Several folks are clamoring for something a bit more frivolous. So here’s two different fun dog videos and several panda videos to sooth your raw emotions.
by Adam L Silverman| 107 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Faunasphere, Open Threads
Several folks are clamoring for something a bit more frivolous. So here’s two different fun dog videos and several panda videos to sooth your raw emotions.
by Hillary Rettig| 76 Comments
This post is in: Faunasphere, Vegan
Great news to end the week, Juicers! In his excellent book The Better Angels of Our Nature—which makes good summer reading or listening, btw—Steven Pinker writes about Europe’s 18th and 19th century “humanitarian revolution,” the period of moral evolution during which people stopped indulging in such cruel medieval pastimes as recreational torture, dueling, cat-burning, and (for realz) cutting noses off.
It’s hard to deny that we’re going through a new revolution, this time focused on the animals. (Nick Kristof recently called it The Humane Revolution.) Every day it seems like there’s another piece of good news—and this week, two huge, wonderful stories broke:
1) Wednesday’s Washington Post reported that the Senate approved an update to the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act that included provisions to reduce the number of animals used in tests of toxic chemicals:
The EPA should use non-animal alternatives where possible, the legislation says, and must come up with a plan to develop and adopt more non-animal methods, such as computer modeling or cell-based tests.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an advocacy group which seeks to to reduce animal testing, predicts the bill will save hundreds of thousands of animals from being used in painful and often pointless experiments (such as the infamous Draize test). And it sets a great precedent:
Millions of animals are killed in U.S. lab tests and experiments each year, the vast majority of them mice, rats, birds and fish. The legislation addresses only some of these tests, and it doesn’t forbid them. But animal welfare groups say it sets an important precedent that is a reflection of both changing public attitudes and a slow, ongoing movement away from animal testing by some industries and research agencies. The National Institutes of Health, for example, has deemed biomedical research using chimpanzees unnecessary and ended it.
Kudos and thanks to PCRM and all the other great animal activists who worked diligently on this issue, and thanks especially to Corey Booker, who spearheaded the inclusion of the provisions. The bill has already passed the House and President Obama is expected to sign.
From hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions…
2) As Vox reported yesterday:
In a massive victory for animal rights activists, and for America’s chickens, United Egg Producers, a group that represents 95 percent of all eggs produced in the United States, has announced that it will eliminate culling of male chicks at hatcheries where egg-laying hens are born by 2020.
This may sound like a technical development, but its magnitude in humanitarian terms is difficult to overstate. That’s because standard practice at hatcheries that supply egg farms with hens is to kill almost all male chicks shortly after birth, usually by grinding them to death, as you can see in this horrifying video…
Gassing is also sometimes used. [Also, many are buried alive.–HR.] Hundreds of millions of male chicks are killed this way, every year, in the United States alone.
Ending chick culling has become possible recently due to technology. United Egg Producers says it will replace culling with “in-ovo egg sexing.” This is a process that can determine the sex of chicks before they develop inside their egg. That enables egg producers to terminate the male eggs and potentially use them to help make vaccines or for pet food (most humans would presumably be grossed out by cooking fertilized eggs). Horrific infanticides will be replaced with humane, painless chicken abortions.
This link contains a good description of the in-ovo process and technology.
Egg consumption is declining big-time, as people say no to both the cholesterol and the cruelty, and also as great plant-based alternatives come on the market. So that may also have something to do with the announcement.
Kudos to the activists at the Humane League who helped make this happen, and here’s to an ever kinder and less violent world.
by Hillary Rettig| 292 Comments
This post is in: Faunasphere
As your liaison to the Faunasphere, I feel like I have been remiss by not posting something about the incident in Cincinnati. I guess I didn’t because the whole situation is just too depressing and it also didn’t seem right to post about it during Memorial Day weekend. Also because I wasn’t sure if I had anything to say that wasn’t being said by many others.
Also, to be honest, this is one of the times when the animal activist community isn’t showing itself in he best light. Here’s what I wrote on FB shortly after the story broke and the online temperature started to rise:
Dear Vegans, The killing of the endangered gorilla in Cincy Zoo was horrible. No argument there. And zoos suck. No argu there, either. BUT when you start attacking the toddler’s parents, especially in vicious terms, you are not helping. First, “inadequate parenting” could be an unfair accusation–kids can get lost in a flash. Even if it’s not, tho, you are providing fodder for yet more “angry / abusive vegan” stories in the media, and thus making everyone’s job harder. No matter what you think of the situation or the parents in particular, please keep a civil tone b/c your need to vent doesn’t outweigh the animals’ need for us to represent their interests responsibly.
Many activists, including every leading / respected one I’ve read, has basically said the same thing. But their voices seemed drowned in a classic Internet tidal wave of venom aimed at the parents, which is a drag. (For the record, I didn’t mind so much when the animal loving hoards went after that ahole dentist who illegally killed Cecil the Lion. But this is way different.)
I’m usually pretty happy to (privately) judge parents whose kids annoy me, but in this case I really can’t. I think these parents were just monumentally unlucky that their lose-the-kid moment happened at the zoo instead of Kmart or Kroger, like it does for many people. (Plus, you know, racism.) And is it unreasonable to ask that the Zoo do more to defend the parents? I get that they probably can’t due to legal CYA. But does anyone else have the sense that the dialogue is unfolding in ways the zoo finds beneficial? It, in my view, is ultimately responsible for this tragedy, because, yeah, it’s not actually that hard to design a barrier that will keep out even a determined four-year-old. As the lawsuits unfold, I’m guessing we’ll hear about safety concessions made in the service of “visitor experience.”
