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Teacher Wants to feed Puppies to Snake
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by Viperidaefan on July 4, 2002
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I just thought you guys would want to see this...its this kind of stupidity that makes all reptile keepers seem like barbarians...How could this guy have not seen how everyone was going to react especially the kids? Hey, maybe this guy would like to be in charge of disposing of death row inmates,huh?(anyone got a large Eunectes he could borrow?)....Do we have some kind of award we can give this guy for doing the most damage to our image this month...he's got my vote...
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RE: Teacher Wants to feed Puppies to Snake
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by skeeter on July 5, 2002
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You hit the nail on the head viperidaefan. If we follow his line of thinking, since death row inmates are just going to die anyway, why not make their deaths more meaningful. Lets feed them to crocodiles and sell tickets. We could use the money to buy land for conservation. And then if we continue in that vein, we could start feeding the catatonic elderly to hogs. And why aren't all those aborted fetuses being put to use? Dogfood maybe. If you haven't figure it out by now, the reason we don't is because it is barbaric.
As human beings we draw the line by assigning more value to the lives of one group of animals over another based on their level of cognizance, or awareness, intelligence, and degree of emotional capacity. I don't want to hear any hogwash about what primitive civilizations do. They are exactly that. Primitive. Advanced civilizations that have a choice tend to elevate dogs, cats, primates, dolphins, and the like to a status that gives them more value than lower vertebrates like rats. If you think a rat or snake loves you, you're deluding yourself. Dogs are deserving of at least some respect. If you are starving and you have no other choice, then go ahead and eat a dog. Otherwise stick to fowl,fish and hooved ungulates.
The idiot that was going to feed the puppies to the boa isn't in touch with the civilized world and has done much more harm to the image of herpers by his straight-logic line of thinking than he could have ever imagined. Logic is great, but as human beings we have to consider the emotional impact factor. None of us are alone in this world.
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Teacher Wants to feed Puppies to Snake
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by Craig0104 on July 5, 2002
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wonderful!!!! more bad publicity for snakes. it is very barbaric to feed puppies to snakes. i think it is borderline evil. people can make the argument that rats are pets too. i, howerver have never fed any of my snakes live food. i can't bare to see a rat of rabbit suffer. i can't even imagine a dog. also dogs have large teeth and claws. people argue it is unnarural to prekill prey items, but i don't see these people hunting their own food.
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Foolish, ethnocentric sentiment
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by MSTT on July 7, 2002
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Members of American and European cultures have a deeply ingrained emotional belief that
dogs and cats are somehow more deserving of special treatment than any other vertebrate
mammal of comparable social and intellectual development, even when they are already dead. This is not a logical conclusion,
it is an emotional one. It cannot be defended as a concern about humane treatment; while
you will provoke a great storm of outrage if you suggest eating a dog or cat or feeding it to
another animal, very few people particularly care that a nontrivial number of dogs and cats
are killed and thrown away every minute. Employees of our government are in fact paid to do
this work with your tax dollars.
There is no question that our society officially condones the mass slaughter of dogs and
cats. The only thing we do not condone is eating them. This upsets people as simply killing
them and throwing them away does not. Why is this such a strong and irrational taboo?
Many of the vertebrates we eat for food or kill to feed to other animals are highly developed
socially, mentally and emotionally. But we are conditioned from early childhood to think of
these species as "pork" and "beef" and "hamburger" and "chops" and "leather", not as live
animals. Thus we avoid even thinking about their deaths or their lives. However it is
impossible to ignore the reality of the pet animals we see around us daily as living creatures,
so we cannot conveniently forget the fact that they would have to die in order for anyone to
use their meat. We do not like to be reminded that we are greedy meat eaters and leather
wearers who daily are responsible for the deaths of many animals whose flesh we eat and
whose skin we wear. So we respond violently and emotionally to anything that "wakes us
up" to the bloody reality of our consumerism, though most of us refuse to actually take any
steps to be less cruel or wasteful in our habits.
I think that the guilt and outrage that people feel over the idea of some animals being killed
for food is utterly hypocritical, unless they are vegetarians who do not wear leather. And even
vegetarians would probably prefer to conveniently forget the fact that in order to make
farmland yield profitable modern crops, a substantial amount of habitat is destroyed, many
insects and animals are killed and chemical fertilizers can have a serious impact on the
ecosystem for miles around.
I eat what I kill, and generally I also kill what I eat because I consider it more respectful,
more ethical and more responsible than letting other people do my killing. To me there are
not many things more dishonorable than killing an animal and not using every bit of the
carcass out of respect for the life you have taken. If we must kill dogs and cats, and the
irresponsible habits of many pet owners seem to make this inevitable, I feel that it is deeply
wrong and disrespectful to throw away their bodies and make no use of them. That's the way
I was raised.
