What's it like in a Zimbabwe prison?

This is Walter Palmer.  He is the newly famous dentist who killed Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe.  The blinding white smile and pricey X-ray laser vision goggles obscure an important truth about Walter, which is... 

Dolphins Aren't Fish. They're People.

Japanese "fishermen" load dead bottlenose dolphins into a boat at Taiji Cove.  Yes, they murdered the dolphins, and yes, the water in the cove is red with the blood of dead and dying dolphins. 

Neat Ivory Trinkets Made from Dead Elephants (WARNING: Graphic image ahead. Read at your own risk.)

Oooh...  Lovely ivory figurines.

Ivory is so nice.  People - artists, you might even call them - make really nice little carvings out of it.  It's all so nice, in fact, that it's quite expensive.  Check out this ivory Buddha statue: 

Neat, right?  I spotted this bad boy for sale on a Hong Kong based website.  It's the "Ivory Happy Money Buddha with Children and Money Bag."  It's two inches tall, an inch and a half wide, and will run you $669.95, plus shipping.  I bet you'll feel good about having that on your coffee table.  Show it to your friends.  It'll bring you peace and prosperity.  It's a conversation starter, at the very least.


Here's where it came from:

 
They kill the elephant first.  As you can imagine, it would be time-consuming and problematic to remove the tusks from a live elephant.  Then they cut the elephant's face off.  The reason they do this is 25% of the ivory is actually embedded in the face. 

Elephants are smart.  No one really argues against this anymore.  Like apes, whales and dolphins, they have huge brains.  They have highly organized social structures.  They express grief.  They have death rituals.  They play.  They use tools.  They solve problems.  Apparently, they even play music.

In fact, killing elephants is a lot like killing people.  And we'd never allow people to die just so we could get our hands on some overpriced baubles, would we?