#Animal rights and welfare activist

[angelcatsstuff]

Happy over 4 years now that you transitioned into the afterlife My One And Only Angel Cat Grazee!

Missing you still, but know that you are always with me and Mit Mit Cat!

[daisylovesrumble]

Urge These Resorts to Stop Offering Cruel Dolphin Experiences! | PETA

Hawks Cay Resort in Florida and The Kahala Hotel & Resort and Hilton Waikoloa Village in Hawaii are supporting the abuse of intelligent dolphins by partnering with notorious Dolphin Quest or Dolphin Connection. These companies cruelly confine dolphins to tiny lagoons so they can offer tourists “swim with dolphins” experiences for profit.

[weaselbeaselpants]

K absolutely none of this is connected to her shows and her worker drama it's unrelated; but I'm not gonna lie Viv's Japan vacation where she's showing herself with a bunch of animal cafes is really starting to piss me off.

The deer being fed I think are wild, I don't have anything to say about that. But the owl cafes, the otter cafe, the marine park.

Look here! I'm not anti-captivity, honest (though AZA is hard to trust when they legit have an approval rating on Seaworld), but I really am skeeved out by so-called zoos and attractions that let you pet the animals, kind of especially if they aren't domesticated animals but exotics. Though, tbh even dog/cat pet shelters or whatever sound pretty hectic to eat at. Also, feels a little unsanitary. But even if that weren't a problem I just...kind of don't like anything where the animals are literally tied down and can't escape from you. It's the same reason I and a lot of other people don't like those pony-rides at fairs. The whole time you're worried about the animal's safety and happiness and also you aren't having any real connection to them.

Watching animals in an enclosure that's nice where they're just doing their thing >>> having to pet the animal. Not that I'm immune to propaganda and wouldn't absolutely volunteer to clean up scat if it meant I could hold a weasel being rehabilitated to the wild for a hot minute. I would 100% do that (it'd bite. Don't care). But there's that and then there's me getting to bond with a weasel that's shock collared or chained somehow and can't escape from me. That doesn't sit right.

And no. I don't care if it's in another country it's still wrong by a lot of global standards. In fact, I think it's kind of weird that people are doing the "respect other cultures"-thing only when it comes to Instagramable stories.

Ya'll have to realize it's not just yuppie American vegangelicals complaining. There are animal rights orgs in Thailand fighting elephant tourism, there ARE animal rights orgs in Japan and they do not like the animal cafes. Animal rights/welfare aren't some kind of 'annoying' American pastime. Why do you think Milo and Otis was controversial? Why do you think Padak exists? Respecting other cultures and their practices means: letting indigenous people hunt the animals they've been hunting for thousands of years, which of course isn't always going to be pretty cause that's what traditional hunting IS; it's allowing ritual animal slaughter in spaces and religions where that's done to feed the community and not as torture or sacrifice. And personally, as a mostly vegetarian, I say right on to both of those things.

Zoos, farms, petting zoos, aquariums and sanctuaries are YMMV, but I vouch for them in theory and usually in practice. Animal cafes and marine parks? I'm sorry but I can't not see those as being tourism and exploitive at best. Especially marine parks.

Viv straight up did a pic based on Blackfish but I guess that doesn't matter in Japan. I'm really disappointed in her as someone who loves animals. Because hey- when you as a human-animal love the other creatures of this earth, of course things like our rights come first. Humans are just that kind of animal and I don't think there's anything wrong with taxidermy or vulture culture. But, especially as an adult, you should know how to take care of animals and it should be your responsibility as their caretaker to give them the best care you have.

There's a petshop near where I (no longer in a few weeks) work. It used to hate that place cause I saw a rat eating another rat's baby alive among other abuses and the owner straight up didn't give a shit, not about the rat or that he was putting smaller reptiles in cages with monitor lizards. You can guess how that ended.

