Barbaric customs still abound

After reading your article about the practice of catching sharks, slicing off their fins for an expensive disgusting soup, and throwing the helpless animal back into the sea, I could hardly believe the quote by the professor who declared this to be a custom of his culture.

There are also cultures that continued to slaughter rhinos to extinction, believing that their horns are an aphrodisiac for humans. Then there is the culture that hunts dolphins in their breeding grounds, endangering the future of the species and whales in spite of a worldwide moratorium against doing so, because their flesh is an expensive delicacy.

And let us not forget the culture that pays poachers to slaughter elephants for their tusks for the ivory trade, decimating their numbers.

It is beginning to be obvious that homo sapiens is the most destructive of all the creatures of the planet Earth, even toward ourselves, and ancient barbaric customs aren’t helping to save the humans or the animals.

Marilyn Fleming

Libertyville