Escaping the Echo Chamber

[RoseMorninStar]

I'm not sure this is the best place for this discussion, but I would think this is would make most of us who adore our pets uncomfortable, so that might fall into the category of an echo chamber(?)

A week or so ago I glanced over an article that I came upon about the ethics of keeping pets, both from an environmental and a humane perspective. I didn't make much of the article at the time (which I did not read in full), but it's been messing with my head ever since. I wish I could find the original article to read in full and link to. Here is a similar article: Should We Stop Keeping Pets? I'm curious what others might think of this? Should we be changing our thinking on the keeping of pets in the same way some have rethought circus animals, zoos, animals as a food source, etc..?

[Sunsilver]

Here's one of the organizations behind this agenda, and here's what they want:
Don't be taken in, or we WILL lose the right to have pets!!

[Frelga]

Sunny, I wondered if that was about a PETA position. They... do not meet my standards for serious discourse.

I dunno Inanna, some people don't seem to know what quid pro quo means.

Everyone who grew up in the 90s or later knows what quid pro quo means!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26CxAEK ... u.be&t=132

[Inanna]

I’m going to ask if those sentences were taken out of context. I can see the reasoning behind them.

[Sunsilver]

Rose, my people come from a farming background. I also am very fond of dogs that are bred to do a job. If animal rights activists have their way, and animals obtain rights that are equal/almost equal to humans, we will no longer have farm animals, and it will be illegal to have dogs or other animals that work and are purpose bred for a specific job.

Also, breeders that breed working animals like police and livestock dogs will likely be forced out of business by the 'adopt, don't shop' crowd. We will no longer have dogs that are carefully bred for a particular task. And this is something I am willing to fight against until my last breath!

Some of the best moments of my life have been spent in close partnership with either a dog or a horse I was training for a specific task.

[RoseMorninStar]

Sunny.. Oh.. I get the far-reaching implications. That's why it messed with my head and why I decided to put it in this thread. It's an uncomfortable subject for me and it made me consider some of the rationale. It's unfortunate that I can't find the original article I saw which focused on a wide range of things, including and especially the environment and the impact of human consumption and that of our pets.

For the record I generally avoid extreme positions, however how we view things does tend to change over time. When I was young we had a hunting dog. I loved our dog but it stayed outside in a kennel. As a child I thought nothing of it but today the thought of our poor dog outside by itself for most of it's life fills me with a sense of horror. Not so much because it was outside because it was sheltered, fed, and cared for, but that dogs are pack animals and it lived most of it's life alone. My parents raised (hundreds of) exotic birds, mostly parrots, cockatoos, some macaws, etc.. They lived their lives indoors in breeding cages. It haunts me. I am not a vegetarian, but vegetarianism it is a growing trend (and for some good reasons). I doubt I'll ever be a full-blown vegetarian but I understand the rational (for a variety of reasons, health, environment, etc..) and have cut back on meat. A friend of mine who chose to go vegetarian about 8 months ago has been slightly pressuring me to do the same, but (for example) she has 3 cats which are obligate carnivores. In the wild they would be a part of the eco-system, but as pets we must raise other creatures to kill & feed them. How does this fit our rationale?

In any case, as I said.. it all really messed with my head & I thought it might be worthy of discussion to get some insights and the thoughts & opinons of others.

Everyone who grew up in the 90s or later knows what quid pro quo means!

I'd say that might be the problem. My comment was kinda aimed at FOX news viewers who are mostly in the 60's+ category.

[River]

In the case of species that are domesticated, what would happen if we stopped keeping them?

[RoseMorninStar]

In the case of species that are domesticated, what would happen if we stopped keeping them?

That is exactly the type of question I began asking myself. How would that work, exactly? I certainly don't have the answers. Is it sort of like the conundrum of not purchasing a puppy from a puppy mill so as not to encourage horrible breeding conditions for profit? What then happens to the puppies? GAH!

[Sunsilver]

In the case of species that are domesticated, what would happen if we stopped keeping them?

They would become feral. There would be a very high death rate at first, as natural selection weeded out the ones not capable of surviving without human help.

Cats generally adjust quite well. Most cities have feral cat colonies that are managed by SNR (spay/neuter and release) to keep the population stable, and some people adopt feral cats that are too wild to be house pets to control rodents in their barns.

Many cities outside of North America that don't have animal control or humane societies have packs of feral dogs. These dogs can often be a problem. They get diseases and parasites that can be transmitted to humans, the most dangerous being rabies. They can also be aggressive and attack humans. In the country, they can attack and kill livestock.

Horses, cattle and pigs can all adapt fairly well to surviving on their own, if there is enough food. There are many historical examples of this. For instance, the famous ponies on Chincoteauge Island arrived there as a result of a shipwreck. When the island of Bermuda was first colonized, the colonists found herds of wild pigs that had come from a shipwreck. And when the Spaniards were driven out of parts of the southern States, the cattle and horses they left behind flourished on the grassy plains.

