Reprieve

I read the headline: Elephant that Killed Handler Spared with irony and relief. On the one hand, finally, a person has decided to use some of the mercy he/she (in this case a she) possesses and "spared" the life of an animal that was acting instinctually in an unnatural setting. On the other hand, why is this the exception?

Why is it that animals automatically get the death penalty?

We never stop to think that we are the ones with the supposed higher order thinking skills that should keep us from encroaching on the wild animal habitat, putting ourselves in danger, and/or relocating wild animals into settings so divergent than their natural habitats that the animals are unable to behave naturally.

If you place yourself on the tracks with a train approaching, and you get killed, should the rest of us try to KILL the train in retaliation.

Worst, of course, is the go out and kill in revenge instinct that we humans tend to exhibit way too frequently. Someone goes out on a trail in the wilderness, in theory to get near nature; nature, in this case, turns out to be a mountain lion. Person gets killed. Now we are going to go out and hunt down a mountain lion and kill it, claiming we are going to match the teeth marks or some such nonsense. Do we honestly believe that by killing a mountain lion we will somehow deter other mountain lions from killing people on the trail??