Boy, 7 breaks into zoo and feeds anilmals to a croc.

How? I've seen some pretty disturbing films and photos of animals kept in those situations- and they don't look content.. they don't act content.. That was sort of a central point..

I find it disturbing how a lot of people project their own desires onto animals- and decide that is what they MUST want, because that is how they would feel 'in that situation'. We associate cages with prisons, and all the negativity from that- a lot of animals will have their own small territory in the wild, (if they're lucky enough to win one) and will never leave it until they're forced out, or die. Some zooS hav had to remove bars from their enclosures, because of the human negative associations- when they can actually be a really good climbing frame, and significantly add to the enclosure- from the animals point of view. If you built a cage round your back garden, would your dog really care less? A lot of so called animal rights protestors are prone to getting human ideals and animal needs mixed up- and do things like 'releasing tropical animals to go free into the wild!' to die in the first frost.

Most animals will not successfully give birth and rear young if they are at all stressed. Farm animals do not rear their own young- and chickens have been bred for hundreds of generations to lay eggs in almost any conditions, before anyone tries to draw a parallel- they are very far from typical. Yes, there's a drive to breed, but if animals are unhappy, they don't put the effort into rearing (what would be the point, if the situation wasn't good enough? their instincts tell them that if they're stressed, they need to be on guard, and ready to run- and you can't do that if you're distracted by trying to rear babies.. far better to save your energy for when you get somewhere better)

By the way, a lot of 'pacing' behaviour in carnivores seems to be basically trying to make the time go faster before they're fed.. the fossas I used to work with did it every day just before dinner, but wouldn't bother in the evenings or mornings when they weren't due a meal- indicating it wasn't boredom, or an attempt to get out.

So.. what do you think should be done with the animals living in the zoos closed for lack of funds? Re-release? that's even more expensive.. Re-home them in other, better zoos? In what space? The place I was at was tiny- we still got offered at least 3 or 4 unwanted pets a week- larger places must get literally hundreds.. the classic one was the red-eared slider terrapin, I knew someone who worked in a council run free entry zoo in Leeds- they started off a pond with 10 of those, accepted about 10 more as donations... and when they counted up what was in the pond at the end of the year, they had over 50... last I heard, without officially accepting any more, they were at over 100 and had to build another pond..

Yes, there are dodgy places, and I'd join everyone else in calling for them to be closed down (don't get me started on one or two..) but they should be treated as individual cases, and not as though 'zoos are like this'- the list of species which *was* extinct in the wild and is now *not*, due to captive breeding schemes, is getting pretty long, and you need a pretty amazing reason to convince me at least that that is a bad thing.

Thanks Hama for reminding me of why I need to find some time to visit the Melbourne Zoo so I can fully shake off the trauma of visiting an Eastern European one

hamamelis, what you say may be true. But, it seems to me like it’s a huge event when a wild animal breeds in captivity, mainly because it’s all over the nightly news. Then they tell me that female gorillas that breed in captivity, don’t learn nurturing skills. And I suspect that many of the captive breeding programmes probably involve artificial insemination, which is ok in the short term, but eventually the gene pool disintegrates and they become sterile.

So, what’s the long term solution?

Regardless of the cost, the only real long term solution is to preserve the natural environments for wild animals. I’d suggest the first step would be to convince people to stop eating so much meat; which we don’t need. I don’t think it’s wrong for people to project their own desires onto animals, otherwise it becomes impossible to see their plight. In the end, I don’t think change will happen until we start seeing our daily steak as Bambi, Daisy or Hazel.



railspinner, fair point. Sometimes I forget that you guys grow up with wolves, bears and cougars. Or as stout calls them “red in tooth and claw”. Though, I think we can learn a lot from experts like “the dog whisper”, and “Dr Harry”. I think you will find that all the experts agree that the ancestry of dogs stemming from the gray wolf, and the importance of understanding pack mentality.

"Breeding in captivity" ain't too convincing to me as in regards of "animals being content" - sorry to say that. A decent shag in jail if opportunity arises - why not?

