Animal Wrongs Group - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Space Warriors from the Cowboy Bebop episode "Gateway Shuffle" were once a legitimate environmentalist group, but were taken over by a more radical leader. They wanted to save a "rare" Ganymede sea rat, and were willing to turn everyone on Ganymede into monkeys to do so.
- This troper took that it wasn't even particularly rare, just that the group was doubly insane, because what they were trying to save it from was being a local delicacy; if it was so rare, even in such a future there had to be some kind of endangered species laws.

Close Anime & Manga

Wonder Girl had to deal with an animal rights group who thought that hydras were nice friendly critters.
Polish superhero parody comic book series Likwidator intentionally embraces this trope and takes it to its logical extreme. The storyline consists mostly of the main hero wandering around killing evil people who mistreat nature — eg. cut trees, work in environment-polluting factories, hunt, buy meat in the store, keep their dog on a leash... Most readers get gravely offended, which is probably the point.
One of the most blatant examples of this trope is Batman villain Ra's Al Ghul, who, in the comics and animated series based on them, has tried multiple times to wipe out more than eighty percent of Earth's population, because it would allegedly return Earth to a more stable ecosystem. However, the moments at which he really shows his Animal Wrongs side are when dealing with the menagerie of endangered animals he collects and keeps. In one comic in particular, he was shown to have had a henchman murdered because he accidentally killed a rare sort of tiger cub by feeding it chocolate, dooming its species to extinction according to Ra's.
- Switch animals with plants, and Batman's other foe Poison Ivy fits pretty well. Depending On The Writer, though, she can be much more soft-hearted (for instance, creating an eco-friendly refuge for Gotham's orphanages in the city parks during the No Mans Land arc).
Subverted in Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. Although Buddy Baker devotes his career to collaborating with like-minded individuals in disrupting fox hunts and freeing laboratory animals, he himself avoids the use of violence (except against a whaler and dolphin-hunter who pretty much dared him to do so). When one of his collaborators on a lab rescue mission spontaneously decides to blow up the lab on the way out, and a firefighter is killed as a result, Buddy hangs up his costume and resigns from the Justice League. Conversely, Animal Man's big-business enemies, far from being the put-upon victims normally found in this trope, are far more brutal and lawless.

Close Comic Books

Animal rights activists are responsible for starting the pseudo-zombie plague in 28 Days Later, as they forcibly release infected test animals despite the vehement protestations of a scientist observing them.
In Twelve Monkeys, a plague that wipes out humanity and forces everyone to live underground is started by a group called The Army of the Twelve Monkeys. ...Or that's what you're led to believe at first. In a subversion, all they do is delay traffic elsewhere, while an independent virologist unleashes the plague independent of the animal advocacy group.
In the film Black Sheep, the mutated sheep are released by one member of such a group. This may have had less to do with his loving sheep and more to do with his, ah, loving sheep.
The four jewel thieves of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back pretend to be crazy animal rights activists in order to provide cover and patsies for a diamond heist. Oddly, the script puts the animal testing lab in Boulder, CO, which is home to many real animal rights groups.
A variation appears in Ghostbusters with an EPA representative. The character attempted to have the Ghostbusters shut down because of potential environmental hazards surrounding the Ghostbusters' tech, manually cut power to the device containing all of the trapped ghosts despite direct warnings from the Ghostbusters, and then had the team arrested after all of the ghosts escaped.
The Designated Hero of Man's Best Friend, a horror movie, is one of these. Against the wishes of her boyfriend, who tries to talk her out of it, she breaks into a legitimate scientist's lab and steals the titular genetically engineered killing machine in the shape of a dog. She gets away with it scot-free, even after it goes on a bloody rampage.

