[BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Boy fed zoo reptiles to crocodile](BBC Link)
What do you do with this one? The little snot is too young to be legally responsible, but it sounds like he needs counselling of some kind. Surely 7 years old is old enough to know this was wrong.
I’m not sure there’s anything to pit here. This is a very disturbed child who needs serious help. He’s gone way beyond “little snot”.
the link is BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Boy fed zoo reptiles to crocodile
And my question is how the zoo had no kind of security .
That article seems awfully short on useful details: Where were the parents, and why did the zoo personnel not act until thirty minutes had passed?
Sounds like a cold-blooded killer to me.
The topic I’m interested in is what do you do when a child below the age of legal responsibility commits a serious crime. I went with the pit because I thought it would head this way anyways.
Neindorf being the zoo director. Zoos are probably always trying to cut costs, and sensors are a lot cheaper than night watchmen, I would guess.
Alice Springs is a town of less than 30,000 people. I imagine the zoo there is smaller than most.
I agree that the article does not give us enough information to make any useful judgment.
I do not think a seven year old can be held responsible nor do I think this means he is seriously warped. Seven year olds have no clue about the effects of their actions and that is why we don’t hold them responsible.
The security system at the zoo might have been adequate or maybe not. Difficult to say.
The boy’s guardians may have been negligent or maybe not. Difficult to say.
Not always someone has to be civilly or criminally responsible when shit happens. Sometimes shit just happens and you have to live with it.
Kids playing with matches have burnt countless houses down. You cannot expect parents to watch their kids 24/7. Shit happens. In this case a few animals were lost. It could have been worse.
Playing with matches does not come close to equating with this situation in my view. The outcome of burning down the house isn’t evident to the child as they aren’t thinking ahead and are more involved with the oooooh pretty fire. This kid bludgeoned to death several reptiles.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24439676-952,00.html
They’re planning to go after the parents for civil damages.
I just hope that somehow some help is gotten for that poor bloody sick child. There ain’t no way it is normal for a child to take reptiles and feed them to a crocodile and bludgeon others to death.
I still think it is normal for seven year olds to learn by doing and to not see anything wrong with killing an animal or to kill it by feeding it to a bigger animal. Heck, I saw a guy in a pet store feeding live fish to other fish just to impress a couple of young women. I was disgusted but they were indeed impressed. Maybe we have become too squeamish regarding pain and death. In most of the world this would not be seen as we tend to see it. We have developed rules about not hurting animals and I am glad about that but it is far from evident that they are somehow innate or indisputable. Most of it is cultural. A seven year old has no concept of that.
In China most people have no concept of kindness to animals and I have seen really disgusting things there in seeing animals being hurt just for entertainment.
Not to mention people who fight animals, hunt or otherwise do things which are not kind to animals.
Seven year olds are learning and they will be cruel to animals or even their peers just to see what it is like. And if they feel the power they will do it again. It takes education to stem that instinct.
Even adults will like to experience power and we have seen what many adults in a position of pwer will do. Whether it is soldiers and contractors killing just because they can get away with it to TSA people harassing travellers just because they can get away with it. It takes much education to not be like that and a seven year old has not received that education yet. I think the kid is perfectly normal and just needs to be told what he did was wrong and should not be done.
I have serious trouble understanding a culture that finds it perfectly acceptable to exert tremendous doses of violence upon other humans with the weakest of excuses and yet believes a seven year old who harms a lizard is a pervert who is seriously warped and may need counseling to bring him back to normal. And if instead of a lizzard it was a puppy or a kitten then the kid might even deserve to be put down or something. And yet people continue to die in Iraq just so that we can continue to exert our imperial ambitions and no one blinks an eye.
In my view the story is that the boy destryed some property because he was unsupervised. It could have been material property instead of animals. There is no difference in my eyes. none.
I’m pretty sure I knew, by the age of seven, not to break into the local zoo and kill a load of animals. I’m also pretty sure I knew that, if I had done something like this, my parents would have gone Dickensian; ample incentive not to embarrass them so.
That would make you… wrong. Killing small animals in childhood is one indicator of a future serial killer.
To bad the kid couldn’t make it over the fence into the croc compound. Try harder next time, kid!
Except that in most third world cultures it would be perfectly normal and I do not believe they all turn into serial killers.
What do you think of people who are fascinated by seeing a big fish gulp smaller live fish? Because that day in Washington DC a bunch of teenagers were quite enjoying the sight. Were they all doomed to become serial killers?
Just as I said, people who are concerned about the life of a lizard would say the kid got what he deserved if he were eaten by a croc.
Fair enough. Probably better suited to GD then. Could make for an interesting debate.
I can only speak for myself, but I most definitely knew when I was seven that it was wrong to kill animals.
We used to catch frogs in a pond at my grandparents’ house. I once accidentaly killed a frog when trying to catch it, and I felt bad for days. I was six.
I love how this keeps coming up. It doesn’t mean that every kid that kills an animal will become a serial killer. In fact I hunted with many kids and none of us have become serial killers. We killed vermin in the barns and sheds with pellet guns before we could go hunting deer or squirrel.
Say it how it is. Torturing animals can show that as a child the person was capable of sadistic behavior. That’s not the same as all kids that kill animals are destined to be Jeffry Dahmner.
The kid in this story needs to be looked at professionally, and in the future there is juvenile hall for kids that are dangerous no matter what help they get.
Look, feeding a lizard to a croc is not a crime anywhere, not even in America. The problem is that it was not his property. That is the problem. In America you can feed animals to other animals and, as I have said, most kids were fascinated watching it. Now tell me most American teenagers are psychopaths.
But these threads always turn out the same way. Oh, a seven year old kid pulled on a puppy’s tail and made fun of a fat woman and did not tip adequately (which even a seven year old should know) and thus proves he has no humanity in him so he deserves to be sent to jail where he deserves to be raped and then tortured and then killed. Several times over.
The law correctly holds seven year olds unaccountable because it correctly recognizes they do not have the judgment necessary for legal responsibility. This trend of accusing them of sexual harrassment and such things is just plain stupid.
They are kids and just need to be educated and admonished or punished adequately.
Sorry, my 4-yr-olds know better than that. Absolutely. No doubt about it.
Now, why they smear pink toothpaste on the bathroom walls remains a mystery.