My "projection" on animals might completely be failing reality... given that. I'm no expert. Just hoping that zoos are not be used as an excuse for "well we extinct them in the wild, but at least we can breed them in captivity"... in this context I would think it's better to videotape them, keep their genetic material and let them fall prey to civilization...

To me, "freedom" is an irreplaceable good, which not even human affection can truly substitute for. As for domesticated animals (like cats and dogs) its a different story though - maybe my double standards... given that. Whereas I don't support big dogs or cats exclusively kept in flats and generally oppose fishtanks and birdcages (the latter IMHO is cruelty).

I accept the passion you have for your profession and - as indicated before - don't necessarily judge a character based upon it. You're an intelligent, compassionate person - there is no doubt about that. Also I never tried to offend you or zookeepers in general, only tried to make a point (most likely not *so* well worded). Definitely you're not the same as butchers, as you prolong and nurture life - and they end it.

Just tried to point out - and started all this strolling - that we tend to create boxes, which in turn is not serving the issue itself... that's all I tried to emphasize.

Just thinking out loud here...

But whose to say that animals are concerned with being happy in the sense that we as humans are preoccupied with the idea. For all we know, contentment in having all your basic needs met does equal happiness for an animal. No worries about finding food, no worries about finding and fighting for a mate, no worries about that abscessed tooth that makes eating a chore, no worries about predators...seems to me eliminating those stresses might just lead to what we call happiness....to the mind of an animal.

If we factor in the idea that nature's "prime directive" is continuation of the species with the "individual" being only a part of that "greater plan" applying the idea of happiness as we. as a species, are constantly questing for, might not be as "important" to the mind of an animal as we might think.

We as a species have the opportunity to live 'as nature intended" that is as hunter gatherers mainly concerned with survival, but it's only when we have those survival needs met do we concern ourselves with the greater philosophical ideal of happiness. The power of reason might just be working against us in this regard.

Stone, I didn't coin the phrase red in tooth and claw, I just used it..

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/red-in-tooth-and-claw.html

Personally I'd be more careful, jumping such conclusions...

Maybe the whole topic boils down to:

- do animals contemplate beyond their natural drives?
- do animals have a soul?
- do animals have a religion?

Definitely they can suffer, develop depression, experience joy and other mental states that might be comparable to human conditions. So why are we depriving them of those conditions that would make us look really really even worse when treating them as we currently do?

Why are insects considered animals 2nd class? I'm still missing an answer to that one and go to bed now....

stone yeah. Im not saying they aren't very close to wolves, and to understand domestic dogs deeply you need to know a lot about wolves and wolf pack behaviour.

domestic dogs are far less inclined towards pack mentality then wolves. Not many people have the heart, knowledge and patience to safely raise wolf/domestic breed mixes. They will often attack their owners if they feel they are stronger then they are and wish to take the position of dominance. If you try to dominate them like you would a domestic dog challenging your dominance (the way I did this with my dog when he was younger was flipping him on his back and towering over him, or biteing his lip gently while he was flipped on his back if he was being really bratty) could cause a wolf or wolf mix to attack you. You can't over dominate them because they just can't take it (good look flipping any dog with wolf in it on it's back BTW)

Domestic dogs also all have unique desires. Wolves desire lots of open space, running off leash, and wilderness, amongst other things.

But you take a labradour retriver, and all it wants in life is to swim, and retrive anything and everything. a content german shepard desires to please it's owner doing tasks which it is trained to do. Australian sheppards fiend for shepparding sheep (or gaggles of playing children or a bunch of ducks) etc etc etc..



I met a old lady in vancouver last year who had a pure rain wolf mix, which are rare wolves from the queen charolete islands. Her son rescued it from a construction site, someone had captured a litter of them and tried to burn them alive, only one survived and it took her son a week to corner it, he brought it to his mom who is wheel chair bound (he thought it was some type of border collie cross) as a companion, but it grew into a full sized wolf. I had a long talk with her about it and she said it was the most well behaved dog she ever had, it had no aggression in it and was always loyal and ready to listen to her.