Close Film

One Mercedes Lackey short story featured activists wanting to free the re-created dinosaurs from an experimental park. One discovered that an apatosaurus that doesn't notice you can squash you good, another that velociraptors are not your new friend, and the sole survivor that triceratops are bad-tempered and surprisingly fast — but fortunately, can't climb trees. The reason for her writing the Anvilicious story is Real Life: she and her husband live in the country with animals and help rehabilitate injured birds of prey, something which has upset some activists.
In the Tom Clancy novel Rainbow Six, an environmentalist group plots the destruction of the entire human race aside from themselves. Taking them to bizarre levels of Strawmanship, the activists gleefully discuss how much fun they'll have hunting elephants and lions once the rest of the human race isn't making them endangered. Their comeuppance comes when the titular team destroys their hideout, forces them to strip naked and abandons them in the jungle to fend for themselves without any technology whatsoever. According to one of the team's members (a special forces survivalist), they have a very slim chance of survival.
S.M. Stirling wrote a trilogy of sequels to the first two Terminator films in which Skynet's plans to destroy humanity are knowingly aided and abetted by a group of self-identified "Luddites", wilfully blind to the fact that they are serving a machine which has no particular use for the natural ecosystem and might well destroy it as inconvenient after it triumphs.
Much of the tension in Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby revolves around whether animal rights fanatic Oyster will acquire power over life and death.
The antagonist in Saints at the River is Luke Miller, a pissed-off environmentalist that believes that building a temporary dam to recover the body of a drowned child (and thus alter the river flow) would set a precedent that would enable further damage to the environment. Maggie, the journalist who is the protagonist in the story, returns to her hometown to chronicle the dispute between the townsfolk who want to recover the body by building the dam and the environmentalists, led by Luke, who try to thwart the plan. Luke is depicted as a misanthropic Cloudcuckoolander who believes that nature, particularly the titular river, is the only thing in the world that's pure.
in John Ringo's Posleen War Series, "Greens" conspire to sabotage the war effort and let most of humanity get killed by a Horde Of Alien Locusts that eat anything organic on invaded planets, and then swarm to others once the biosphere collapses. See also "Anvilicious" and "Strawman Political".
A Expanded Universe book featuring Godzilla had a brief blurb that Greenpeace wanted Godzilla declared endangered.
Played with in Wicked, where the protagonist joins a revolutionary group working for the rights of Oz's Talking Animals. Their ultimate goal? Kill the Wizard.
The novelized version of Tom Clancy's EndWar has a terrorist group led by a guy named Green Vox. They're an environmental group and during the Soviet invasion of Canada decide to blow up the oil fields with NUCLEAR WEAPONS because oil is polluting the environment? And two nuclear bombs won't?
The CHERUB Series has several groups: Help Earth! from The Recruit and Divine Madness and the Animal Freedom Militia, Animal Freedom Army, and Zebra Alliance from Man vs Beast.

Close Literature

Animal rights terrorist groups have turned up a few times in British crime dramas.
- One episode of Spooks involving an animal rights group who instigated a bombing campaign against vivisectionists that made Al Qaeda look like a cheerleading squad.
- They're pretty popular in American crime dramas, to supply them with murderous zealots and occasional Red Herrings. Law And Order in particular is quite fond of going to this well.
- A storyline in Between The Lines had an animal rights group planting bombs, unaware that they were being manipulated by a competitor of their main target. It ends up in a murder-suicide with a big bomb
An episode of Tremors: The Series has an animal rights group trying to get graboids declared an endangered species, and the Perfection Valley residents' co-existence with the albino graboid El Blanco as dangerous to its health. The group's leader wasn't above non-fatally poisoning El Blanco to give them an artificial smoking gun, but upon her actions being revealed, the rest of the group leaves in disgust.
- This episode gets funny when you realize that:
1. El Blanco is already a protected species and
2. The residents of Perfection have ended up protecting the graboid from harm a few times (when it's not saving them by attacking the Monster Of The Week).
The Mentalist: An animal rights group is suspected of murdering a professor who is a part of an experiment that tests on animals. It runs out they weren't the culprit either, but the audience learns earlier that the experiment is inhumane for both animals and humans.
Subverted in a third-season episode of Veronica Mars. She suspects a group of committing a crime, but finds out they're generally pretty good people. She also tricks a Ted Nugent Expy into wearing a shirt saying "Meat is Murder". Kristen Bell, who plays Veronica, is, apparently, a vegetarian.
In Dollhouse Caroline Farrell (who will become Echo) first comes to the notice of Rossum Corporation (the people working closely with the Dollhouse) when she breaks into one of their labs to record the mistreatment of experimental animals there.
- In fact, her boyfriend points out numerous fetuses in jars and evidence that human experimentation is occurring, and she merely scowls and goes back to fawning over the monkeys.
An Animal Wrongs Group frees a genetically engineered monster in the Fringe episode "Unleashed."
This was done in Monster Of The Week episodes of the The X Files, before the Myth Arc grew big enough.
- Main example in Darkness Falls, which ironically won an award from the EMA because of its "environmentalist message".
- In Fearful Symmetry. The WAO ("Wild Again Organization") is suspected of releasing an elephant from a zoo whose cages are too small to make the animals comfortable. It turns out to be that the first case wasn't their fault. Later, when one of the WAO members attempts to release a tiger to force the Government to shut down the zoo, the tiger kills him.
Numb3rs had one of these, who accidentally murdered a professor (when his partner learned of it later, he was appalled). It turned out that he was schizophrenic and thought animals had greater "spirits" then humans; he basically acted independently from the main animal rights group.
Whale Wars focuses on a real-life group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose ships (there are three; the show focuses on MV Steve Irwin) forcefully intervene with illegal Japanese whaling. Since this is a documentary, this is also Truth In Television (Your Mileage Will Probably Vary).
- This troper has trouble deciding if the Moral Dissonance induced, as the Sea Shepherd crews attempt to very literally attack other vessels and then whine about any sort of retaliation or the whalers defending themselves, is hilarious or just sad.
  - This troper would like to note that it's almost only the rookies who "whine", while the more experienced volunteers fully acknowledge that they are fighting a war.

