Not cool at all (h/t Meghan).
Not cool, Onion
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Category Archives: Animal Welfare
Alabama’s Bold Legal Stand
[Trigger warning: Well, sort of. I shall allude to sexual assault and animal abuse in this post, but will also generally discuss things that some people might find inappropriate in polite company.]
Whatever feelings you have about this picture, please keep them to yourself.
Alabama’s state senate took a bold stand against bestiality last month, passing a bill that would make it illegal.
Wait, it wasn’t already illegal?
Nope. And it’s not in Texas, either—at least not expressly so.
Only 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have statutes specifically prohibiting sexual contact with animals. I’m of two minds on this, really. On the one hand, I am all for protecting animals, who, as far as any of us know, cannot consent to sexual activity with a human. On the other hand, do we actually need another law?
One state where it is expressly illegal is Louisiana, where a man was arrested last summer for alleged sex with livestock. He has been charged with four counts of “crime against nature.” I do not like the sound of that statute. Continue reading
This Week in WTF, January 24, 2014
– See my vest? Some fashion editor wore a coat made from a gorilla out in public recently (h/t Laura). Her response to criticism was that she “received the coat as a gift from a friend who is vegetarian.” Maybe the gorilla died of natural causes.
(In other news, last week was Diane Fossey’s birthday. Go figure.)
Photo context: The Vegan Police scene from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Via Twitter
– And they say romance is dead: Back in November, an Oklahoma State football fan managed to get his homemade sign in the background of ESPN’s College Gameday. The sign made some off-color comparisons between the inadequacy of Baylor’s defense and pornographic actress Lisa Ann’s, uh…..the sign said “Baylor’s defense has more holes to fill than Lisa Ann.”
(Not all of you know who Lisa Ann is, and others of you will pretend you don’t. The hyperlink on her name goes to her Wikipedia page. Her pictures of Wikimedia Commons push the NSFW boundaries. For anything else, do your own Googling.)
She apparently thought the sign was funny, or charming, or something, and the two kept in touch. (I can’t believe I just linked to TMZ.) They were both back in the news because he was her date to the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards last weekend. Did I mentioned he’s a freshman at OSU? My freshman year of college was kind of dull—it certainly did not involve a trip to Vegas with a 41 year-old woman who received a “Hottest MILF” award.
The OSU student tweeted the picture to the right, and of course the internet’s mind went straight to the gutter.
– We make the news around here: A news drone, which I did not know was a thing until just now, was flying above Cape Town, South Africa, trying to get a better view of a guy who was threatening to jump off the top of the city’s Civic Centre. The reason this is news is because the drone almost knocked the man off the building. Luckily he didn’t fall, but it’s just one more data point against drones.
News drones??? Really????
Lorises Are Not Pets
The slow loris may be one of the cutest animals in the world, and they have the social media presence to prove it.
This does not mean that they make good pets. My general principle is that if an animal is not a dog (Canis lupus familiaris) or a cat (Felis silvestris catus), then you should probably think very hard before keeping it as a pet. (Other animals that have become fully-domesticated companion animals include rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, parakeets, and, I grudgingly acknowledge, ferrets. Goldfish too, I guess.) An animal born into captivity might, in an individual case, get on well with humans, but that still doesn’t make it a good idea as a general rule. Not only is it not safe for humans, it is often unspeakably cruel to the animals.
The slow loris is but one example, but it’s a doozy. I’m citing Wikipedia here for the sole purpose of saving time. Click through to the article to see all of the citations.
