Hi. I'm Sara Farris, Eng.prof at Univ of Houston-Downtown. I don't remember who was talking about gorilla-eating gorillas, and I'm not swift enough with this email stuff, so I don't know how you guys are quoting each other (it must by easy; y'all do it a lot), but anyway, Dian Fossey presents evidence that, yes,gorillas do, on rare occasions and for unclear reasons, eat their young. It happened only once during her studies (that I remember), and I don't know if other evidence has been found since. She writes about it in _G in the Mist_. But it was such a rarity that it doesn't seem to make sense to atttibute it to gorillas as a trait, any more than we attribute deviant human behaviors to humans as a category. As for the theory that all hunting is trophy hunting, I guess I like the idea more than I really buy it. :-) I lived in Minnesota (rural, west-central), and it seemed that every person with a penis liked to kill animals for food and pleasure (I'm including fishing in hunting). I dated an ex-marine for a while (I had to become a lesbian--I had such horrible taste in men!) who hunted everything allowed and had earned spending money as a teenage as a guide for what he derisively called TIMMYs (Totally Incompetent Minneapolis Minnesota Yuppies). TIMMYS eventually inspired him to stop guiding, tho he contintued to hunt. It wasn't that he objected to sport huntning; he just objected to jerks spoiling _his_ hunting grounds. He also had friends, young married, working class; she worked in an office I think and he did landscaping, which has a short season in that part of the country. He hunted _for food_. If he didn't get his limit, their freezer didn't fill. Ok, yes there's an element of trophy-hunting here, but I respected their lives, certainly more than I do people who wouldn't shoot a deer but will buy ground chuck at Kroger. gotta go, sara