Close Live Action TV

Aqua's music video for their song "We Belong to the Sea" pokes fun at this trope... Lene runs grabs a goldfish in a bowl and runs from pursuers for the entire video, until the end where she successfully flings it into the sea. Never mind that goldfish are freshwater fish, the video ends with a shark's fin cruising across the ocean!
The page quote is from a Folk Comedy song about a vegetable wrongs activist.

Close Music

In Bloom County, Opus the penguin failed to find his mother due to an Uzi-toting animal rights group breaking into the animal testing lab that he broke into, kidnapping him, and then leaving him in the ice-cooler of a 7-11 because "they're on a bit of a shoe-string budget-wise."
- Although in defense of the animal rights group there, the Mary Kay people were also carrying uzis. Pink ones.
On another occasion, he mistook Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior for an Antarctic-bound cruise ship with neighbor, septuagenarian and "fellow environmental extremist" Mrs. Limekiller.

Close Newspaper Comics

The only possible way to describe the Ashbound in the Dungeons And Dragons Eberron setting, overlapping with Well Intentioned Extremist. These are people who believe anything other than living in a cave is inherently evil. Because one of their early members turned into a lich to aid their agencies, and after she was destroyed there was a bumper season, they concluded all arcane magic was equally evil. The Faiths of Eberron supplement points out that slightly ~~less monomaniacal~~ more flexible individuals might have considered that after said lich caused severe ecological damage, the bumper season may have been a result of the balance reasserting rather than a sign that all wizards are using powers that risk severely crippling nature (you have to be at least level 17 to access that kind of thing). Even worse are the Children of Winter, who consider the world to run on cycles and believe the winter cycle is coming... so they're going to help it along by killing lots of people. So much for Cernd and Jaheira talking to the plants.
Greenwar from Aberrant.
There are some traits of this in Monsterpocalypse's Green Fury. Only now they have dinosaurs. Dinosaurs as big and powerful as Godzilla.