Slow lorises are sold locally at street markets, but are also sold internationally over the Internet and in pet stores.[129][130] They are especially popular or trendy in Japan, particularly among women.[120][129] The reasons for their popularity, according to the Japan Wildlife Conservation Society, are that “they’re easy to keep, they don’t cry, they’re small, and just very cute.”[120] Because of their “cuteness”, videos of pet slow lorises are some of the mostly frequently watched animal-related viral videos on YouTube.[60][123] In March 2011, a newly posted video of a slow loris holding a cocktail umbrella had been viewed more than two million times, while an older video of a slow loris being tickled had been viewed more than six million times.[131] According to Nekaris, these videos are misunderstood by most people who watch them, since most do not realize that it is illegal in most countries to own them as pets and that the slow lorises in the videos are only docile because that is their passive defensive reaction to threatening situations.[123][131] Despite frequent advertisements by pet shops in Japan, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre reported only a few dozen slow lorises were imported in 2006, suggesting frequent smuggling.[83] Slow lorises are also smuggled to China, Taiwan, Europe, Russia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia for use as pets.[130][120][131] Continue reading
No Habeas Corpus for Tommy the Chimp, for Now
![By Ikiwaner (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/449px-Gombe_Stream_NP_einsamer_Schimpanse-224x300.jpg "By Ikiwaner (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons")
An organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project (NHRP) filed several lawsuits in New York state courts last month asserting habeas corpus claims on behalf of several chimpanzees. The lawsuits basically asked the courts to grant limited human rights to four chimpanzees living in human captivity in the state. This is believed to be the first time a lawsuit has sought habeas protection for nonhumans.
According to the NHRP, one of the chimps, Tommy, is living in a cage on a used trailer lot. The owner of the trailer lot, Patrick Lavery, takes issue with that description, telling the Daily Beast that he has tried but has been unable to find a sanctuary for Tommy, and adding,
I’m not just some Joe Blow who’s got a chimp locked up in the garage. Of course, I think they should live in the wild, but the sad fact is that not all of them do and that’s where people like me come in, spending $100,000 of my own money to help out and buying monkey chow by the ton.
Another chimp, Kiko, is deaf and lives in a private home in Niagara Falls, according to the NHRP. The other two chimps, Hercules and Leo, are at a research center at Long Island’s Stony Brook University.
![By By Aaron Logan [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Lightmatter_chimp_-300x200.jpg "By By Aaron Logan [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Through New York’s online court system, I identified three lawsuits filed in December 2013:
- Nonhuman Rights Project on behalf of Tommy v. Lavery, Index No. 002051/2013, Supreme Court of Fulton County, New York. Filed 12/02/2013, disposed 12/17/2013
- Nonhuman Rights Project on behalf of Kiko v. Presti, Index No. 151725/2013, Supreme Court of Niagara County, New York, Filed 12/03/2013, disposed 12/10/2013
- Nonhuman Rights Project on behalf of Hercules and Leo v. Stanley, Index No. 032098/2013, Supreme Court of Suffolk County, New York, Filed 12/05/2013, currently open
A judge dismissed Tommy’s case after an hour-long hearing on December 3, expressing sympathy for the cause but declining to extend legal personhood to a chimpanzee. In Kiko’s case, a judge denied the request for a order to show cause after a hearing by telephone on December 9, saying that the question of chimpanzee personhood is better resolved by the legislature than the courts. A Suffolk County judge denied the petition for Hercules and Leo without holding a hearing. The NHRP has announced that it will be appealing all three cases. Continue reading
Texas Court Clarifies How to Appeal a “Dangerous Dog” Ruling
The law governing “dangerous dogs” is not as well-defined as it should be, with jurisdiction often split between municipal and county courts. Procedures may vary widely from one municipality or county to another, including between a municipality and the county in which it is located. In an attempt to be brief, if a dog bites or otherwise attacks someone, the local animal control authority may take possession of the dog, and a judge must make a determination as to whether the dog meets certain criteria to be declared “dangerous” (a statutorily-defined term.) The law mandates various requirements on the owner of a “dangerous” dog, including maintaining extra insurance and keeping the dog in an approved enclosure. If the court finds that the dog caused the death of, or serious bodily injury to, a person, it can order the dog destroyed.
Chapter 822 of the Texas Health and Safety Code, which covers regulation of non-livestock domestic animals (e.g. dogs, cats, etc.) does not provide specifics about appealing a municipal or county court’s determination that a dog is “dangerous”
In Romano v. Texas, a woman fostering a dog for a rescue group was bitten (the court says “attacked,” but I’m assuming one or more bites were involved) by the dog, an a Montgomery County justice of the peace ruled that the dog caused “serious bodily injury” and was to be destroyed pursuant to § 822.003(e) of the Health and Safety Code. The rescue group appealed to the county court, which dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, albeit without any findings of fact or conclusions of law. The group then appealed that dismissal to the 9th District Court of Appeals. Continue reading
The Chronicle of Biscuits
Please consider this a supplemental “Monday Morning Cute” entry, because Biscuits’ story cannot wait until next Monday.
