Chinese villager jailed for eating tiger

A Chinese villager has been jailed for 12 years for shooting and eating the country's last known wild Indochinese tiger, China Daily reports. Kang Wannian and Gao Zuqiao, from Mengla, Yunnan Province, encountered the animal in February while gathering freshwater mussels in a nature reserve near China's border with Laos. Kang …

[Owen Sweeney]

Which was it?

Clams or mussels...China Daily says mussels, Lester says clams.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always wanted to say this...

Beware of Man eating tiger.

[Anonymous Coward]

So... and help me out here, I coulda missed something

...in biology 101, but don't you need TWO of a species to carry it on?

Paris, coz even she'd get this one right...

[JaitcH]

They get their nooky ...

by sneaking across the border into Laos or VietNam.

[Anonymous Coward]

One in the wild

and one in captivity, genius comedian

[ravenviz]

This may be newsworthy

but how many other people are responsible for killing off the last of this or that? There are thousands maybe millions of species that have gone unaccounted for. At £43,800 a pop that soon adds up. Why don't we wise up and bail out the planet instead of banks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw the IT angle...

...very sad :(((

R.

[Subban]

Stating the obvious...

"Kang claimed he shot the cat in self-defence, but the local court ruled he "did not need a gun" to gather mussels"

I think the evidence rather supports the fact he clearly DID need a gun to collect mussels.. He has a dead tiger as proof.

(Assuming he also came home with mussels with his tiger, rather than went looking for tiger alone)

[Ben Rosenthal]

I know I said

that I wanted it rare, but not like that! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

And if there was a golf tournament there...

...then Tiger would be jailed for eating a Chinese villager.

Oh, yes I did. But anonymously.

[Eddy Ito]

Oh really?

"there was no need to carry a gun for catching mussels."

Have they never heard of tiger mussels?

[Gareth 11]

Theeeeey're GREAT!

Sorry. Had to.

G

[Martin 66]

more obvious

he couldn't have been hunting the tiger - why would anyone go tiger hunting in a place where there was only one left !!

[lglethal]

Why cant the same penalty's be applied to...

Why cant the same penalty's be applied to all the chinese people who traffic in Indian/siberian/non-chinese Tiger body parts. They may not have killed the things themselves but by trading in their parts your fueling the trade that leads to there death.

And whilst where at it, what about the Shark fin dealers, and all the other endangered animals that are killed to feed the chinese market in these products...

Hypocrisy much?

[JaitcH]

The people of YunNan have strange tastes

YunNan is a province in the extreme northwest of China and shares borders with Laos and VietNam. It has the head waters for the YangTze and Mekong Rivers.

The Vietnamese like have a rat problem and the Yunnanese like eating cats. Never known to miss the opportunity to make a few Yuan or Dong they started catching cats and smuggling them across the border to satisfy the desire for cat meat.

As a result the rat population increased in this part of VietNam and the rice crops were ravaged causing the government of VietNam to threaten the death penalty for smuggling ANY wild animals from VietNam into YunNan.

[MeRp]

Xinjiang?

Surly you must have meant something other than northwest.

Looking at a map, I'd call YunNan south central.

[JaitcH]

Maps ...

Sorry, I live in VietNam and we refer to the area as the northwest.

In China it is in their West Central area - home of some great scenery and the Leaping Tiger.Gorge.

[Anonymous Coward]

North by Northwest.

Funny, that Vietnamese word "Northwest" looks just like an English word that means something completely different. Northwest China in English borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgystan.

[Another One]

Surf and Turf?

Not normally on the local menu but maybe he wanted to branch out?

[Richard 102]

Poor sap

If he'd killed a tax official, he'd be regarded as a folk hero.

[Shane Orahilly]

Cheque please!

That's quite a bill for Surf & Turf for 6. I think I would have gone for the veggie option.

[Nebulo]

No title is required.

Tiger eats man: no news ... Man eats tiger: news.

Now, to satisfy worldwide curiosuty, could the Chinese gov ask him ... what did it taste like?

[Anonymous Coward]

What flavour is it?

It's a cat innit. It's a bloody great cat... it's not any bloody flavour. Tiger!

(with apologies to Mynot Phonty)

[Norman Mackay]

Eat Anything

There isn't much the Chinese won't eat, and their doing a fine job of killing off most of the species at their end of the planet. All too soon there will be zero wild life left to kill. What then ? Start killing and eating each other.. The ignorance coupled with arrogance is a deadly formula for what's left on our planet in the way of none human species.

History will not be kind to the human inhabitants of this planet who will ultimately be held responsible for the eradication of all other species.

Quite depressing. The sentence handed down was more than justified.

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmmm

Brings a whole new meaning to having a chinese!!!!

[hahnchen]

A hi-five for veganism

Yes, obviously - because the inevitable outcome of a non-vegetarian diet is cannibalism. It was the singular cause of the collapse of the Roman Empire.

[chr0m4t1c]

Citation required

If I remember my Roman history studies correctly the Romans were primarily vegetarian, only eating meat regularly when they needed to get supplies from more recently conquered lands.

I don't remember any evidence that they resorted to cannibalism at any point and certainly the fall is usually attributed to a combination of decadence, military problems, financial problems and the rise of Christianity.

In fact, it could be said that as Rome still exists today - you can even go there to visit if you want - then it never really /fell/, it just faded back into the city that it is now.

So. Any actual scientific proof here or just some kind of vegetarian "meat-eating=evil" rhetoric?

[The Indomitable Gall]

We're no different....

The only thing that stops us Europeans and North Americans killing our wildlife is that we've already done so. Bears, wolves, bison, auroch, beaver, reindeer -- these species have been wiped out completely in parts of Europe and in some cases in their entirety.

I'm not saying we should allow other countries to make the same mistakes as us, just that it is sheer bigotry and hypocrisy to criticise them without acknowledging our own past mistakes. In fact, it borders on racism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me?

Ever heard how the Maori cleared Aotearoa of large wildlife in the span of a few generations with knife and fork? Or how amerinds hunted buffalo - drive a large group of them over a cliff, take a few morsels and let the rest rot? Give the "Noble Savage" drivel a rest please (now *there's* racism for you - as if they are any different than people wearing trousers), humans as a species have this tendency to clear their environment of tasty food at a frightening rate. I bet that if we all went vegan the soy bean would be on the endangered list a few seconds later...

[Michael 28]

bet they don't...

have this problem in africa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet!

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it is rather obvious he did need a gun

or else he would have been the meal. Now, I am all for animal rights, but sentient beings have to take rank a little higher, though I do sometimes wonder.

Anyway, in a scenario where it is you or another then well, that is it, whatever happens is just evolution and the law has nothing to say about it.

[M Gale]

*coff* *hack* *splutter*

This entire comment tree. So many upvotes, so little time.

You all owe me a new keyboard, you bastards. I was eating porridge too. PORRIDGE.

[Anonymous Coward]

See?

That's what happens when you eat plants. Now a beef proper would have been far easier to clean up, I bet.