Essay On Primate's Memoir By Robert Sapolsky

Sapolsky Essay on the Moral Question

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. Robert Sapolsky, the author of A Primate’s Memoir, witnessed Game Park Rangers in Kenya dispersing the meat of a zebra that they killed. The game wardens killed the vulnerable zebra illegally only because they wanted the meat. Their reasoning was that they were not receiving a salary from the warden, but instead the warden was keeping the money for himself. The question is, are these game wardens poachers? I heartily believe that these rangers are poachers, and their actions are not ethical for many reasons. For example, it’s illegal to kill zebras anywhere in Kenya and not just on the game reserves. Kenya is known for its safaris and expansive wildlife reserves, and the country declared to the world in the 1970’s that there would be no more hunting permitted. The rangers’ duties were to protect the wildlife of Kenya, not to eat them. Also, they can survive without meat, and there are many other food sources they could be eating legally. For example, the rangers

Sapolsky implied that the rangers were not the only people in Africa that were corrupted, and that Sapolsky was urged to do the same and share the rangers reasoning. Sapolsky had encountered many people in Africa “Wising Up” such as the man at the food kiosk who ripped him off and the clerk with the imaginary government tax at the lodging place. In other words, corruption was common all over Kenya, but does this make it ethical? From the zebra leg to the imaginary government tax, these actions were all carried out of deceptively. Although these actions were all easy to overlook, there will always be an ethical