Recent studies indicate that trophy hunting is impacting negatively on some lion populations, notably in Tanzania. In 2004 there was a proposal to list lions on CITES Appendix I and in 2011 animal-welfare groups petitioned the United States government to list lions as endangered under their Endangered Species Act. Such listings would likely curtail the trophy hunting of lions by limiting the im...

Sport hunting has reportedly multiple benefits to economies and local communities; however, few of these benefits have been quantified. As part of their lease agreements with the Zambia Wildlife Authority, sport hunting operators in Zambia are required to provide annually to local communities free of charge i.e., provision a percentage of the meat obtained through sport hunting. We characterize...

Trophy hunting can provide economic incentives to conserve wild species, but it can also involve risk when rare species are hunted. The anthropogenic Allee effect (AAE) is a conceptual model that seeks to explain how rarity may spread the seeds of further endangerment. The AAE model has increasingly been invoked in the context of trophy hunting, increasing concerns that such hunting may undermi...

Therapeutic leave-taking rituals are a short-term strategic form of mourning therapy. These rituals consist of three phases: a) preparatory-in which the therapist explains how performing a ritual might help in taking leave of the deceased; b) reorganization-in which the client carries out certain tasks, such as writing daily entries in a 'continuous letter' to the deceased; and c) finalization-...

131 Recently, in a breakthrough research, scientists from University of Barcelona, Axilum Robotics France and Harvard Medical School have successfully demonstrated a conscious transmission of information between the minds of emitter and receiver subjects far away from each other. Scientists believe that such ‘hyperinteraction’ technologies will have a profound impact on the social structure of ...

The functionalist “law” that religion sustains the moral order must be amended. As is demonstrated in this study, religion has this effect only as it is based on belief in powerful, active, conscious, morally-concerned gods. Contrary to Durkheim’s claims, participation in religious rituals per se has little independent impact on morality and none when done on behalf of gods conceived as unconsc...