Close Tabletop Games

Steer Madness is an indie game where you play an anthropomorphic cow who joins an Animal Wrongs Group; setting test animals loose from a laboratory is one of your missions.
The Cult of Planet in Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire is kind of like this, except they are defending an environment that is more than capable of defending itself, and believe their cause so strongly they would gladly let humanity go extinct to preserve Planet. (Of course, they can convince Planet not to kill them by doing this, and in fact lend them aid in the form of slightly more docile — to them — wildlife.)
- The Gaian Stepdaughters in the core game are initially portrayed as an environmentally conscious, yet pacifistic and peaceloving faction. However, If one studies the various blurbs in-game, it is heavily implied that canonically they utterly wipe out the Spartans, a faction of belligerent Crazy Prepared military nuts, using Mind Worms; a native species that combines Body Horror and Mind Rape to make a potent form of Nightmare Fuel laden death!
Nippon Ichi's Phantom Brave spoofs this with Canary, who is trying to start up an Animal Rights group named H.A.R.M. (Human Activists for Rare Monsters). He and a circus manager mistake the magical (but mute) gnomes known as Putties for non-sapient beings. The Putty, despite being caged, enjoys its leisurely life and wanders back in, prompting Canary to outright abduct it. Once recovered, though, the Putty wishes to go with Marona instead. He reluctantly goes back into the cage but escapes on his own later, to rejoin you on your island.
In the second World of Warcraft expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, there is a new faction called D.E.H.T.A. (Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals). Most of their quests involve brutally killing animal hunters and poachers (Their leader gives you brownie points for turning in the hunter's ears!).
- As a bonus, walking into the small D.E.H.T.A camp within a few minutes of killing an animal results in your becoming a pasty smear on the ground when the entire camp rushes you with Animal Wrong warcries. (This can, however, be averted by taking a swim before approaching the camp.)
  - This can be averted by going to the camp with a sufficiently high level of gear. Unfortunately, no achievement yet exists for killing all D.E.H.T.A. members at the camp.
- In D.E.H.T.A.'s defense, all those hunters they send you after are so thoroughly crazed they'll attack players for absolutely no reason at all, and D.E.H.T.A.'s archnemesis, Hemet Nesingwary (an anagram for Ernest Hemingway) is a ridiculously kill-happy quest-giving Egomaniac Hunter who slaughters his way across three separate areas, including the last functional preserve of Draenor's original wildlife. On the other hand, they ask you to kill the hunters in rather inhumane ways. Like, say, baiting their own traps and having them walk on top of them, then leaving them to die in the trap.
  - The enemy poachers are more a parody of player characters repeatedly "farming" enemies for money ("Just fifty more hooves and I'll have the new gun!") and constantly having animal parts being used for one thing or another ("I'm sure ol' Hemet can do something with your bones!")
- Then there was the time the Real Life group PETA decided to actually try and hold an in-game protest over the fact that you could in fact club baby seals in the game. They tried to get people to come to the particular area and stand around to "block" the baby seals, and while it wasn't stated outright, it was implied the protesters should try and Pv P anyone that did go after a seal.
  - It's impossible to "block" someone in World of Warcraft, as characters on a collision course simply pass through each other. You also can't be attacked in player-versus-player combat on a non-Pv P server unless you voluntarily switch on your own Pv P flag. Perhaps they intended to "block" the seals by standing directly on top of them with large characters (e.g. male draenei and taurens), so that it was impossible to click on them — this can be tricky to maintain if the baby seals are moving around.
  - Or PETA are morons. Wanna bet which is more likely?
In Dwarf Fortress, Elves are essentially a Plant Wrongs Group — cut down too many trees, and they will invade you and eat any of you that they manage to kill.
- They aren't exactly fans of animal killers either. If you try to trade them anything derived from an animal (leathers, bone crafts, etc.) or anything with any kind of blood on it, they'll refuse to trade anything with you and leave in a huff. And then possibly return to invade and eat you.
  - Unless it's clearly kobold or goblin manufacture. They take that stuff cheerfully.
In Final Fantasy Tactics A 2, one quest early in the game involves donating money to a monster's rights group, aiming to protect monsters that are endangered due to over hunting. A notice later in the game reveals that the group has come under fire, as one of their campaigns to protect the endangered "Cluckatrice" caused an increase in poaching, as more hunters are now aware of their existence.
- The resultant quest chain reveals that the monster's rights group is actually a front for Khajima, the Big Bad of clans, who were themselves poaching the birds.
In Fallout: Tactics, a Jane Goodall Expy releases deathclaws. No points for guessing what happens to her.
City Of Heroes has the Devouring Earth. Their MO involve propaganda, protesting, arson, kidnapping, indoctrination, mutation, animation, homicide and genocide. Admittedly, that's not much worse than the other villainous organizations.