However I wouldn't condone feeding cute wittle fuzzy wuzzy animals to snakes in the public
view, because the fact is that most people will react with irrational knee-jerk emotionalism
against snakes. Puppies and kitties are cute and snakes are evil, according to their firmly
entrenched Disney-movie beliefs. Never mind the fact that non native feral dogs and cats
have caused an unbelievable amount of damage to fragile native ecosystems, far outstripping
anything that the ophidian genus has done in known history. People are only interested in
cute and fuzzy and aren't generally smart enough to look much beyond that in making their
value judgements. So there's no point in annoying the unwashed masses; it really doesn't
teach them anything and causes more hassle than it's worth. There are better and healthier
food sources for your snakes than predators anyhow.
Regards,
TT
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RE: Foolish, ethnocentric sentiment
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by Vishnu on July 8, 2002
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I would like to suggest that TT is certainly correct on this matter.What we're dealing with here is"failure to communicate ". Dr.Timothy Leary had the perfect analogy concerning what is being discussed here. Reality tunnels.What you are raised to believe and your daily impetus,reinforced by people who think the same way,gives you your"take" on reality. When Animal Planet runs articles about the habits of rattlesnakes and pleads for them to be left alone and not wantonly killed.The reality tunnels of the snake -haters will make them go out and kill as many as they can find.In addition to that if they get the story and the mutilated pictures to the local paper,they will run it ,making heros of the snake--haters in the eyes of at least some of the public. Feeding unwanted puppies to a Boa or any snake in front of impressionable kids or adults,who will view this as unacceptable,is really asking for trouble.These people will blame the snake and I am sure some attempts to have it killed will follow.The only difference is in their reality tunnel ,killing a snake will always be alright and the death isn't complete until the gory details have been explained to someone who will find that disgusting.
There are organizations to protect puppies,kittens,etc from cruel and unusual deaths and this will most certainly be viewed as just that.I am unaware of any organization that will protect snakes from the same.
I am sure that some of this snake -hate and mutilation has some Freudian implecations.
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Logic
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by skeeter on July 9, 2002
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Like I said logic is great, but we aren't all emotionless androids. If the teacher was going to feed puppies to the snake, I'm sure he could go to the pound and pick up some euthanized animals, bagged frozen and ready to go. It shows extremely poor judgement to kill live puppies in front of a high school classroom. Though TT may not have any feelings for puppies maybe she can imagine how she would feel if they were whacking the heads off of rattlesnakes to make sandwiches with. 'Putting it to good use' doesn't always make the best argument when strong emotions are the counter argument. The rattlesnake roundup people could and do use the same line of thinkign. They make boots sandwiches and hatbands. But that doesnt change how TT would feel having to watch the slaughter.
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Teacher Wants to feed Puppies to Snake
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by alkee42 on July 9, 2002
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That guy most be a retard to think that feeding puppies to a snake in school is going to fly. There are too many kids and people who love puppies and consider them next to humans. I suppose that this guy didn't realize that rats and possibly even FROZEN rabbits work the same and have better results on a croud of teenage kids. Besides being sadistic and stupid he now probably caused a lot of people to view snakes as evil and menacing creatures causing more piontless killing of snakes.
jeremy mcmanmon
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Missing some logic
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by MSTT on July 10, 2002
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Tell you what - if you can mass produce captive bred rattlesnakes to the point that they are overrunning and destroying native species, then whacking their heads off for sandwiches en masse would have some merit. The reality is that snakes are predators near the top of the food chain, and harvesting them at barbaric events like rattlesnake roundups is not sustainable use.
Assuming humane standards of painless slaughter could be established, I'd actually support using common captive bred reptiles for meat and skins. It's better than impacting a wild population. Any time you have a significant surplus of non native animals that are doing significant damage to native ecosystems (eg, cats, dogs, feral pigs), it is an extremely good idea to utilize them as a resource while reducing their numbers. Unfortunately our society is not rational when it comes to making such decisions; it is socially acceptable (though ecologically unsound) to harvest rattlesnakes, but taboo to do the same with the much more problematic, non native and destructive dogs and cats.
As for my personal feelings, I don't like to think of any reptiles being harvested by humans as luxury product. But the fact is that there is a commercial demand for such products and captive farming is a conservation success story for the species as a whole, so I support farmed alligator products and would support other farmed reptile products if they could be made long term sustainable use projects.
Regards,
TT
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RE: Missing a warm heart
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by skeeter on July 11, 2002
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MSTT the balance of nature is so screwed up that nothing you do or say will change it. Humans will contiue to clear cut rainforests, rednecks will always kill rattlesnakes and cold hearted individuals like you will contiue to feed puppies to snakes. As long as there are rats in this world I will not stoop to feeding puppies to snakes. Fortunately for this world there are still a few of us that don't live in an emotional void. Straight line logic that ignores suffering has never been good for humanity. I find it odd that you have so much compassion for the pain and suffering of reptiles but you have none for the 'fuzzy wuzzy puppies' as you put it. Do you have more in common with reptiles than mammals?
