Don’t bid in ego auction

Most mammalian predators have two forward-facing eyes, which gives them binocular vision. This ability to focus on an object with both eyes and produce in the brain a single image from two independent light sources — the eyes — allows such predators to make a judgement.

For a cheetah stalking through the savannah into a herd of gazelle, it is a judgement of timing and distance. Launch too soon and the hunt will be unsuccessful. Too many poorly judged hunts in a row and the tipping point on the graph of survival is passed; weakness and death will surely follow.

Game shooters face the same dilemma but for us the judgement is an ethical one. Is the bird we are about to shoot a sporting shot or is the shot unethical?

Moral code

For many of us the answer is