Close Video Games

Sluggy Freelance has had a few panels with PETA members attempting to "rescue" Bun-Bun. Hilarity and stab wounds ensued.
Subverted in Templar Arizona. A group of animal rights activists are picketing a restaurant, screaming and throwing trash... but considering that the guy who owns the restaurant is a Magnificent Bastard who lovingly serves up only endangered and cute things such as poached (the cooking method) condor eggs and braised newborn puppies, it's completely justified. Though the owner notes, as he finishes reading off the day's menu, "I'll be back tomorrow. I do so enjoy our little visits. And I suspect that you do, too."
Gordito's Father in The Adventures Of Doctor Mc Ninja had his guns jammed by a PETA operative so he would be killed by the dangerous animals he was supposed to shoot in his sharp-shooting act that was decreed to be cruelty to animals. (Of course, stuffing a bunch of animals into a cannon and firing them all out so that they can be shot just might fulfill anyone's standard for animal cruelty.)
Order Of The Stick: Leeky Windstaff. That is all.
Housepets has a whole arc that centers around two guys employed by PETA. However, while one fits this trope well, the other is a far more nuanced character; as well, the arc is a criticism of PETA specifically (the sane one notes that they let him join without a background check).
- In addition the crazy one tried to kill the dog they kidnapped.
The Crocomire Hunter, a main character in Planet Zebeth, fits this quite well. He goes into fits of sobbing and/or plots for revenge when an enemy creature (yes, they are referred to as enemies, even though many are friendly or at least unassuming) is killed. Pretty much all other main characters have no sense of value for the enemies' lives, so this happens often.
Cyanide and Happiness contains a goldfish rights activist.

Close Web Comics

A bunch of college students in an episode of Pinky And The Brain free laboratory animals, and then immediately toss them into the wild to fend for themselves... usually in the wrong habitats, in part thanks to completely misidentifying the species. This includes taking the titular laboratory mice and tossing them out of a plane into the Amazon Jungle.
- "Can mice fly?" "Sure, just like monkeys."
PETA in South Park was depicted as a bunch of zoophiles who thought having a cow as a sports mascot was degrading.
- Even worse: In another episode, animal activists shot down a group of police officers, border patrol officers, and an innocent bystander to get a whale to Mexico. Worse yet, the reason, which the animal liberation group was unaware of, was that the whale was being transported to Mexico not to get it to the ocean, but to the moon. It got there. As you might have expected, it didn't last long.
  - Note that the episode was criticizing the concept of the movie Free Willy. Basically, even though Orcas raised captivity have much a shorter average lifespan than those that live in the open sea, they tend to die even sooner if they are released.
An episode of The Powerpuff Girls had an animal rights group try to stop the PPGs from "harassing" Mojo Jojo, i.e., stopping him from committing crimes. The girls then helped them move Mojo into the wild.
Futurama had a slightly different spin on it. The loony animal rights group in "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz" decides that the best way to save a group of penguins that's breeding too rapidly is to break out the guns and declare it penguin-hunting season. This is, in fact, a very valid strategy if one values species' health over individuals' welfare.
- Futurama also played the trope straight with Mankind for Ethical Animal Treatment (MEAT), a PETA knockoff that starts off protesting the Popplers and then ends up thwarting the Planet Express crew's plan to solve the interplanetary crisis that ensues without Leela getting eaten.
  - This is part of an elaborate Running Gag. The leaders of both the above groups are the members of the Waterfall clan. Free Waterfall Jr. is the first, in the Popplers episode, and his father swears to avenge his death at the end when Lrr (of the planet Omicron Persei VIII) eats him. The father in question, Free Waterfall Sr., is the leader in "Birdbot". When he dies, his father swears revenge. Old Man Waterfall, the elder in question, serves as Zoidberg's civil rights attorney in a later episode, is then killed, and his Straw Feminist great-granddaughter swears revenge. (She has~~n't~~ shown up again, but ~~if she does~~ when she did, she's toast.)
  - Right on the money. She shows up again in the last movie, this time being telekinetically strangled by The Dark Ones. Her brother Hutch, a homeless bum and member of the Legion of Mad Fellows, never witnesses her death, only prying her feminecklace from Fry's brain that was lodged there in an unrelated incident. And so we see the last of the clan, to be killed in the new series.
  - Not to mention that they're all voiced by the same guy, who's credited in the fourth movie.
- When Leela protested that the activists couldn't expect everyone to conform to their standards, Free Waterfall Jr. corrected her; in fact they could, on the basis that they taught a lion to eat tofu. Pan right to an emaciated lion, which coughs once, pathetically.
The Japanese Beetle used this a couple of times, ones with a militant animal rights group attempting to defend a Godzilla-like monster... up until it ate their leader. A later story had an aged hippie concoct a formula that made anyone who ate meat suffer "sympathetic pains", usually manifested as violent reactions followed by blackouts.
The central characters in I Am Not An Animal are released by one of these groups.
Godzilla The Series had a Kaiju liberation group called S.C.A.L.E. (Servants of Creatures Arriving Late to Earth) that believed kaiju and other mutants to be the future of evolution and try to free all the monsters from Monster Island.
A subtle version is used on King of the Hill, Bobby accidentally kills a whooping crane while on a snipe hunt; while trying to secretly bury it, they are harassed by not only an unnamed animal rights group but a park ranger as well. Later, while try to bury it in a field, the animal rights "hippies" chase them off decrying them as murders while tearing down plant life and stepping on a bird's nest, crushing several eggs.
In one episode of Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law, the People's Animal Freedom Front liberates Magilla Gorilla from Peeble's Pet Shop (running over a dog in the process). By the end of the show, they've dumped the obnoxious ape out in the woods somewhere after suffering through many, many Incredibly Lame Puns.

