In Buddhism, the tiger is one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolising anger, with the monkey representing greed and the deer lovesickness.
What critics regard as the senseless slaughter of intelligent creatures they see as a legitimate exercise in pest control, blaming dolphins for decimating fish stocks.
Bonnie Erbe, a columnist for the Scripps-Howard News Service, wrote last year, "When native peoples, no matter how badly abused by us in the past, seek to perpetrate equally senseless barbarities on helpless creatures, we should stand on principle and use our awesome power to stop, not to enable them".
However, while the intelligent designer carefully tweaks his inventions to match his fancy, the environmental changes that control the destiny of living creatures are senseless and inconsistent.
When you think about it, it makes sense: The Adult Swim sci-fi comedy and Bethesda's fourth iteration Fallout are both filled with senseless violence, surreal random creatures, and delightfully deus ex machina technology that either ruins or saves the day, depending on your perspective.
In spite of countless acts of cruel and senseless violence against this noble creature, there has yet to be a documented case of a healthy wolf attacking a human being.
It also stands to weaken the Endangered Species Act, because if critical habitat is redefined as any place where a species might ever have existed, and where you or I might want it to exist again, then the door is open for many other senseless efforts to bring back long-lost creatures.
But we would do well also to ask the question of whether any form of entertainment that involves harm to a living creature is really necessary; even the senseless devouring of insects on certain reality shows like Fear Factor.
When fishing gear scoops up, hooks, entangles, or otherwise harms another creature not destined for market, it's called bycatch: an innocuous term for a senseless waste of marine life.