That place has new owners now. It mostly has animals there in transition. While they still have feeders (I know, that's prolly controversial to the reptile parents reading), their conditions have really improved. No crowding the rats, even the feeders, in unsafe unventilated places. They get REALLY mad if you tap the glass on the cages. No more keeping lovebirds apart from birds so that they're always calling. Betafish males get actual decorated tanks to themselves instead of those depressing bowls! If petstores and units where you pick up your expensive reptiles, fish and birds from HAVE to exist, I'd rather they be places like this. Places where the staff are trying and really do seem to love and want the best for their animals while expecting nothing fancy from the animals in return.

I'd love to be proven wrong on this- I remember seeing a yt vid for a bed and breakfast where you ate outside with the cows that made the dairy you're eating, and them being cows they of course wanted to come up and say hi to the guests. Of course I'd love that '' magical '' experience with an animal while I'm enjoying my coffee. But I just can't trust cafes and exotic petting zoos like this. My family has veterinarians, farmers, vegans and vegetarians, and FFA graduates in it. I'm just really concerned about the little things like this.

I know in my heart that of course Viv doesn't want to hurt any animals- but it bothers me.

Thoughts @chaifootsteps @derangedhyena-delphinidae?

[gone2soon-rip]

PAUL O’GRADY (1955-Died March 28th 2023,at 67). English comedian, broadcaster, actor, writer, and drag queen. He achieved notability in the London gay scene during the 1980s with his drag queen persona Lily Savage, through which he gained broader popularity in the 1990s,hosting the game show,Blankety Blank,in his Lily Savage persona.Paul was also a keen activist in LGBT rights throughout his career.. O'Grady subsequently dropped the character and in the 2000s became the presenter of various television and radio shows, including the dating show,Blind Date,and also The Paul O'Grady Show, and Paul O’Grady Live. Paul was a passionate dog lover and campaigned rigorously on behalf of pet charities such as Battersea Cats & Dogs Homes,for which he was a keen ambassador. H ealso presented shows on his love of dogs,such as Paul O’Grady:For the Love of Dogs.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_O%27Grady

[darkwood-sleddog]

proselytizing about your "anti-carnism" and animal rights activist views is not a trauma response lmao.

[thueenz]

wait I thought the dodo posted animal welfare/rescue content? What is shady about that corporation/brand? :0

hi i just woke up hopefully i can word my thoughts! so sorry if none of this makes sense ahshshg im not like a professional in these spaces just someone very into animal welfare so bear with me here. this is all from memory as well because i refuse to watch a bunch of dodo videos but i doubt they have changed at all judging by my quick skimming of their account lol

basically it...is and it isnt. Not all the dodos content is bad on technicality. but the people behind it clearly dont actually care about accurate information or animal welfare at all, or at least not in a way that actually helps animals.

concerning point one: improper keeping of wild animals. theres many videos on the dodo of wild animals being kept as household pets, where they most certainly are not thriving lmao. Most of their content is dogs atp at least but theres still a hefty amount of wild animals. foxes, deer, raccoons, opossum, and monkeys i just saw from a quick scroll. not the monkeys good lord the poor things. the dodo promotes and shares this content, these wild animals playing with domestic ones (unsafe), the keeping of monkeys is especially bad they cannot mentally thrive in a home environment and should not be cuddling dogs 😭 all these animals are going to suffer. they are not domesticated, they are not fit to live by humans and get their needs met outside of a zoo where they have an entire enclosure and team of people looking after them. opossums are also if i remember incredibly tricky to keep healthy in captivity and almost always become dangerously overweight in the hands of pet owners, if not always.

ive seen the dodo post 'heartwarming' videos of baby animal rescue by the layperson and how 'cute' it is that the animal got attached and now has to live as a pet. its not cute. its not heartwarming. what you did was fail to rescue the animal. take it to a professional so it can be released properly. if the animal gets habituated to humans, then you failed. it is a failure of a rescue, not cute. organizations try their best to PREVENT that usually.

