All wild animals should be free

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Not even gonna watch. I don't need to get angry right now.

By definition, any "wild" animal is, in effect, "free".
A caged animal that is not a normally domesticated animal is "captured" and out of it's element.

That is why I feel no guilt about deer hunting. They are indeed more "free" than any of us humans will ever be. Up until the last minute of their lives when they get hit by a car/get an arrow thru their lungs/etc. they are not mistreated by humans by any means. They get to explore as far as they want, fuck, eat as much as they want, and never see a human unless it's from a safe distance. Who among us wouldn't want a life like that? :bullseye:

Hunting is not the issue.. I hunt.
Abuse is the issue.. We should not cage and abuse any animal

We have a city council woman proposing possibly one of the dumbest local laws ever. She wants to make it illegal to run a pet shop in the city because she wants everyone to adopt a pet from the shelter instead of buying a puppy or kitten. While I think that is a laudable goal, and sometimes rescue animals work out well, the truth is some people just want to raise the animal from start to finish and many of the shelter animals do come with bad habits. Besides, the pet shops would just move outside the city limits and the trade would go on as normal (especially since there are so many small towns which are effectively suburbs surrounded by San Diego) and all that would happen is the city would lose the jobs and tax revenue from those businesses.

I agree. That is an ineffective approach to the problem. But I am speaking more to the treatment and caging of circus animals. Zoos are less abusive but in no way allows any animal to live an normal and healthy life.

I'm thinking that the concept of animals living a "normal and healthy life" is something akin to the "noble savages living in peace and harmony before white man came along" and "the good old days when life was so much simpler and easier." Let's face it, animals in the wild suffer terribly from natural events such as droughts, floods, fires, and so on. They don't always have nearly as much to eat as they would like. With a few exceptions near the top of the food chain, they have to spend a good part of their time cowering in fear of being eaten alive. The death rate among offspring is horrendous. They have no medial care whatsoever (by definition, veterinarians are not caring for animals "in the wild"). They try to eat so they can stay alive, and they try to stay alive so they can eat, and they end up dead anyway, very few of them living to whatever corresponds to "a ripe old age" for their species.

Therefore, I have a fairly hard time feeling a huge amount of sympathy for domesticated animals (let's face it, cats, dogs, horses, sheep, cows, and so on are all the cross-bred descendents of wild animals that people didn't let live in their "natural" state) and other animals that are in the care of people who provide them with clean, warm, dry, safe places to live, while giving them all the food they want (and of a much better quality than they could get in the wild), and provide all kinds of care if they are injured, or get sick, or when they get old.

Sympathy for animals that are mistreated? Sure, absolutely. But I'm just not buying the "animals should be wild and unmolested by men" concept. It is rooted in ignorance and a very fanciful imagination.

Your lack of understanding and interpretation of "wild life" is monumental.. Stick with Burger King and spare me the ridiculous "noble savage" statement


Animals cower in fear? All that you described in the natural order as far a predation and loss of the young. When was the last time you saw a deer "cower in fear?"

this really wasn't worth and answer.. But.. you are one of the most arrogant fucks on here..

An elephant chained up for its entire life except to perform in front of you as you gnosh hot dogs is leading a good life?

you are just so well informed and insightful with your pretension... that frankly .. it just proves you are just fucking stupid!

As I've gotten older I've become more and more against keeping certain animals in captivity. This does not include domesticated animals like cats and dogs, or even cows and horses. These animals are usually well taken care of.

But these days I'm totally against zoos, circuses and marine parks where wild animals are kept in cages or forced to perform tricks for our amusement. I have a fondness for elephants, and I get downright angry whenever I see an elephant chained at a carnival or circus, and who are forced to give snotty children rides. They are such beautiful, magnificent creatures that deserve so much better. The same goes for dolphins and whales, kept in tanks and given treats to perform for us. They should be living in the open ocean where they belong.

The only time I would be okay with keeping animals in captivity is if that animal were on the verge of extinction in the wild, or if it was a sanctuary for hurt or sick animals to recover before being released back into the wild.

Why not just punish animal abuse more severely?

Why keep animals captive at all, other than to stroke our own egos?

It actually increases their population numbers as often there isn't natural habitate for them to go back to even if they could survive (which many of them couldn't since they were raised in captivity). Then you have the problem of rescued animals which couldn't survive due to injury or what not but which can still live long and happy lives with human help. In short, the idea is nice but often impractical for some animals which means the most humane option is for humans to keep them and care for them. Sure, do a better job of protecting wild habitat and making space for nature but you're still going to end up with lots of animals where there is no space for them or which would die in the wild so punish abuse more severely but realize some simply will have to be kept by humans.

Oh my, I do believe I touched a nerve!

As I always say, when you have to resort to insults and vulgarity, it is tantamount to admitting you don't know your subject.

Which you don't.

I'm reminded of the animal rights activists who broke into a fur farm and released all the chinchillas into the wild. Without question the animals had no ability to survive in the wild as they'd been born and raised in captivity plus chinchillas aren't even native to North America so even if, by some miracle some do survive they'll just end up as an environmentally damaging invasive species.

