Yet another reason to hate the human race.

ALL OF MY HATE to Dr. Reeder.

No seriously, screw her.

And then she probably disected it and donated the remains to McDonalds...


I also made a funny for this:




Feel free to fill in the blanks. I'm too tired to think of something atm.

Huh. Misanthropy is a thing here?

I'm not an animal person but that is just friggin' WRONG!!!!!!

I think you guys need to gain a little insight before flipping. This particular bat was killed, yes. But because of the sacrifice, that's how they determined it to be a new genus in the first place (Niumbaha) - through cranial and morphological comparisons to other Vesper bats in its family. I would agree that it is indeed a bit sad considering it is a rare species it isn't really a possible process with current tech where it can be alive and achieve the same results with accuracy. In the end though it wasn't an unimportant death. So either relax, or don't support scientific discoveries with new or little known species. Something needs to give. Doesn't matter to me which you go with, but I'm here to point that it can't be both.

CT scans would have been just as effective for studying the bat, and it could have been tagged and re-released back into the wild.
The bat was killed because dead specimens are easier and cheaper to study.
A beautiful and rare creature died because the people that claim to love these animals didn't want to go to the extra effort of keeping it alive.
Scientific curiosity has never been and will never be a good enough reason to take any life.

I completely agree that alternative methods without killing the creature are the best way to go. I cannot deny that because there are many benefits in tracking specimens. However that's kinda when the thinking breaks down IMO. I'm not too certain specifically what kind of process is necessary nor if a CT scan really would have been sufficient. And it's possible they did a CT scan in preliminary exams. Possibly for the cranial analysis but I don't know what else they needed to do. I do know that for certain morphological analysis there is no other way but to physically go into the body of the creature. However I think that it's a little tasteless to just attack her name without knowing the background. But it's fine to disagree with that process. But anyway, what makes people want to go to arms over this? You'll all forget about it in a few days. Is science less important than say grabbing a burger? Oh but bats are soo cute, is that what makes taking a life bad? Serious question. How do you justify it?

How do I justify it?
It's very simple, really.
I don't believe in killing without reason, and there was no reason for that incredibly rare creature to die.

Dr. Reeder has proven herself to be either an exceptionally cruel or exceptionally ignorant person many times in the past.


These pictures show Dr. Reeder smiling as she holds bats in a way that forcibly stretches their wings.
Even a novice bat conservationist can tell you that holding a bat in such a manner is both excruciating and dangerous to the bat, as the stretching can cause the fragile bones in their wings to break.

He's just too cute why?????

So, I gave this a lot of thought, and I want to say that what follows are my feelings on the subject and are not a criticism of other people's thoughts or ideas. I don't believe in taking the lives of other beings. I wouldn't do it unless I thought it absolutely necessary; the fact that I am a pacifist vegetarian represents this fact, which I take into consideration in my everyday life. All life is precious.

I do see some people ranting here about the needless taking of life, and using some strong language at that. Many of us take life needlessly; in truth, adult humans can live healthy lives without consuming meat, especially in the quantities that our society seems to advocate. It may seem strange, and some people disagree and cite various scientific findings as their evidence, but other scientists have downright proven that there are many ways to live without it, particularly when one is at least a middle-class person in a first world country. Ultimately, I don't push this on people because I don't believe in forcing my ideology onto others. Not everyone could or should live their life the way I live mine.

The point of my comparison is this: we all take life. I have realized, through my experiences as a vegetarian, that while we can all lessen the ways in which we take life we have yet to erase this impact. It isn't inevitable, but we do it anyway. I can disagree with Dr. Reeder, but she is nowhere near the worst of the worst. Many of her colleagues practice similar methods. I would rather write her a letter detailing my concerns, were this a priority to me, than rage without consequence.

I agree, to some extent, with everyone who has posted here. But every time I went back to re-read a comment, I could not help but think of the greater, more massive losses of life that so many of us are not protesting. This killing of the bat for whatever perceived scientific purposes the doctor has only strikes us because it's out of the ordinary. At risk of paraphrasing Heath Ledger in his arguably most famous role, we would rather be enraged by the death of one bat than the death of another thousand infants by diarrhea in third world countries or another soldier being shot in a war that might have been avoided, and this is because those things are ordinary to us. We can justify any loss of life in any way we want; we can all be Dr. Reeder in more or less extreme ways.

We can be sympathetic to all loss of life. We can be upset by all death. There is no limit to the human heart's ability to love and care for this world and its denizens. but I want to recognize that while this issue may get some extra rage because it seems to very out of the ordinary, it isn't. It has been happening for a very long time. Some people agree with it and some don't. I've chosen not to direct my anger at someone who is clearly one player in a larger game.

In conclusion, I would rather Dr. Reeder avoid this in the future whenever possible. I've drawn a lot of parallels in this post that could upset a lot of people. But I'm not upset if other people see this issue differently than me; that's the whole point. We're all just cogs in the clock. If we fight each other, we'll never solve the problem. So, I'm glad we have these discussions.