Close Western Animation

Something not commonly known is that there are different flavors of movements looking out for the interests of animals. Taking note of which movement a group classifies itself as can help identify which ones fit this trope:
- Animal welfare groups seek to minimize suffering from animals, but doesn't object to animals being used as food, companionship,or otherwise. They just don't want animals to suffer needlessly. This site gives a good overview of the animal welfare philosophy.
- Animal rights groups see any human interaction with an animal as inherently exploitative and abusive. They honestly believe owning an animal is no different than owning a human. They are the ones that hope to completely separate humans from animals—which doesn't just mean no eating meat, but also means no having pets, no working or companion animals, or anything. PETA (see below) is the most well-known champion of this flavor, but they're criticized by other animal rights activists for not going far enough.
  - The Other Wiki's introduction to the Animal Rights article puts it simply: "Advocates approach the issue from different philosophical positions but agree that animals should be viewed as legal persons [...] not property, and that they should not be used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment."
  - This is the point where veganism and vegetarianism become intertwined with animal interests—and again, PETA is the most notorious for pushing veganism down everyone else's throats.
- Animal liberation groups are the worst of the bunch—they want animals "freed" from human contact and they want it now. This is where you'll find "veganarchists" and the ALF, the people who aren't afraid of using violence to force people to give up their animals. Sea Shepherd also applies, at least in the case of whales.
PETA has gained something of an infamous representation for appearing to be the Real Life embodiment of this trope. It is the often cited as the "artistic influence" for writers to use the Animal Wrongs Group as a trope, as it is used as a Truth In Television justification. This website is a good source for more details on the subject. But do keep in mind that PETA is an exceptionally large organisation (2 million members) with litte universal policies.
- PETA actually came out against Obama recently. Why? Because he killed a fly during an interview. They even sent him a live-fly trap, where they can be released outside later. A tad odd, but it's not the most out there. That would belong to Killing Mama.
- PETA isn't even pro-animal: PETA barely tries to find homes for strays (as they are also against pet ownership, calling pets prisoners) instead killing them en masse. They're also against seeing eye dogs. They also are pro-outright-slaughter of certain breeds of dog which were created by man.
While PETA is better known, in the US at least, ALF is international, and much more prone to vandalism and destruction of property.
- There is some evidence that PETA actually funded some of the ALF's crime ventures in the past.
This troper recalls seeing a news story one day that talked about a PETA member throwing...paint, maybe...on a star's fur coat. Caused a few days of debate.
- It's funny how they always seem to throw their paint on women wearing fur, and never on bikers wearing leather.
  - Of course, most bikers don't take kindly to you messing up their expensive leather coat. They'll usually proceed to return the favor, only messing up your face instead of your coat.
  - Exactly my point and the reason that paint throwing tends to be done to women wearing fur instead.
This Onion video spoofs the tendency of PETA to use naked women to push their points: Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women.
- "We have no intention of changing our tactics until every last animal on the planet is given more respect than women."
Sea Shepherd. Imagine your average militant animal wrongs group, but on the ocean. They're the ones that throw acid at whaling ships, and they managed to sink some, too. They also took The Great Steve's name in vain.
- But wouldn't sunken ships leaking their contents be just as bad for fish?