However, as anyone who has ever had extensive experience with livestock or pets can tell you, this would come at a cost. The animals would be vulnerable to all the things they are protected from when they have humans looking after them. And many of the things we protect them from are deadly. It would definitely be survival of the fittest.

[RoseMorninStar]

We visited Chincoteaugue & Assateaugue a couple of years ago. It was amazing to watch the wild ponies. Those who monitor & manage the herds have tried to introduce new horses to reduce inbreeding of the current population, but they've never found another horse that has been able to survive eating the salty marsh grasses.

[Frelga]

I remember watching a documentary about urban packs of dogs, former pets and their descendants. They were said to breed back to a standard dog shape, medium sized and yellowish in color.

There were street dogs where I grew up. They were rarely aggressive, and when they were, it was enough to pretend to pick up a stone. They knew the score.

A small pack hung out around my school and we snuck bits of our lunches to them. One dog was our particular friend and walked us home from school every day.

They must have been picked up by dog catchers eventually. Probably it was not a great idea to have feral dogs around young children, but I missed my friend for a long time.

[Túrin Turambar]

There are some interesting ethical dilemmas around the keeping of pets, both from the perspective of the individual animal (should it have a choice?) to society-wide questions about the resources which go into feeding and caring for them (there are pets receiving better medical care than many people). But I don’t have any answers to them. I’m not a pet person myself.

[Sunsilver]

Cattle grazing has pushed wild horses in the U.S. into areas where few other animals can survive. As a result, they are amazingly surefooted, and have rock-hard hooves. I remember hearing a story about campers who had the horses come in very close to their campsite, which was on very rocky ground, and they never heard them coming.

They are also known for their incredible endurance.

[elengil]

I've heard those kinds of arguments.

We as a species have pet cats and dogs because their wild ancestors decided living with us was more beneficial to them than not. That is, we didn't domesticate them so much as they chose to become domesticated for their own reasons. They decided that they would accept us as much as we chose to accept them.

More personally, we have had stray cats adopt us out of nowhere and decided they wanted to live with us. One could argue stray cats only exist because someone had a pet at some point and it either got away or was abandoned or had kittens which were strays already, etc. But they still decided that living with us was better than living on their own.

I would also point out that giving medical attention to animals is not the *reason* people lack sufficient medical attention, so it's not a finite resource that is being misapplied somewhere. It is because in the US we have chosen not to ensure everyone, rich or poor, has access to necessary medical care. That is on us as a society, and is completely independent of whether or not we have pets.

[Sunsilver]

Yes, very true!

[Frelga]

Well, it does say that we as a society have pretty messed up priorities.

[yovargas]

If the primary argument against keeping pets is their environmental impact - keeping humans has a far higher environmental impact but arguing that this makes raising your kids immoral instead of releasing them into the wild is, shall we say, a bit absurd.

We have to accept that at some level, nearly everything we modern humans do is bad for the environment and that it is ultimately unreasonable to think that because of that, we should go back to living like animals, which would genuinely be the only way humans wouldn't cause environmental harm. It's my view that the only reasonable, realistic position is to encourage society-level enforcement that aims to minimize the most significant, large-scale causes of harm, such as government policies aimed at limiting carbon emissions, and avoid getting hung up on the things that are, in comparison, relatively minor, like pets or plastic straws.

[elengil]

We have to accept that at some level, nearly everything we modern humans do is bad for the environment...
...go back to living like animals, which would genuinely be the only way humans wouldn't cause environmental harm

I'm not sure I can agree with either of these statements. (No, I'm not suggesting you said we *should* go back to living like animals, only disagreeing that we'd have no impact in doing so.)

[Cerin]

If I might return to the employment bias photo at the bottom of the last page, does that photo disturb anyone else? It reminds me of the scandalous painting by Manet, 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe,' depicting two men and a woman picnicking in a park-like setting. Everything seems perfectly amiable and normal, except that the men are fully clothed and the woman is naked.

google image

Men in formal settings, whether it be business settings or celebratory settings, cover themselves; they wear clothing that hides the particulars of their bodies. The more formal the occasion, the more completely men are covered and the more completely women expose themselves. Notice how the woman in the employment photo is completely revealing her physicality; she might just as well be advertising her wares on a street corner. And yet we wonder why she is not taken as seriously as the man who is sitting there in a suit, which renders his body discreetly off-limits to his co-workers. If fashion did not have women dressing like prostitutes, tacitly declaring 'what's important about me is my body,' maybe they would be viewed as more capable.

edit

This is all assuming that the women in that photo aren't applying to be 'exotic dancers.'

[elengil]

does that photo disturb anyone else?

No