This shows just how their is no rules to dogs, their is an exception to every one you can come up with, this rain wolf defied conventional wisdome about pet wild animals and showed just how every dog truelly is a strong individual. Pretty neat stuff I think (huge dog lover)


Oh and a good quote on projecting ourselves onto dogs.

"A dog is not 'almost human' and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such. The dog can do many things which man cannot do, never could do and never will do." - John Holmes

Thanks for the information on “red in tooth and claw”. I’m thinking it’s time to read one of Richard Dawkins books. The Ancestor's Tale is currently in bookshops.

Regarding the greater philosophical ideal of happiness. The power of reason might work for us if we ever got out of our survival “rat race” mode. I’m not sure if you ever followed up on Buddhism. From their point of view, all the unhappiness in the world is caused by chasing happiness. This is explained in the Twelve Nidanas.



How so Fire Tom? You said something similar earlier about assuming that those outside the western world might have different standards regarding zoos. I wasn’t intentionally being derogatory. I was simply pointing that people from a culture going back 70,000 years in Australia, might see things differently to white fellas.

Btw, if anyone is in Australia, then the much anticipated series, The First Australian starts Sunday night on SBS.




That about sums it up. As far as the position dominance goes. I live next door to an American pit bull, which are supposedly banned in Australia. The dog is terribly unhappy, and barks constantly when the owners are out, which is often. I just totally ignore the dog, and I’m hoping this is the best way to get on with it.

Nice quote.

You might not have meant it derogatory but it seems to be a sensitive topic (as the history of this thread has shown) - I mean hey... no pun, but:



Thus your statement has a staggering 71 - 83% chance of being incorrect... Now prove the same to my assumption... (sorry to quote Wiki though..)



Apart from not knowing which lineage of Buddhism you would be referring to (and the fact that Tibetan and Thai Buddhists do kill and eat animals) - I would *assume* that zoo animals are pretty close to enlightenment, as they seem to give into their fate and 'stop chasing happiness'. Which then would make mankind facilitating spiritual growth of animals by voluntarily torturing, imprisoning and killing animals - which, in this line of reasoning, would make us their gatekeepers to Nirvana...

This certainly would not apply to the American pitbull next door (at this point at least) - however I tried to point out the chance that animals develop mental disorders (when held in captivity at least) and the dog barking all day might just be there... btw: you might not be ignoring the dog but it's careless owner (IMHO)...

Well, Tom, I believe in all buddhism, only humans are capable of escaping samsara, but your argument would work if we took it as humans being facilitators to these animals reaching a more elevated incarnation in the future, possibly one that would allow them to escape samsara.

Hi Stone,,,I'm treating the follow up on Buddhism as an ongoing project, it's a rather slow process as there's some assumptions I'm unwilling to make in order to follow the "religious" aspect ( which IMO seems to be the most commonly pursued and talked about facet ) meaning my practical application of Buddhism tack is going nowhere fast. Unfortunately, I never got a copy of Guide to The Buddhist Path, as the bookstore I ordered it from closed down...good thing it wasn't prepaid.

I'm still working on this difference between contentment and happiness being a purely human endeavour and I thought I had a couple of examples where animals have left a life of contentment in order to pursue their happiness. I'll have to think about it more, as those animals may have been content, but there might have been stressors in those contented lives that negated that contentment. Also, trying to work in the idea of enlightenment and it's relationship to contentment and happiness is proving rather interesting.

At this point I may assert that enlightenment equals contentment with that apparently widely elusive concept of happiness being a purely human pursuit and suggest that if animals were at all "religious", they'd be Buddhists.

I might just be on crack with this line of thinking though.

I've had a similar situation to your pit bull one, IMO, the dog is not content because it's needs as a gregarious ( pack ) animal are not being met. There's nothing you can do really, except make repeated calls to whomever deals with noise and animal cruelty issues. Maybe get the neighbours on side too, I'm sure nobody likes listening to this dog bark out his loneliness and misery.

Of course, it's a pit bull, which is the canine equivalent of a handgun and most people don't get that breed unless they're trying to convey an image. Chances are, the owner doesn't give a rip about the dog's mental state and just might like mistreating in order to "make it mean"

So what do you figure...are wild animals possibly walking the 4/8 ? Might they be in an enlightened stat of mind ?

