^ There are deer in the forest that aren't hurting anyone, yet we still hunt them for sport. Kids kill ants and bugs all the time, but I don't see you crying for the ants either.
If you choose to value everything equally and treat humans the same as every other living creature, you need to be as distressed when someone steps on a bug or a blade of grass as when a yukkuri is killed. If you don't react the same way every time someone exterminates cockroaches or steps on an ant, you're indirectly saying that a yukkrui is more important or worty of better treatment than a bug, at which point you can't rebuke anyone who says mutilating a yukkuri is no worse than cutting your lawn since at that point it's a matter of personal opinion.
I'm going to use your logic and say that was completely justified since I'm appalled at how that family can just eat bugs that aren't hurting them with no remorse whatsoever.
^^The eternal discussion, I guess all depends in what point of the evolutive chain do you put yukkuris at.
You can see them as ants and bugs, so nobody cares about what you do to them.
You can see them as a dangerous vermin, so it is your rigth and duty to exterminate them.
You can see them as fruits or vegetables that can move, a walking livestock that can be eaten or disposed of.
You can see them as animals that can (try to) harm humans and therefore can be hunted back.
You can see them as sentient beings that can feel, express themselves and have self-awareness, making them closer to human beings and thus having similar rights.
And the most common view: you can see them as intelligent animals, at the level of dogs or cats. If they are rabid or a risk to humans you can kill them without hesitation, if they live in the wild on their own you can leave them like that or you can hunt them to harm them for sport or to satisfy your sadistics whims, the same if they are living in the streets and if they are beloved and well behaved pets it will be a bad thing to harm them.
In the case of a family of yukkuris at a public park not hurting anyone is like a family of cats doing the same. If you hurt them there will people who will be mad at you, people who will try to have you punished as defenders of animals rights, people who will just look to another direction and people who will encourage you.
I am of the opinion that they are closer to dogs or cats than bugs or ants and see truckingman pov: if there is a family of puppies living peacefully in the park and someone come and crush them I also will be mad. Another case will be if they are demanding food or claiming that the park is theirs...
>>treat an imaginary woman You can't actually treat an imaginary anything, as you cannot interact with fictional beings unless they are in your imagination, at which point you're really just roleplaying with yourself. I bet you're one of those crazies with a "waifu".
Of course they are not real. But that doesn't mean that you cannot imagine them in a real environment or make resemblances with real things. That's what it is called to use your imagination (which is quite different to believe in them to the point of a otakukin).
If you can't do that you just can dismiss every and each fantasy work because they are just drawings/writings about things that didn't happened and things that don't exist.
LA DE DA DE DIE GENOCIDE! LA DE DA DE DUD WALL-OF-TEXT-SHITTY-DISCUSSION AGAIN! Also, I'd like to remind the community that truckingman is a semiliterate, 13-year-old wannabe troll. If you don't answer to his posts, he'll go back to Danbooru and grace that board with "compasitors" and other assorted nonsense. Srsly. Don't feed him.
Rats are pretty intelligent too, yet few would care if they died. Rats invade your home, steal your food, nibble on your items, propagates like mad, and spread uncleanness where they go. Exactly like yukkuris. Even sewer rats look cute if you clean them up.
These are wild rats in the park. It's just bad to not dispose the corpse. They should still be killed like insects - in their thousands.
not to mention that, in some depictions, they are shown as being able to break basic laws of physics such as being able to have their output exceed input (energywise), and are seemingly capable of internal fusion, fission, and the assembly of highly complex organic molecules (e.g. the transformation of basic sugars into bean paste).
something like that in our universe has the potential to become a universe ending menace.