On the other hand, the barrier did indeed remain unbreached for years and many thousands of other visitors. So although I think zoos are at best a highly mixed bag, maybe this is one of those slippery incidents where no one is proximally to blame.
At the same time, poor, poor Harambe..
That’s my 2c. What’s yours?
PS – Here’s a brilliant (and funny) take.
This post is in: Faunasphere, Open Threads
Or so the goat would tell you. From “occasional commenter” Isobel:
This is Shit the Goat. He is named Shit because we are constantly saying “Oh shit, the goat’s in the house!”. The puns truly write themselves with that name.
He is a six-month-old male goat who is very friendly and likes to lay on the porch and eat with our dogs. Over the last two months, he has become a part of the pack. He loves to eat beans and corn from my hands. He also loves table scraps, specifically ramen noodles.
***********
The late great Molly Ivins once had a dog named Shit (for reasons, but not the same reason).
And if you need another pick-me-up for a Monday morning, the “Chewbacca Lady” [warning: autoplay] really does have the most infectious laugh…
What’s on the agenda as we start another week?
Monday Morning Open Thread: Pets Get to Come into the House!Post + Comments (125)
by Hillary Rettig| 50 Comments
This post is in: Faunasphere, Hillary Clinton 2016, Nature
Kudos to Hillary Clinton for launching an official page on Protecting Animals and Wildlife. It’s short on specifics (the very thing Clintonistas like to rap Sanders for), and the free trade policies she’s enamored of directly undermine environmentalism and animal welfare in many ways, including:
Still, it’s a welcome development – and she hits many good notes, including protection for farmed animals and ending horse slaughter.
Sanders had a pro-animal page much earlier – although not on his official campaign site.
Huge kudos to my fellow animal activists for their decades of hard work that has brought, and is continuing to bring, animal issues more and more into the mainstream. Because animal welfare = human welfare = eco welfare, we all benefit.
Clinton Launches Animal Protection Campaign PagePost + Comments (50)
by Hillary Rettig| 116 Comments
This post is in: Faunasphere, Vegan
Along with his many other excellent qualities, Prince was a vegan and supporter of animal causes. He wrote the song “Animal Kingdom” for PETA. Excerpt:
“No member of the animal kingdom nurses past maturity
No member of the animal kingdom ever did a thing 2 me
It’s why I don’t eat red meat or white fish
Don’t give me no blue cheese
We’re all members of the animal kingdom
Leave your brothers and sisters in the sea”
According to PETA’s memorial: “When people would ask him why he was concerned about animals in the face of widespread human suffering, Prince would respond, “Compassion is an action word with no boundaries.”
by Hillary Rettig| 115 Comments
This post is in: Faunasphere, Nature, Open Threads
By now you’ve probably heard of Inky, the New Zealand octopus who conducted a daring overnight jailbreak. He apparently:
slipped out of a small gap at the top of his tank
The Times, whose style book apparently favors “octopuses” over “octopi”, quotes aquarist Alix Harvey:
“Octopuses are fantastic escape artists…They are programmed to hunt prey at night and have a natural inclination to move around at night….They have a complex brain, have excellent eyesight, and research suggests they have an ability to learn and form mental maps.”
I wonder what resources of cognition, planning, perception, analysis, resourcefulness, and determination Inky used to effect his great escape. (And I wonder if we’ll ever be able to answer that question.)
In a Telegraph article, Inky’s keeper framed this as a case of curiosity gone awry:
“But Inky really tested the waters here. I don’t think he was unhappy with us, or lonely, as octopus are solitary creatures. But he is such a curious boy. He would want to know what’s happening on the outside. That’s just his personality.”
But I wonder. If octopuses are so intelligent—and Inky in particular—why assume they would be happy living out their lives in a tank being gawped at by humans? Isn’t the opposite assumption a lot more plausible?
As I noted earlier, it’s getting easier and easier to ask questions like these. In the past, anyone who felt even a shred of empathy for, or identification with, a nonhuman was accused of anthropomorphism—a career killer for scientists. Now, not anthropomorphism, but the lack of it, is becoming suspect. In a recent delightful New York Times oped What I Learned From Tickling Apes, noted animal behaviorist Frans de Waal calls the de facto ban on anthropomorphizing a “linguistic castration” and notes:
It is typically used to censure the attribution of humanlike traits and experiences to other species. Animals don’t have “sex,” but engage in breeding behavior. They don’t have “friends,” but favorite affiliation partners….
[Aristotle] put all living creatures on a vertical Scala Naturae, which runs from humans (closest to the gods) down toward other mammals, with birds, fish, insects and mollusks near the bottom. Comparisons up and down this vast ladder have been a popular scientific pastime, but all we have learned from them is how to measure other species by our standards. Keeping Aristotle’s scale intact, with humans on top, has been the unfailing goal.Bolding mine.
Meanwhile the Times article notes that, “A less independence-minded octopus, Blotchy, remained behind.” Notice how anthropomorphism is okay if it serves the dominant paradigm—in this case, that an imprisoned animal loves his/her captivity. De Waal notes that it’s always been okay to anthropomorphize about, “tendencies that we consider animalistic (everyone is free to speak of aggression, violence and territoriality in animals).”
I wonder if Blotchy is really less independence-minded, or if he just lacks Inky’s skills or capacities.
I wonder if he, too, would escape if he had the chance.
EDIT: Per erudite commenter lukeness: “Octopi is incorrect because the word octopus does not derive from Latin, but rather from Greek.”