And btw Stone, heard of any "Karma by not acting"? (as I said: not sure which lineage of Buddhism is yours):

So you manage to 'ignore' the barking Pitbull next door... great meditational exercise for you if you succeed, innit? Next thing you know is that this Pitbull runs out on the street and kills a kid - or is it only me who just thought it sounds like "another classified dog bound to snap due to continued neglect of its owners..." and neighbors

Hi Stout, I can understand some of those “religious” reservations because I was more than a little “freaked-out” the first time I participated in a seven stage Puja. So, I’m thinking about starting a thread on Buddhism where people can “discuss” the practical aspects of Buddhism.



I’m not sure what you mean by 4/8. And, at risk of bringing up more misunderstandings about Buddhism, I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the myth about people who create bad karma in their lives being reincarnated as animals.

The pit bull. I don’t think the owners of the pit bull are trying to make it mean. I think they got it for status, but don’t really have a clue about owning or training dogs.



Fire Tom, give the obvious skills shown with the goanna, croc and other reptiles, all I’m suggesting is there may be more to this, than meets the eye. And along with Buddhism, and other topics, this seems like another example of censoring what people can and cannot say.



Fire Tom, I’m not sure that that your point is relevant. However, what I d say is it’s difficult to establish accurate figures for a mobile population, given the current methods used by ABS to collect census data. A more realistic estimate, from the Desert Knowledge CRC, would be about 40%.



Fire Tom I live in the west, so I’m a western Buddhist. If you want a label then perhaps Mahayana will do. Though like MNS, I believe in all Buddhism.

As to your *assumptions* regarding Buddhist ethics. I suggest you learn a bit more about Buddhist ethics before making unfounded judgements.



I think you will find that there is a big difference between people keeping domesticated animals like dogs, compared to caging wild animals.

I’d suggest your "Karma by not acting… great meditation exercise" statements are meant to be inflame. The dog is confined in a back yard. We have talked to the authorities, and neighbours. The owners say they are responsible dog owners. And personally, I’m prepared to put up with the barking rather than having the animal destroyed. Basically, I think the owners just don’t understand dogs.

Hi Stone, I googled Puja, and I can't say it's something I'd be interested in other than knowing what it actually is and what benefit a participant might hope to gain from performing it. Now I know.

By 4/8 I was using shorthand for the Four Nobel truths and the Eightfold Path, concepts, that as I've previously stated are very difficult for me to find fault with...and I tried to.

See, that myth about Karma and being reborn as an animal ( I've made references to this too, something along the lines of being reborn as a hagfish ) is one of the assumptions I'm unwilling to make..IE, I refuse to believe it as it's just another one of those examples of using fear of what might/will happen in the afterlife in order to enforce "the rules"

With domestic dogs, I quite often hear crap like " I don't want my pet to rule my life " as an excuse for leaving their pet alone for extended periods of time. These people, I figure should have either cats or tropical fish,because, depending on the breed, dogs are pack animals and tend to stress out if they're left out of the pack....maybe your frequently out neighbours might consider a second dog, just to keep the first one company.




Yes, I agree...a very big difference.

Hi Stout, that’s a great tip on my neighbours getting a second dog.

The Sevenfold Puja is designed to arouse the Bodhicitta, which is the will to enlightenment for all sentient beings. From a more practical aspect, meditation is the key to the any self development. I think the fear of being re born an animal may have been used as a parable, in the past, to convey the message of living a good life.

Have to rush, thanks for your input

What? The equivalent of a hand gun? Man their are pitbull bans ariseing all over the world, in the last year 3 major municipalitys in canada have enacted pitbull bans. It's statements like that that really bother me. It is true many pitbull owners have their dogs because they think they are "tough" or whatever. their is also all kinds of pitbull owners who just like the breed.

Pitbulls are not human aggresive typically, the ones that maul people are raritys. they are known to put up with extreme amounts of abuse before they turn human aggresive. they do have a natural inclination towards animal aggression that can be a handfull for many dog owners (who don't want a fighting dog like some scum bags do)

Did you know pitbull breeders often get rotweilers and shepards to guard their kennels because pitbulls are terrible guard dogs, even over their own litters.

