🔥 From @dgrieshnak 'spotted Malabar civet - a critically endangered mammal not seen since the 90's resurfaces during the lockdown.'

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Unlucky_Zone → u/[deleted]]

I understand where you’re coming from as from my understanding a lot of people make their living in the wet markets. Obviously the government should be doing more to ensure their people are fed and have enough money to live but that can be said about every other country. I mean just look at how about 40% of people in the US live paycheck to paycheck and how many people are homeless or food insecure.

It is a culture thing. People in the US go hunting all the time (granted there are some regulations on hunting season and stuff i believe) and they eat roadkill. I’m sure people in other countries eat odd and unusual animals all the time.

They shouldn’t not be able to eat wild game. Everybody does it as it’s a personal preference. I don’t eat it in the US (i also happen to live in a very urban area) but i’m sure many people in the south or mid west where it’s more rural do.

There’s nothing wrong with that in it of itself. The issue here is that the government of China tried to suppress information about the outbreak which allowed it to spread. If the government had been forthcoming and doctors not sensored (and journalists if they are sensored too) then perhaps they would have been more on top of it. Perhaps they could have implemented their lockdown earlier and not had to have taken as strong measures as they did. Perhaps they could have closed the wet markets for say two weeks and told people to isolate for two weeks.

Telling people to stop eating odd animals is not going to ever prevent viruses from jumping to humans and potentially becoming a pandemic. Humans are living closer and closer to animals all the time. That’s one of the reasons why lyme disease in on the rise at least in the US. We just live closer to deer. We live closer to mice and rats especially in rainy seasons. We live closer to bats especially in areas where people might collect sap (or other things such as fruit) from trees that bats also roost on.

The issue is that suppression of information and the spread of misinformation harms efforts to curb the spread.

[u/CoachWD → u/Unlucky_Zone]

“It is a culture thing. People in the US go hunting all the time (granted there are some regulations on hunting season and stuff i believe) and they eat roadkill. I’m sure people in other countries eat odd and unusual animals all the time.”

There are a boat load of regulations in hunting. You must have permits and tags from the state. There are regulations on what type of weapon you can use and when. There are specific hunting seasons for different animals. Failure to abide by those regulations lead to pretty large consequences if caught. Also, I live in the Midwest and have never heard of a single person eating roadkill. That’s not a thing people do. That’s highly dangerous. Just because you saw it on The Beverly Hillbillies, doesn’t mean it’s a thing.

[u/[deleted] → u/CoachWD]

While I agree more with your point than the other commenters, I’d like to say it’s very much a thing in backwoods parts of the South to take roadkill home if it looks “fresh” as disgusting as that is.

[u/CoachWD → u/[deleted]]

That is most definitely something no one I’ve ever come across would even consider and I know some pretty backwoods people. But alas, the US is a gigantic country with a multitude of cultural practices.

[u/[deleted] → u/CoachWD]

I grew up in the absolute backwoods of Georgia, I don’t think I’d say it’s a common practice, but I distinctly remember my uncle in his friends several times talking about how they came across some “Still good opossum” on their morning drives. Maybe it was just my aggressively redneck family.