#No To Animal Cruelty

[foldingfittedsheets]

When I was young my dad offhandedly told me he thought people treated fish with so much casual cruelty because fish can’t scream.

The words branded themselves across my soul.

As an adult I think he may have been joking. He payed no especial attention to any indignities fish suffered in our household but I could never forget. I saw fish in a different light after that.

Fish kept in tiny bowls, breathing their own poisons, dying by inches. Fish kept in cold tanks, casually disposed of. Fish touted as being short lived when they could outlive the better loved family dog if only they could breathe. Fish casually won and discarded in cheap plastic bags, thrown away a week later.

How they would scream, if they could.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

🚨 BREAKING🚨:

We have identified a dog slaughter facility in Thái Nguyên, Vietnam, where nearly 30 dogs are desperately suffering — terrified, waiting to be slaughtered for their meat.

Please donate to help us shut down this cruel operation. Save these dogs from death and help all animals who need us the very most. 😠😢⬇️

bit.ly/46PFnwj

https://twitter.com/HSIGlobal/status/1717896446563975672?t=t_hTAMKYrOGdI33ywBu2iQ&s=19

[sayruq]

Some of the mice died on impact. They all had injection spots on their backs

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Okay, I know people as a general rule tend to not care about invertebrates as much as cute, fuzzy mammals, but this is a must-read if you care about animal welfare. The short version is that horseshoe crab blood has been used for decades in medicine as a way to test whether something is truly sterile; the blood clots in the presence of bacteria. Since then millions of horseshoe crabs have been captured and drained of blood, even though a synthetic alternative was developed a few years ago.

They go through a pretty brutal experience in the process. They're caught by fishermen who often throw them by their tails into a pile in the open air, and they're then trucked to a bleeding facility where they're strapped down and their blood is removed with needles jabbed directly into their hearts. Over half their blood may be taken, after which they're supposed to be returned to the ocean. However, it's likely many of them never make it back, instead turned into fish bait and sold by the same fishermen who caught them in the first place.

Apart from the fact that this is a horrific thing to put any animal through, the attrition due to fatalities has put a serious dent in horseshoe crab numbers. This is compounded by massive habitat loss, pollution, and the capture of horseshoe crabs as food, particularly as the females of one species are considered a delicacy. And other animals that rely on horseshoe crabs are suffering, too. The American rufa subspecies of the red knot, a medium-sized shorebird, is critically endangered as the horseshoe crab eggs it must have in order to successfully complete migration have become increasingly scarce, and it is likely the bird will become extinct if trends continue.

While there are guidelines for medical horseshoe crab harvest, they're considered optional. The few laws that exist are poorly enforced. Short of a complete ban on horseshoe crab blood in favor of the synthetic alternative, these animals are in very real danger of going extinct after a history spanning over 400 million years on this planet.

Thankfully, this article is not the first to bring forth the issues surrounding horseshoe crab harvest. Here are a few resources for further information and action (US based, though horseshoe crabs are threatened throughout their entire range):

Horseshoe Crab Conservation Network - https://horseshoecrab.org/conservation/

Wetlands Institute - https://wetlandsinstitute.org/conservation/horseshoe-crab-conservation/

Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition - https://hscrabrecovery.org/

[mademoiselle-crabaletta]

I feel like we need to start really pushing for hate crimes against women to actually be treated as such. It's fucking insane that a man can beat/rape/murder a woman, call her sexist slurs during the attack, and then tell the police and press that he did it because he hates women, but somehow this isn't considered a hate crime. The only reason places don't want to do it is because there's so many that it would mean like 90% of hate crime victims would be women (literally the reason the uk gave for not doing it a few years back)

It's extra crazy because wasn't it something like 80% of mass murderers have a history of harrasment and violence against women and girls? You would think it would be a no brainer to treat these crimes seriously to prevent these men from getting out and committing even more violent and horrific crimes, but that would mean treating women as people and not shock absorbers for society I guess.

[todaysbird]

if you support stuff like this knowingly for the sake of personal enjoyment you’re valuing an animal’s life less than your party

[incorrectbatfam]

Damian: My grandfather is in the backyard stabbing the ground with his sword trying to render the soil barren by killing the worms but luckily my sister has trained them all in classical ballet and they keep pirouetting away from the blade.