The pitbull bans are only going to result in scum bag dog owners who want tough and aggresive dogs to resort to dog breed that are a lot more dangerous. the problem isn't the breed it's the owners, and the owners aren't going away. Mark my word in 10 year the next breed you hear about in sensationalized media about dog mauilings will be rotweilers, ridgebacks or some other large breed powerful dog. In the 50's the popular image of pitbulls was a gentle, family dog.


20 years ago the feared dog was sheppards, before that standard size poodles.

Their is so many myths about pitbulls it's ridicilous.

for one thing, what most people classify as a pitbull isn't a pitbull, What is a pitbull anyways? Only one breed could be considered a pitbull and that is theamerican pit bull terrier. most people consider pitbulls either american pit bull terriers, american staffordshire terrire, staffordshord bull terrier, or any dog that has short hair and vaguely resembles a 'pit bull'

Pitbulls don't have lockjaw. no canine has a jaw that locks. What people mistake for 'lockjaw' is a dog not wanting to let go. All dogs are capable of biteing someone and not letting go. Pitbulls also don't have terribly strong bites compared to many other breeds. many dogs, even small breed dogs can cause serious damage if they attack someone.

PS-depending on the statistics you use, pitbulls are typically the 5 or 6th most reported dog in instance involveing dog attacks. Why the reputation? Ignorance.

You 'suggest' or you 'assume' (again)? nothing of that kin intended...

Even though I have spent maybe the first 20 years of my life in close(st) contact to dogs, I couldn't call myself an "expert" in the subject but do know that some dogs tend to escape their confinement (as from my experience) when the opportunity arises. Personally I would rather have a psychotic dog put down than another kid dying from an attack (which has been the reason for such dogs getting banned)... but that's just me.

I did ask for your lineage of Buddhism, no need to jump on me for that reason

However, I guess this thread has gotten so far off topic, that (to me) it's pointless to contribute any further.

Hi Railspinner

It's the owners I was referring to when I made the equivalent to a handgun statement, not the breed itself. These dogs have had bad reputation and given the stigma that's been attached to the breed for the last twenty years you have to question the motivation of someone getting a breed that pretty much everyone is afraid of.

IMO running around with a pit bull ( yes an American Staffordshire Terrier ) is pretty the much the same thing as the open carry policy that some US states allow. The message here is "fear me, I'm badass" and anyone claiming that they "just happen too like the breed" is most likely just saying that as more of an excuse than anything else.

The problem isn't so much their attacking humans, as it is with attacking other dogs. For instance, locally we had a guy running around with a pack of five of these things in a van and letting them run off leash in dog parks...
cbc story here

I'm figuring the reputation has to do more with media hype and I fully agree there are more dangerous breeds out there...like those fluffy innocent looking Chow Chows.



Yes, it was bound too, we can only say "this kid needs help" so many times, and it's not like AP did any follow up

Thread drift can be good too.

stout I see what your saying now, I thought you were being another fear monger of pitbulls.

Their are lots of reasons why people have pitbulls, many of which aren't for the image. They are fun breeds with lots of energy. Personally I would never have one because of the potential problem of their animal aggression and the way people perceive them. especially the cops (if I ever wanted to pass through ontario I would have to have a muzzle on my dog if it was a pitbull the entire time due to their retarded pitbull laws) muzzles usually create aggression in dogs, and they certainly cause a fair bit of fear when average people see you walking a hannibal lector looking dog.

short haired dogs are really sensitive to cold weather to, im glad my mutt has shaggy hair. canada has long winters.

Railspinner, those types of misunderstandings are typical in this format. Although we mostly endeavour to be clear, it doesn't always happen.

For reasons the same as yours, a pitbill would be one of the last breeds I'd get if I were looking to get a dog. I'm more into mutts myself...large mutts, and it's just not practical to get myself a dog right now.

Hannibal Lecter looking dog... I know exactly the look you're referring to with those big wire cage muzzles. How apropos.