concerning point 2: promoting dangerous animal pairs. small prey animals and cats are the most common. cat saliva is dangerously toxic to small rodents, lizards, and birds. they should never be put together. every time i see a video of a cat 'playing' with a little hamster or something i die a bit its so stressful. these animals are often stressed by the cats as well. cats have prey drive, instinct. they are going to kill your hamster girl. they just are.

concerning point 3: rampant anthropomorphism. im not sure if people understand what i mean by that so let me try and explain. anthropomorphism is the name for the human tendency to apply human thoughts, emotions, and morals, to inhuman objects and creatures. its what we do. we view things from the only lens we know. however, to do this to animals so freely without a second thought is horrifically damaging. animals are not people. the dodo promotes false images of what animals are feeling and thinking, and applies human concepts of what 'freedom' and 'respect' is to them if that makes sense. its the basic thing all animal rights activists do- which, animal rights activists advocate for animals to have the same rights as humans. the term gets watered down and accepted but most of them genuinely want this, something incredibly damaging for these animals.

anthropomorphism leads to abuse. each animal is different and needs different needs for its own health, not what a human thinks it would want in the animals place. a common point is to say "what if that was you" to a farm animal. its not me. because i am not a cow. a cow has no concept of caring about freedom. it cares that its well fed and healthy. or insisting animals are feeling guilty for something, or insisting they dont have instinct or prey drive and 'would never' because they 'know hes family', or other human views of what animals are feeling instead of understanding what is really going on, which, surprise, damages the animal greatly. they need to be cared for as an animal, not a human.

concerning point 4: a common talking point among animal rights activists, as you can guess, is veganism and completely stopping animal agriculture. this is obviously not good. i wont get into veganism right now unless someone wants me to(but living in a house with a family of animal rights activists vegans, i know first hand unfortunately.) i dont remember what videos exactly but i know the dodo has spread these points in the past, maybe not outright, but with falsified information about farms and livestock. animal farming is not evil. if i have to see one more video of "omg the mother cow is crying for her baby 😭think before you buy meat.." and its a cow crying to be bred bc shes in heat i will explode LMFAO. and then they bring in a calf to reunite with her thats clearly an entirely different breed they just bought for the video to make people sad. not talking about a dodo video there just a general genre of video but i wouldnt be surprised if the dodo posted one of those too 💀.that space is rich with dangerous misinfo about animal welfare and animals themselves, prioritizing human feelings over what the animals actually need. anyway the dodo tends to post content from that point of view

im sure the dodo fakes a lot of the content. in general like. livestock arent just laying near dead on the road from farm trucks after falling out. and other stuff but i dont remember specifics but its a pretty common thing in the animal rights activist scene. believe it or not farmers want their animals alive and healthy for good product if nothing else. mass factory farming and neglect is a product of capitalism not a product of "inherently unethical farming"

if anyone thinks "well, the dodo might not know all this" then they should not be running a widely viral brand about animals. full stop. they dont care. if they did they wouldve long since changed. they care about what makes people feel good, not what is good for the animals. there is no excuse to not know at least this basic information if you are running an account like that. i see a lot of abuse online from people who dont know better because the average person knows next to nothing about animal welfare beyond how to keep a dog alive. and i wish desperately there was more education on this stuff but it is what it is. i will never blame someone for not knowing something as long as they are willing to learn. the disconnect from animals and understanding them in this world is a huge problem, especially the disconnect of where you get your food. but they do not get that excuse.

tl;dr dodo promotes neglectful and dangerous keeping of animals, and false information about them.

[gayleafpool]

do animal rights activists know that in the wild animals get hunted and killed for food by other animals like do they know that’s literally just how life works

[lacapraso]

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[daisylovesrumble]

petition: Stop the Massacre of Sweden's Brown Bears. Demand an End to This Brutal Cull!

