The Hunting Video That One Animal Rights Activist Called 'Snuff'

On a trip to Zimbabwe earlier this month, Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons hunted and shot an elephant. He released a video of the excursion and, predictably, animal rights activists are up in arms. One likened his video to "snuff film." Snuff is a genre of film, by the way, in which people are killed for sport. Usually, snuff is pornographic--we're talking hard core--and the woman is the one to die. Do you think that Parsons' hunting video is comparable to snuff?

In the video, Parsons explains  that hunting problem elephants is rewarding: "Of everything I do, this is the most rewarding. This video shows one typical night and day."

Check it out--you can see the hunt as it happens (warning, the clip gets pretty graphic):

Parsons calls them "problem elephants" because they've been trampling on and ruining the crops that local farms need for subsistence. And that's no small thing. Consider: the day following the hunt, villagers gathered around the elephant and butchered it for meat. As the day went on, more and more villagers rushed to the elephant, clawing at it ravenously for food. Even though the elephant was huge, Parsons notes in the video, there still wasn't enough meat to go around for all.

And yet, the animal rights activists are more concerned with the dead elephant than with scores--maybe hundreds--of hungry African villagers. Here they are, fighting to get a hold of the last bits of meat:

Laura Goldman, an animal rights activists, called Parsons' hunting video "a gruesome, 4-minute elephant snuff film." She's also circulating a petition that says "Tell Go Daddy's CEO: Real Men Don't Kill Elephants."

"Elephants face enough threats, such as habitat loss, poaching and drought, to be ambushed and killed by hunters," another activist said. "There are better ways to alleviate human-elephant conflicts without inflicting harm to elephants."

What about alleviating human conflicts--like poverty and hunger?