Carlo Consiglio, Vom Widersinn der Jagd, Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt am Main, 302 pp.

This book by the Italian zoologist Carlo Consiglio, published in Italy under the title Diana e Minerva ('Diana and Minerva'), has recently been translated into German. The book puts hunting to the test from a purely scientific point of view and finds that it is in no way justified. The first section examines the various theories according to which hunting is not harmful, finding that either they do not work, or that they show hunting is incompatible with nature conservation. The second section shows how hunting is not well regulated, leading to further disfunctions. A third section highlights the empirical evidence of the influence of hunting upon the size of natural animal populations. In the fourth section other negative consequences of hunting are studied. 798 quotations from scientific literature back up Consiglio's study.

Paul Parin, Die Leidenschaft des Jägers, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg, 2003, 200 pp.

Nobody had revealed the cruelty of hunting with so much clearness and so many details till now. Not only sadism towards nonhuman animals, but even towards humans, with frequent use of whip; moreover relations between hunting and sex (hunters often become sexually aroused when they shoot), sexual abuse of boys, fraud and smuggling. This is not simple coincidence: cruelty is bound with hunting, because the essence of hunting is joy of killing; without killing, hunting becomes a nonsense. Hunting is the minor sister of war.

Wally & Horst Hagen, Die grüne Macho-Connection, Jäger und Gejagte, Rasch & Röhring, Tecklenborg, 1999, 399 pp.

Another book against hunting, dealing mainly with trophy hunting, especially in Africa where the authors have gained long-term experience. The text has a great deal to offer on hunters' motivations, the joy of killing, the relationship between hunting and neo-colonialism. It confutes the theory of a hereditary inclination to hunting, as also the theories that hunting was a decisive factor in human evolution and that elephants with too large tusks would be handicapped as they could not obtain minerals from the ground or from tree bark (the opposite would be true). It denies the necessity of wildlife management and criticises the support given to hunting by major associations such as IUCN, WWF and Zoologische Gesellschaft Frankfurt. The last named organization even falsified the opinion of the late Prof. Grzimek who on the contrary was a true opponent of hunting. Revelations made by the book include the following: Hemingway, who supported hunting, had “impotentia coeundi”; elephant tusks are becoming smaller and smaller (from 30 to 7 kg) owing to hunting; Baden-Powell, founder of the boy-scouts, was in favour of hunting, including of humans; “Polish shooting” consists of shooting in the anus. The book does have some faults: it accepts the term “sport hunting” although hunting is not a sport; it considers the possibility of a meatless diet as unproven and it holds that some experiments on animals are necessary for medical purposes.

Carlo Consiglio.