[whomeidontknowthem]

I met a dog with surgically partially removed vocal cords to soften her barking, which was also the time I learned that such a thing was possible.

After researching, I've reached a conclusion: it should be done to more whumpees.

Yours is too loud? Their screams are ringing in your ears? You're tired of listening to their rants, but enjoy their pleading enough to want to leave them some voice?

Perform devocalization on them today to ensure they never manage anything more than a husky whisper!

[pastadoughie]

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Adorable posters promoting kindness to animals from the Great Depression.

Morgan Dennis (1892-1960) was an American artist and writer who is most often remembered for his images of dogs.

These posters by Morgan Dennis were produced for the American Humane Association's Be Kind to Animals Week during the 1930s.

The commemorative week was first observed in 1915, and several well-known artists of the time created artwork to promote it over its first few decades of life.

The national organization offered copies of posters like Dennis' to local branches, leaving space at the bottom for their identifying information.

Each Dennis poster featured a child performing a kind act, reflecting the organization's educational approach.

The Association's timeline history of the week notes that in 1936, Shirley Temple was the junior chair of the Be Kind to Animals Week Commemoration — a celebrity endorsement that further cemented the relationship between kindness to animals and childhood.

1) 1932 Be Kind to Animals Week poster featuring artwork by Morgan Dennis.

2) 1934 Be Kind to Animals Week poster featuring the artwork of Morgan Dennis.

3) 1935 Be Kind to Animals Week poster featuring the artwork of Morgan Dennis.

4) 1938 Be Kind to Animals Week poster featuring the artwork of Morgan Dennis.

[mundaneandmagicalcreature]

Bird imaginary in iwtv + Claudia

Bonus from The Vampire Lestat

[llutik]

promised land sugar mountain

[rebeccathenaturalist]

If you've ever shared "cute" pictures or videos from owl cafes, read this sobering reality check.

92 cafes across Japan hold over 1900 owls captive, simply for entertainment. This includes two species considered Near Threatened (Barred Eagle-owl Bubo sumatranus and Chaco Owl Strix chacoensis) and one Vulnerable species (Snowy Owl Bubo scandiacus). Moreover, there is a lack of transparency as to the origins of many of these owls, which may not all have been captive-bred. Species may have been mislabeled during import, and not all have paperwork showing they were legally imported, meaning there is a very good chance owl cafes feed into the illicit, non-sustainable wildlife trade.

What the article doesn't cover is how stressful these settings are for owls. They're bright, noisy, and confined, and the owls are exploited by the owners who allow untrained strangers to hold and pet them without consideration of the owl's well-being. The "break areas" where the owls can get away from direct contact are still within sight of patrons, meaning they are still subject to human contact.

Owls are not chickens. They are not domesticated birds that have spent thousands of years and thousands of generations in human company, being selectively bred for human-friendly, docile traits. Even a tame owl is still a wild animal with intact instincts that tell it it should be living a largely solitary life in a wide, open field or forest, not stuck in a small space with many other owls of assorted species and a bunch of people.

This also isn't a situation like falconry, where captive birds are given plenty of private space, and flown daily for physical and mental fitness. And a single cage may have dozens of owls, more than what limited staff can handle. Even if some of the birds are supposedly "rescues" (as at least one cafe's website claims), any reputable wildlife rescue is going to limit the contact between the animals and humans, and absolutely is not going to allow visitors to regularly take pictures with and handle the wildlife--even socialized, trained ambassador animals have very stringent limitations on direct contact.

So it's not at all unsurprising that an already highly unethical industry is likely contributing to the problem of questionable or illegal wildlife trade. This study is just one more piece of evidence suggesting that these cafes are anything but harmless, cute fun.

[signanothername]

Killer giving his kitties to Color for safe keeping cause he can’t have them around him if he wants them alive, and Color being the bestie ever to take care of them for Killer till he’s able to see them again

And isn’t it fucked up? How Killer has to separate himself from the only thing important for him in his life?

[animentality]

[incorrectbatfam]

Stephanie: Isn't it weird that people kill mosquitoes just because they're annoying? Like, if people did that to other people I would've died years ago.