[luphus]

honestly people are way more ignorant about the welfare of the animals than they think they are

animal rights activists are even worse regarding that, because instead of actually learning about what an animal needs and how it behaves they rely solely on how they *think* animals feel and need

and it's the reason why the public views feeding and interacting with wild animals as "being good and kindhearted :) " and keeping animals in zoos as "poor animals suffering in cramped cages >:( "

and it kills animals

[mortalityplays]

today someone was telling me about an old friend of his who was an animal welfare activist back in the 70s, who liked to smash the windows of butcher shops without warning while they were out walking around town. one day this friend spotted an old car battery sitting in an alley, picked it up, spun it around, and hurled it at the window of a furrier's shop. he said it was an amazing thing: as he stood there panicking, thinking they were about to get arrested, the whole window bellied inwards and bounced the thing right back without even a scratch.

I said lucky the window didn't break, they'd have charged you with battery. he said ugh this is why anarchists don't tell jokes. I said aye, we always bomb.

[isaacsapphire]

Again, pointedly and intentionally failing to understand why other people eat what they eat. It’s food, not cocaine. I can’t be too mad about yall not knowing fuck about nutrition because almost nobody knows fuck about nutrition. Still might be helpful here. Contemplating what a cultural genocide entails and why people might object to people proposing to do part of one to them might also be fruitful. Remember, just because you dgaf about your heritage and family traditions doesn’t mean everyone feels that way.

You are incorrect about the logic of your own ideology and at this point, I am well passed caring if you are stupid or lying, because you are very very blatantly leaving out important steps.

Step 1 is “we’re going to prioritize ‘animal suffering’ over human suffering because enough chickens outweigh a human because I said so.”

The obsession about complicity also smacks of a moral purity concern rather then anything practical smacks of being essentially a religious belief rather than anything half as logical as you pretend to be. Be the cold calculating rational thinker you pretend to be, not an anxiety wracked guilt ridden useful idiot.

You’re also lying about what your movement actually want to accomplish; not a harm reduction approach to meat eating, but the abolishment of human consumption of animal products worldwide, with the abolishment of domesticated animals or the biosphere as a whole as a stretch goal. Also we already have a climate emergency vegan in this thread so rather obviously uwu animals is not the only ostensible motive.

I half suspect that the whole movement is a psyop to keep outlier political groups from getting anything done by tying them up with pointless infighting about things that they can’t ever affect anyways, getting nutritional deficiencies (bla bla B12 and not all you clowns being rich, organized, or informed enough to stay healthy on whatever restrictions you put yourself under) so that you physically and mentally aren’t capable of doing anything effectively.

I believe that we'll eventually solve the meat eating/veganism issue not by cultured meat, which requires highly controlled production environment, but by geneengineering plants that have flesh that is 85-90% like meat in terms of taste, texture and protein content. This is the most plausible scenario because it will be Good Enough for the overwhelming majority of people while annoying the 5-10% of the most insufferable people on either side, therefore it's funny, therefore it will happen.

[pers-books]

Liz Truss’s bid to ban trans women from sports runs out of time after MPs discuss ferrets instead

Left: former PM Liz Truss. Right: two domesticated ferrets (names unknown) Getty/Wikimedia Commons

Former UK prime minister Liz Truss’s recent attempt to ban transgender women from female spaces ran out of time and will now not be debated after MPs joined forces to “talk it out” for five hours, including discussing ferret name choices.

Truss, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister, sponsored the bill – entitled the Health and Equality Acts (Amendment) Bill – saying it would define sex in law as biological and, in her view, end the “absurd and dangerous situation where biological males self-defining as females can access girls’ and women’s toilets and so on – as well as sports competitions”. 

In recent months, Liz Truss has become increasingly vocal over trans issues and has aligned herself with hard-right groups and figures, even appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US state of Maryland last month, where she claimed that “trans activists” had infiltrated the UK’s civil service.

One of Liz Truss’s allies, Secretary of State for Trade Kemi Badenoch, slammed the “filibuster”, saying that Labour MPs had used parliamentary time to discuss ferret name choices instead of “protecting children.”

