Response to Betsy

I don't believe that it is ethical to seek to eliminate a species because they have the potential to harm us.  It's ethical to kill a mosquito that is biting you, because they are causing you harm.  It is a sort of self defense.  Eliminating a whole species is a bit drastic and harmful to the natural environment.  Our natural instinct when another living thing is harming us is to harm it back.  Animals do this to other animals, and we naturally do it as well.  But does the fact that something is natural justify it?  Or can it still be considered unethical?

It is natural to favor aesthetically pleasing animals over less attractive animals, but that doesn't mean it's ethical.  Perhaps it is a part of human nature to prefer "cute" things over "ugly" things.  Some people argue that babies make cute sounds so that they're parents will be more inclined to take care of them.  Does this suggest that we wouldn't want to take care of our own offspring if they weren't cute?  Is there possibly an evolutionary purpose for our preference to cute things?

(There are a few different questions in this post; you can just answer one if you'd like to)