At first I thought Biscuits was a sugar glider, but a commenter on Imgur says he is a southern flying squirrel. Either way, squee.
One picture in particular stuck with me, because dog:
In sort of a postscript to the story, this picture of a harvest mouse climbing a dandelion also appeared on Imgur today, prompting the comment “BISCUITS HAS ESCAPED!”
Fire Ant Genocide, in GIF Form, Because Art
This is from a Reddit post entitled “Casting a Fire Ant Colony with Molten Aluminum,” which is apparently a thing people do.
People go to such great lengths for the sake of art. I screencapped a few comments discussing the ethics of the project.
Their First Ride to Their Forever Homes
I found these in an Imgur gallery entitled “First ride to new homes after being in a shelter.” Here are a few highlights, with some pittie-esque dogs and a little one who needed someone to hold their paw.
Living under Human Rules in the Wild
A photogenic elk was reportedly euthanized by park rangers last week for, as far as I can tell, being too interested in people (h/t Ryan Clinton), as Knoxville’s WBIR reported:
An elk who went viral after a close-up encounter with a photographer was euthanized Friday, Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials confirmed Friday evening.
Park officials said the elk could not be re-trained to be fearful of humans. They said the elk had been coming back to that area in search of food, and had begun associating humans with food.
Spokesperson Molly Schroer said placing the animal elsewhere would be passing along a potentially dangerous problem.
If you haven’t seen the YouTube video, I have to imagine that the experience was terrifying for the photographer (those antlers look pointy), but at the same time, this seems like an elk being an elk.
WBIR reports biologists said elk normally mate during the September to October time-frame, and may have thought [photographer James] York was competition for a lady-elk.
The phrase from WBIR’s article that keeps bothering me is “the elk could not be re-trained to be fearful of humans.” We require dogs, cats, horses, and other domesticated animals to live by our rules, even if they don’t understand them. This makes a certain amount of sense, because we bring these animals into our homes. Plus, we have bred them over millenia to be dependent on us. The burden is on humans to train domestic animals how to behave. In a cruel twist of fate, however, the animals pay the ultimate price if the humans’ lessons don’t take. I don’t have a better way to do it, necessarily, but I think we can all at least acknowledge the cruelty.
But what about non-domesticated animals like elk? They live in the wild, while we mostly only visit there. Whatever that elk was doing, it was doing it on its home turf. Maybe it’s still on us humans to watch what we do in that world.
As I said, I don’t have a ready-made solution here, but I hope the wild gets to stay wild a bit longer.
In other news, some people are far more interested in pretending to dominate the wild, but at least they can’t do it without well-deserved public backlash:
Outdoor television show host and avid hunter Melissa Bachman caused a huge controversy after she shared a photo of herself with a dead lion yesterday with the accompanying tweet:
“An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60 yards on the this beautiful male lion… what a hunt!”
My favorite comment on the story (aside from Ricky Gervais’ uncouth tweet) came from Ona Lynn Nass, who offers a local perspective:
Melissa….He was beautiful before you so savagely killed him…..She should be ashamed of herself. This is a total disgrace….what we called “canned hunting”. Wipe the smile off your face,. any idiot can take a high-powered rifle and a hunt lions that cannot escape and have got ‘human imprinting”. I wish there was a way to get rid of these places that offer these facilities to tourists. It’s all about the money. Btw Melissa, did you need to eat the lion to survive? Wasn’t he so beautiful and majestic while alive, before you took his life? Why didn’t you rather shoot him with a camera. I hope you, never, ever put a foot in our country again….and that goes for ALL you trigger happy tourists. Keep your blasted dollars, yen, euros or whatever. The average South African doesn’t want your kind or your money here. Just ……. off. We don’t want you here and if we could close those shooting ranches down somehow we would. I hope you have nightmares about that lion for the rest of your life……..