PETA and Butterflies

[andyfox]

On the way to lunch today, I heard on the radio that some celebratory group wanted to release a thousand butterflies as part of their celebration. PETA objected on the grounds of cruelty and now the group is going to use butterfly-like balloons instead of real butterflies. I assume it's not the release that they saw as cruel, but rather the pre-release incarceration.

I have some respect for butterflies. They're pretty to look at [there's a wonderful butterfly room at the Museum of Natural History in New York], they must have had a tough life, what with the caterpillar stage, followed by what must have been the clautrophibic cocoon, and then the wispiness of their existence, at the whim of birds, winds and butterfly nets.

But what about, say, ants? I just crushed one. I more than crushed it, I disintegrated it, rubbing it between my fingers until it disappeared from view. Ants seem much more intelligent than butterflies. True, they appear to be communists [the one I just obliterated was quoting Engels to the end], but they are very industrious, always work, work, work, no flitting about aimlessly like a butterfly, and I often see one carrying an injured comrade, under great personal duress, something I don't see other creatures defended by PETA, such as butteflies or chickens, doing. I dare say I've killed tens or thousands, maybe millions of ants, in my lifetime (either directly or via Terminix). Cruel, ghastly deaths.

So should we have concern for butterflies?

Or ants?

Or chickens?