being the main scavengers in most ecosystems they occur, and controlling populations of sea mammals.
Yet, human beings keep killing sharks for their fins, wasting the rest of the animal, and keep ignoring them. Shark fishing has even increased across the years, and there's little to no legal actions that protect sharks. Not even iconic species like the great white or the basking sharks are truly protected, even in spite of their clear charisma.
Thus, I find it slightly hypocritical from any person claiming to like animals bitching around to save whales and wolves when many, many sharks are killed off each year. This upsets me, somewhat.