Champion said: “I am interested that my right hon. Friend is keenly mentioning ferrets at every opportunity that she can get in this debate, so let me just put it on record that my brother had a ferret called Oscar.” Eagle replied: “My hon. Friend now has that on the record. I do not really know what else to say about that, except that I am sure that Oscar brought her brother great joy.”

Conservative MP for North Devon Selaine Saxby also joined in the Animal Welfare debate after she was asked by Ms Eagle whether she had ever owned a ferret, “and if so, what was that ferret’s name?”

Saxby replied: “That is an excellent intervention. I will come to ferrets, but unfortunately I have not had the pleasure of one at home myself.”

At one point, the Animal Welfare debate segued into a discussion of the soap opera Coronation Street, with Labour MP for Chester Samantha Dixon saying: “Is my hon. Friend aware of a recent Coronation Street storyline on precisely this issue? It involved the indomitable Evelyn, who is, of course, played by Maureen Lipman, and covered the issues around puppy farming. It was a strong, educational storyline.”

A bill aimed at ban conversion therapy failed to move through Parliament on Friday 1 March for the same reasons, after a debate on it ran out of time: with anti-conversion therapy ban MPs, including gender-critical Labour MP Rosie Duffield and several Conservative MPs, similarly accused of ‘filibustering’.

Were it not too early in the morning for it, I'd be HOWLING with laughter at this!

Here's a suggestion - instead of hounding trans people, do something about the number of children being groomed online!

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Hello to new followers and anyone wondering about why I talk so much about whales and dolphins.

I used to work as a professional dolphin trainer and spent about 5 years involved in the industry as well as in cetacean welfare. I want to share everything I've learned and experienced during that time to help people be more informed about cetaceans in human care.

My first introduction to cetaceans was actually through Blackfish, during my early days of studying for my Canine and Equine Science degree in university. I never thought that my research on killer whales in SeaWorld would result in me doing internships in dolphin care and resulting in a massive career shift into marine mammals.

After my internships I worked in 2 different facilities, learning animal training using positive reinforcement almost exclusively and helping to improve welfare by designing enrichment programs.

While this blog is a lot about my dog adventures with my greyhound (now I'm a professional dog trainer and running my own business), I am more than happy to answer questions about dolphins and whales in human care. If I don't know the exact answer, I will pass it onto my network of cetacean welfare researchers and colleagues still working in the field.

Dolphins are incredible animals to work with and are not the tortured and depressed souls that a lot of animal rights activists claim they are. Of course, if you don't like dolphins and whales in human care, that's okay! However, I hope I can help to reassure people that these animals are loved and cared for and that, in some cases, can absolutely thrive in our care.

[art-damaged]

Portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo / activists

In June 2024, this painting was defaced while on view at the Philip Mould Gallery in London. Two individuals walked up to the painting and used rollers to paste printed materials onto the work: one applied the head of Wallace (a character from the "Wallace and Gromit" animated franchise) over the King's head, while the other adhered a A speech bubble that read: “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!”

The individuals were later identified as members of the animals rights activist group Animals Rising, who issued a statement claiming responsibility, characterizing the incident as a "light-hearted action" that had been meant as a protest criticizing the welfare standards of RSPCA "assured farm" status. (King Charles is a patron of the RSPCA.) “With King Charles being such a big fan of Wallace and Gromit, we couldn’t think of a better way to draw his attention."

In its statement, the group also claimed that the painting - the first commissioned since King Charles's coronation, having been unveiled only a month prior - had not been damaged in the incident: “The posters were affixed using water sprayed onto the bag of them, and are easily removable without causing damage to the painting." This was later confirmed by the gallery, who said the painting had been set behind protective glass. Neither of the individuals were arrested ("The gallery did not wish to report a crime, and as such, there is no further action by police," per reports), but it remains unclear when the painting might return to public view.