h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hmm, I think I disagree on that, since I don't think it actually bothers anything how long it lived once its actually dead, which is the only time it could know, except it can't.

I always tend to think a persons argument is running out of steam when they focus on one small point of the opponents argument to the exclusion of all other points, but anyway to keep pendant happy and for your information;


Green turtles are one species hunted for human consumption, acording to http://www.insideindonesia.org/edit80/p18-19back.html and from http://www.earthtrust.org/wlcurric/turtles.html
"The life span of sea turtles in not known. Hawaiian green sea turtles seem to grow very slowly in the wild, usually taking between 10 and 50 years to reach sexual maturity - 25 years is the average. Their long period of maturation helps to explain why it takes sea turtles so many years to recover from a substantial population decline..."

So probably a similar lifespan or longer, than humans, if sexual maturity is only reached at an average of 25 years.

Huh, that's funny, cause I usually think that when someone fails to back up their central point with facts *cough* that they never had an argument to begin with. And then when they continually substitute "sea-turtle" for anything relevant to the discussion, because the sea-turtle is a more sympathetic animal (even though it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand), well then I *know* they never had an argument to begin with.

Pass the turtle please!

"fails to back up their central point "

Excuse me? No, it was *never* my central point. It was an aside. Check back through the thread for the correct context. It was an additional reason, why in my opinion eating this particular animal was wrong.

*You* focused in on this one point.

If i had said in my first post to this thread. "The green turtle reaches sexual maturity at between 10-50 years old, but this and/or other turtles can live anything up to a couple hundred years- no-one really knows for sure.."
Instead of the more vague "long lived species".. Would that have made any difference to my point? Sorry i wasn't specific enough for you.

The confusion is arising due to the fact that this topic is being discussed across 2 threads. Perhaps it was my main point on this thread, but not in the overall context of the 'it's ok to mistreat animals for fun' discussion elsewhere. I'm mature enough to admit error there.

You may smugly punch the air and notch up a point. I still stand bye my assertion that it is more wrong to kill an intellegent and/or long-lived species than a short-lived dim-witted one.

OK, I don't know about the other thread that you're referring to

(punches air smugly, notches up point)

(punches air smugly, notches up point)

Well quite. Cheers for being honest

Well to be fair its pretty commonly known that just about all tortoises, turtles, and indeed terrapinsare pretty long lived. Its not a bit assumption.

There may also have been a terminology problem. In the UK, tortoise meeds land Chelonian, terrapin means fresh water Chelonian and turtle means oceanic Chelonian. Thus a turtle is a sea turtle by definition. This case is a bit strange, because normally terrapins are the ones that get eaten.