Signs of Intelligence

I'm a foodie ... there, I've said it. Without going through stages of self help, without having any kinds of withdrawal, that admission came easy. I am capable, on my more sloth like days, to watch hours of either the travel channels Man Vs. Food and ponder how one man can eat so much meat and still live, to watching No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. I've bought Mr. Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential for friends, read some of it myself, and reveled in the fact that among foodies, he's like a rockstar. I know that he also has a dislike for me and people like me. I'm a vegetarian you see and he thinks that people like me, don't "get it" about eating meat. I suspect that he stole part of that riff from Denis Leary and his "Oh you will eat the meat" from No Cure For Cancer. You've seen it ... I KNOW you have. Hell I even own that one. So it saddens me to think that I may have to stop watching Mr. Bourdain after he commented recently on Larry King Live that

"it was OK for humans to kill and eat animals because we've been designed to chase down "smaller and stupider creatures."

(See the story here on Huffington Post)

It's Speciesism. Blantant. Defined by wikipedia speciesism is as follows:

The assigning of different values or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership.

I've said it before and I'll repeat myself. As a species, it is imperative for us to understand that intelligence and instinct are NOT specifically inherent to JUST humans. I think that we as a creature need to redefine what intelligence is and is not and not to define how smart an animal is by how well it manages to avoid being killed by us. We're pretty pesky creatures us humans ... and we're also really good at finding ways to kill most creatures, if we're not careful, using logic like Mr. Bourdains, we could find ways to kill ourselves.