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Reading comprehension 101
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by MSTT on July 11, 2002
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Speaking of knee-jerk emotional reactions completely obviating logic, you seem to have missed something. I do not particularly advocate feeding puppies to snakes for two reasons. One is that this causes negative publicity because most people are like you, completely unable to function logically when their emotional buttons are successfully pushed. The other reason is that carnivores make much poorer quality food than do herbivores. may be infected with cross-infective parasites and could compromise a snake's health. I keep only venomous species, and none of these are really large enough to comfortably consume a puppy. So I've never done it, probably never will. Yet you are happy to inaccurately scream "puppy killer!" at me, simply because I've brought up issues that you find uncomfortable to think about.
You obviously can't think very clearly when your emotions are involved. My case in point. You aren't thinking at all; you're coughing up a knee-jerk response because something has made you feel angry and uncomfortable. Why not take a closer look at what that something really is?
It's easy to divide the world up into good and evil, warm fuzzy cute wittle puppies and bad evil snakes and rats. If you had a mind that was slightly more complex than a Disney movie, you might find yourself thinking harder about the real ethical issues around the killing and harvesting of animals for human use. There are many issues and considerations involved here, and most people seem to be deeply in denial about them and would rather become angry than think hard about why it's okay in our society to kill dogs and cats en masse but not okay to use their bodies for food or clothing.
If you are really concerned about canine suffering, I suggest that you take positive steps to encourage pet owners to neuter their animals and responsibly find homes for all the puppies they produce, contribute to your local no-kill animal shelter, adopt some strays, etc. But I'd guess that your concern is not actually about alleviating the suffering of dogs so much as your wanting to continue living in denial and screaming angrily at anyone who brings up issues you don't want to think too hard about.
Try thinking with your own brain for a change. Wake up. Figure out why you get angry to the point of irrationality at the mere mention of these issues, even though the person bringing them up is *not* suggesting that puppies are good snake food. Thinking rationally is the first step to positive change.
For instance, what do you think would happen if it were generally accepted that you were individually responsible for every life you needed to take? I expect that many fewer animals would die, and those that did die would not be carelessly killed or wasted. If the dog pounds disappeared and it was expected of every pet owner that they had to personally euthanize any unwanted puppies they produced, and serve them for Sunday dinner to make sure nothing was wasted and the life taken was respected, how many unwanted puppies do you think would be born? Ethics like that tend to increase the care people take with animals' lives, not decrease it.
What I'm describing here is a very old way of thinking, one that is much less fraught with greed, waste, careless killing and unthinking cruelty. The ethics I was raised with say that if you are responsible for taking any animal's life, you do it with your own hands with compassion and you waste nothing out of respect for the life that you have taken. I guarantee that if more people still followed these ways instead of taking the unthinking coward's way out, there would be much less casual cruelty to all kinds of animals, dogs and cats in particular.
What I advocate is responsibility and respect for any life you take. That means if you kill it, you eat it, so don't kill it if you are not fully prepared to accept this responsibility. What you seem to be advocating is an emotional knee-jerk response that isn't well thought through. You don't seem to object to dog pounds where cowardly people can conveniently let government officials do their killing, only to the idea of actually using the bodies of dogs that are killed.
You call me heartless because I follow the old ways - I eat what I kill and I kill what I eat. I choose to take that personal responsibility because I believe it is the most ethical and compassionate way to eat meat and use animal products. If I close my eyes to the actual killing and let other people do it for me behind closed doors and on an assembly line, how do I know that it was done with any care whatsoever? So in sparing myself the unpleasant sight, what I would really be doing is ducking the ethical responsibility and saying "I don't care how it's done, just do it somewhere I don't have to watch".
I do not think that it is the old way that is heartless. I think it is the new coward's way that is heartless. You accept any kind of killing, even horrendously cruel killing, as long as you do not have to watch or participate. But suggest giving these animal's lives the respect they deserve by using their bodies to some purpose, and you cowards start to scream and fuss. You think you're fussing about the killing, and you're not. You're fussing about having to think about it at all.
Anticipating your next emotional response, I don't kill dogs or cats or keep any as pets. But if I ever did feel that it was my personal responsibility to euthanize one, I would do it compassionately with my own hands. And I would certainly want to see that the body was not wasted, that it went in some way towards continuing the cycle of life, because that is how I show respect for a life taken.
If you do not understand this kind of respect and ethics, and your only moral code is "don't kill cute wittle fuzzy puppies cuz they're wittle and cute", you have a lot to think about. Go think about it for awhile before you fire off another knee-jerk response.
TT
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