  - Throw first, think about actions later?
  - Apparently, tropers here Did Not Do The Research. Irwin's wife wanted the ship named after her husband, they have NEVER sunk a ship, and they throw Butyric acid, which only taints the whale meat (makes whatever it lands on smell horrible for weeks). They might be stupid as hell and borderline suicidal ("YOU SHOULD ALL BE WILLING TO DIE FOR THE WHALES"), but the Japanese whalers like to stretch out the Sea Shepard's crimes, to cover up the fact that what they're doing is in the gray area of the law as well.
  - Talk about Pot Kettle Black. The ONLY things I see accurate in the above attempt to call Did Not Do The Research is that Terri wanted Steve's name on the boat and that the Japanese whalers are no saints as well. Everything else is incorrect, as they literally have a KILL COUNT showing how many ships they have sunk (with absolutely no regard for the crews I might add); and, while Butyric Acid doesn't turn the sea into cyanide, the effects it has on marine life that consume it (either by taking it in from the water, by direct exposure, or by eating something that has it) are hardly debatable. Hint: It's not good.
  - Besides which, even if the Sea Shepherds weren't breaking several laws (of the standard, maritime, and moral/ethical types) and causing more damage to The Ocean than they're preventing, the fact still remains that their methods are (aside from being ineffective) incredibly douchey. One must only see their 'rebellion' in action to realize: Hey, these guys are idiots. Whiny, insufferable idiots. And I'm sure neither Steve nor Terry would want for Steve's namesake boat to be out there injuring people and generally making all conservationists look like the terrorist whackjobs the caricatures make them out to be.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. Tactics have reportedly included beating staff members with axe handles, planting car bombs in public streets, and obstructing ambulances. They got their big publicity when Huntingdon Life Sciences was in the then-prime minister's constituency.
I came upon two videos a couple months back taken by an animal rights group protesting the seal hunt. One consisted entirely of this (mortally wounded, apparently) seal pulling itself across the ice with a bunch of said protesters watching, none of whom thinking that it may be better for the animal to end its suffering than to spend hours filming its suffering. The second was simply a couple of people picking up some baby seals, apparently ignorant to the fact that their mother WILL NOT take them back because of it, leaving them to starve.
- They obviously Did Not Do The Research, they fail biology forever
There are several examples in combination of this: Did Not Do The Research and Nice Job Breaking It Hero when animal rights activists released mink being farmed for their fur in Britain. Said (non-native) mink proceeded to seriously destabilize the local ecosystem.
- This troper heard a story similar to this, but with ferrets. Not only did the escaping ferrets destabilize the local ecosystem, the ones who didn't escape were torn to pieces by each other once let out of their cages, as ferrets are appearently very territorial. And the ferret farm was a little mom and pop business that obviously didn't do too well after that.
The Humane Society has started down this dangerous road. In at least one community, the Humaine Society has become extremely politically active. Thanks to laws they pushed for, any dog that is declared a dangerous animal will be put down. All it takes for an animal to be considered dangerous is for it to bark a lot at strangers. Why does the Humane Society want all terriers to die?
- Please Elaborate. Where was this, out of curiosity?
Perhaps not the best example, but ask about 80% of the population of North Idaho about the wolf problem. Who the HECK thought that bringing them in was a good idea? They're not half as bad as some other examples, but it was still a display of stupidity.
- 99% of ecologists called. They want you to research the term "elk overpopulation".

Close Real Life

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples: