FTR, when I mentioned starvation, I was echoing a post from slightly upthread which pointed out that removing all food sources in the home causes the poor little meeses to starve. Your whole emotionally incontinent rant centering around glue traps is based on something I never said or implied. Now wipe those hot, snotty tears of mingled embarassment and impotent rage from your face. Read this post carefully, maybe a couple times, and then attack me over something I actually said. You can do it, lil buckaroo, I know you can!
We’re attaching moral platitudes to these animals because they feel fear and pain much like we do. They have highly developed and functioning nervous systems, a cerebral cortex and a limited mental capacity that is enough for them to be traumatised by such experiences. Studies have shown metacognition in rats, as well as the ability to empathise andfeel depression. Mice even have facial contortions similar to human beings when hurt.
And this: “limitless capacity for breeding and spreading disease” - we do exactly the same thing! Why bring disease into an argument of morality?
You realise that live feeding can be dangerous for the snake, right? There is such a thing as pre-killed/ft.
So does napalm in wartime. Doesn’t mean it’s ethical in the slightest. Most sensible wildlife organisations and rehab centres oppose the use of glue traps anyway. But thankfully my moral compass isn’t broken, so I don’t dictate what’s right and wrong simply by how effective something is, like some kind of cold emotionless machine.
Perhaps you should treat those around you with a little bit more respect and dignity, because they are more similar to us than you realise! All mammals are. These aren’t insects we’re talking about.
Does it now? When mice do not find a food source, they simply move elsewhere and look for other sources of food. You don’t know for sure they’ll starve, I’d assume not considering they flourished before they were a problem in said house anyway. You said “starvation” with no context, glue trap or otherwise, as if you were implying starving something to death is an appropriate way to kill a concious mammal.
Haha. Run out of things to say eh? Well then… I’m not surprised, coming from someone who compares a mammal to bacteria.
I agree with Blake’s post.
They eat the anticoagulant poison. They get thirsty. They feel sick. They search for water. They stroke out and die.
Not a pleasant death but not a horrid one either. Compared to typical wildlife deaths - death by disease, death by predator, or death by starvation - it’s actually a better way to exit this world.
But go ahead and get your panties all bunched up over it. Because big nasty people do that to poor defenseless little meeces. After all, Sylvester was an asshole but Speedy was the good guy.
Incorrect. The bacterium that caused the bubonic plague is still around. Wikisays:
. So, healthcare and better sanitation (including not leaving food & garbage lying around) is the answer to prevent another outbreak of the plague, not killing off host animals en masse. Not that we could, even if we tried, so killing a few rodents nowadays around your house “because rats caused the black plague” is a silly emotional mix of revenge and self-justification.
Now, **Blake **provides some actual info. I didn’t know the most common “no smell poison” was an anticoagulant that works the way Blake describes, through internal bleeding. caused the rats outside in search of water, in a state of medical circulatory shock, instead of dying in the walls and stinking up the home.
I also didn’t know that dying of haemorrhagic (hypovolemic) shock is not described as particularly painful in humans:
Consider my ignarance fought on that point.
However, the description of how rodents die of anticoagulant poison makes it even more likely that my mouse was dying of such a poison. If I find a desoriented rat or mouse in the street, where a normal rat woulnd’t go, with no visible injury yet clearly very ill, is it really likely that rat suffers from a natural rat disease instead of poison? Do you really expect me to perform an autopsy before I have reason to voice my disgust on slow working poisons or glue traps? What if the autopsy isn’t conclusive? Should I call in Dr House?
So I guess anticoagulant poison then isn’t that bad. But none such argument can be made for glue traps.
That still leaves me -admittedly emotional- pissed off about people who don’t do their own mercy killing. Is it really that unethical or strange for me to expect people to kill swiftly, if they must kill at all ?
I didn’t enjoy killing that mouse at all, I hated killing. I hated that I, who hadn’t set out the poison, felt forced to do something I hate doing and that upsets me greatly, because the people setting out the poison wanted to keep their hands clean and not dwell on an -for them- vaguely unpleasant subject.
You know, tiger, I kind of get the feeling that your problem here comes largely from some belief that animals, especially ones you think are cute, have human thoughts and feelings. Now, please, don’t start crying again when I tell you this, but real mice aren’t like the ones you read about in your collection of Redwall books and see in cartoons. Now, ol’ Scumpup did get his biology degree nearly 30 years ago, but back then budding biologists were cautioned against something called anthropomorphization. That’s a big word, I know, but I’ll help you, okay? Basically, it means attributing human characteristics to animals. It gets in the way of objectivity if one is studying an animal and causes even big-brained scientists to make bad decisions or draw poor conclusions. So, it’s understandable if someone somewhat…ah…less big-brained like you falls into it. Just remember, unless you are a genuine psychic you can’t make any statements about rodents having any kind of emotions analogous to our own. All you can reference is their behavior. Which, in this case, is filthy, destructive, and disease carrying. That’s why the grown ups get rid of mice using the most quick, effective, convenient means. Now why don’t you put on your foam rubber helmet and go play in the yard for a little while before lunch?
Maastricht, it’s also interesting to point out that plague was also carried by humans. Fleas aren’t picky unless the host is dead. That explains Iceland getting the plague despite there being no rats.
Would you kindly climb down off that fucking cross, please? It was a goddamn mouse dying of who knows what. Everything else is just a rather disturbing desire on your part to make yourself the martyr at the center of an overblown morality play.
Your feelings betray you.
This has nothing to do about cuteness (many people don’t think mice are cute anyway), and some of the feelings humans experience aren’t exclusively human. You just need a developed enough brain, and mammals have that. I never said that animals have human thoughts. My problem is the unnecessary cruelty part, because you know, animals can feel fear and pain. They don’t need complex human thoughts to be capable of that.
That doesn’t address anything except make you look like an idiot.
I know full well what that means, but since emotions like fear and anger aren’t uniquely human, then you really have no point here.
These scientists are far more educated in the field than you or I, so how do you know it’s a poor conclusion? I’ll take their word over yours any day, as well as my own personal experiences in the matter and anecdotes from pet owners who can clearly see this. As for being small brained, you compared a mammal to a single celled organism. Really.
I can attribute those qualities to human beings too. So what? Oh, by the way, “disease carrying” isn’t a behaviour. It is as much a behaviour as breathing. Who’s the small brained one again?
You can say the same for humans too re: behaviour.
If you don’t think animals have emotions, then you are a fucking idiot. All the scientific evidence says that they do, as well as anyone with half a clue.
Perhaps if you weren’t such a condescending twat I’d take you a little more seriously.
Just pack them a little bag and send them on a mousey vacation. How tough is that?
Tell that to a barn owl! Poisoning is a better way to exit life than other typical wildlife deaths? What a bizarre statement! If only the poison remained in the victim, instead many poisoned rodents do end up as food for other animals and birds of prey, such as Barn Owls, who end up dying a very unpleasant atypical death. They eat rodents, they will eat poisoned rodents as well.
I have to kill a lot of rats, I prefer traps. Poisoning might introduce the poison into other critters I don’t want to poison, like raptors or the neighbor’s cat.
mice don’t need to find food to nest in a place. they will look for dry protected shelter and in cold climates then warmth in winter. they will bring food in to a building/auto and cache it as they do in the wild. you will find nests often made with local (in building, auto) materials such as paper, insulation. they will bring in seeds and have storage places just like they will do outdoors.
mice can be a fire hazard because they will chew on wires. the plastic in the insulation and sheathing of the wiring is attractive to them.
using traps is very effective and quick, i’ve had traps sprung as soon as i walked away. snap traps are only good when they are unsprung. you need to check traps daily or more frequent. a dead mouse will just feed the rest of them if you don’t collect and reset the trap.
poisons are good where you can’t check the traps like in crawl spaces or sheds or storage areas that you don’t go through daily.
Exactly. And FTR, I eat and love foie gras and have zero qualms about it. I also gasp throw living lobsters into boiling pots of water, killing them so I can eat them!
I know, horrible. Just the other day I sprayed a hornet nest with bug killer. I am so mean.
You shouldn’t be shooting things if you can’t finish them off when a shot doesn’t. :rolleyes:
Because your house was infested with disease-carrying geese and lobsters? When you meander away from claims of “self-defense” to “I like doing it,” your actions are no more morally sound than anyone else who like doing something cruel. “I kill because I like it” is a poor defense, legally or morally.
So yeah, you are mean.
You’re going to have to provide some cites there, scooter. Who, exactly, has determined that animals feel human-style fear and anger? How did they determine that? What makes you sure they weren’t
simply observing animal behavior and attributing their own emotional values to it?
Which highly educated scientists? Was their work peer reviewed and accepted?
Bringing pets and pet owners into this is probably not your best strategy, spanky. Pet owners, almost by definition, have an emotional investment in their animal.
I don’t think he is actually killing the geese and making his own pate. Killing something because I like eating it is not a poor defense. Its called being an omnivore at the top of the food chain. I don’t believe in causing unnecessary suffering when I can help it. But I’m not becoming a vegan.
Ok, I’ll gave you anexample. Their names are mentioned. There are many more articles on this subject. Here is another, with links to other scientific journals. But, just like I say the sky is blue, I don’t need a scientific journal to know that an animal can feel pain, or can be frightened, or angry. A information in a lot of these articles are used in textbooks for students and academics, so they are most definitely peer reviewed and accepted.
“Human-style” ? Since when does an animal have to be a human being to experience emotion? You claim that animals have no emotion, which is blatantly untrue - now you change the goal posts and say “human-style” ? They either have emotions or they don’t. Fear and anger are primal emotions that exist in all mammals, this is obvious and you don’t need a degree in animal behaviour to realise that.
Why are you discounting pet owners? They would have hands-on experience, know how their pet behaves, know what it likes, etc. You’re just writing it off as “emotionally invested” because you’re afraid it will embarrass you. But you are doing a fine job of that already.
Time to put your head out of the sand, and get into the 21st century. By the way, humans are technically animals too. Chimpanzees have definitely shown to possess emotions. I can list many more real life examples, and cite sources. I can’t even believe we’re having this discussion, in fact, I should ignore you because you’re obviously incredibly ignorant.
I hate animal cruelty as much as anyone (seriously-I’m a card carrying member of the Humane Society), but last night I watched a mouse die an agonizingly slow death…at the hands (paws) of my cat. We often wake up to a dead mouse or rat on the porch, but this was the first time I actually witnessed the brutal, horrific torture.
We were up late and as I walked by, I saw the cat on the back porch and opened the door to let her in. But then I realized she had a mouse and closed the door, but turned on the light to see what was happening. She had the mouse in her mouth and then let it down. The mouse, who appeared to be very young and small, looked terrified and then tried to make an escape under the grill. The cat pounced on it violently, then started biting it’s back leg. It was too much to watch, so I walked away. About an hour later, I decided to see what was going on…and watched as the mouse, with it’s back leg chewed off, tried to hobble away as the cat watched…only to be pounced on again. This went on for hours and eventually I went to bed. This morning, there was a dead mouse on the porch.
After watching that violent bloodbath, I’m thinking that starvation or internal bleeding would be a better way to go. I genuinely have no idea which method of killing is worse, but being killed by a cat is far from humane, imo. It’s a cruel fucking world.