See Grout, this is a balanced and workable view of how it should and does work. Not a simplistic "all wild animals should be free" (which doesn't actually mean anything, because both the term "wild" and the term "free" are begging the question that the subject is supposed to be exploring), but a realization that nature doesn't always work the "wild and noble" way you think it should.

touched a nerve.. christ you are so predictable.. no facts .. just asininc at his best

actually I'll stick by my previous post.

Your ignorance is so fucking obvious I felt I could just go with that..

so thanks for making it easy for me

oh for christ sake asininc.. you were talking about moo-cows and terrified animals cowering.. what is posted here is not even relative to what I was sting, other then a very specific part of a broad statement. But then you latch onto it afyer making a fool of yourself with your first post.

Rehab is important and it is specific to specific individual animals you simpleton

Still nothing, I see. And still unable to deal with the artificial and meaningless distinction between "wild" and "domesticated" animals.

At some point, for there to be "domesticated" animals, someone had to limit the freedom of "wild" animals. Or did that thought never cross your mind?

Once again, all you have is insults and vulgarity, because you don't know enough about the subject to come up with real arguments.

I've always been of the mind that if you want to see a lions, giraffes, etc save your money and go on a safari in Africa. You want to go whale watching, go to the Pacific Northwest, get on a boat and take your chances.

Whales aren't meant to be kept in tiny aquariums, and no one was ever meant to see lions or giraffes caged up in a zoo in Atlanta or Toronto. I understand that some zoos do a lot of work in terms of staving off extinction of a species and education, but zoos to me are just prisons that lazy people frequent.

As for the cretins like the ones in the video Grout posted, I can't even describe how fucking angry they make me. Shit like that is a serious problem in many parts of the world and more needs to be done in terms of preventing it.

Many zoos have extremely important breeding programs which help prevent species from going extinct. The breading program for the California Condor has been so successful (they were down to less than 20 animals) the species has been reintroduced into the wild and can once again be seen in nature where as back in the 80's there wasn't a single one left in the wild. That's not an isolated case and instead there are lots of examples. Zoos certainly have their place for breading and research as long as they're designed with animal welfare in mind and are scientifically based.

The sports talk show I listen to does a weekly segment with a guy from Zoo Miami, formally Metro Zoo. Great guy. He too has a problem with circuses and small zoo operations since they don't really have the resources to properly care for the animals but most large zoo's now are great places for animals and do a lot for care and conservation.

And then there are the shitty little mom & pop zoos around the country that need to be shut down! Here in North Jersey (Forbin should know this), there's a family run zoo (I use that term loosely) called Space Farms where they have lions, tigers, and other exotic animals in tiny metal cages. It really makes my blood boil!

I'm back you pretentious poser.. I made an a statement that was an opinion about treatment of wild animals .. and you came back with the ridiculous retort that wild animals " cower in fear" and moo-cows are domesticated..

then you jump in on the ridiculous point about wild life rehab that benefits "one" specific animal..
well you are the guy in a bar fight who stands behind the tough guy and goes "so there" every time the big guy lands a punch.
the california condor was .. again one species saved through incredible dedication.. they were fed by puppets and "taught how to hunt" because animals raised in captivity have no examples to learn from.
38,000 elephants are killed each year so some pretentious fuck like you can havd a phallic ivory memento on their mantle piece..
thje mountain gorilla will be gone in ten years because of poaching ..
my claim was opinion about mistreatment of majestic animals and you talked about moo-cows and then jumped on other peoples response with "yeah,, what he said" you made not one statement of your own,
you came at me with the "noble savage" bullshit.. which is not even close to what I was posting..

you think you ran me off you ass-wipe.. I had a horse cast in his stall last night.. if you had a clue you would know what that was.

you did not ever make on your own.. you just rode on others points

My point was no animal should be kept in captivity to please you... horsies and moo-cows aere not what I am talikng about.
I am glad people help the red tail hawk that is hit by a car on route 117 in Okra Oklahoma.. because that is compassion.

It is not a statement about the abuse of animals.. Elephants live almost 70 years.. they live in family groups.. the herd cares for the young and the aged..
thy mourn for their lost ones..
they graze and cover miles a day.. they are imprinted with the need to yearly migrate thousands of miles..
to be chained and kept alone is indescribable abuse..

mountain gorillas are being poached into extinction.. keeping them alive in zoos is 3D TV

so to your point.. which you never made..
you struck a nerve because you are one of the un-informed and pretentious asses that make me swear..you ignorant fuck =)

I made a statement about a video of abuse and you... I guess you just shit from your mouth

gonna go check on my horse.. while you look for some one to hide behind .. you dickless pretender

That chick in your avator looks pretty wild to me.

Grout...you're the idiot that keeps repeating that NO ANIMAL SHOULD BE KEPT IN CAPTIVITY...and then goes on to equivocate and swear about the animals you didn't mean and in fact reveal your own hypocrisy since you keep horses yourself.

I guess you mean some animals you deem inappropriate shouldn't be kept in captivity and everyone should agree with you.

Very interesting that I can make you do something. It's a shame you don't have enough willpower to decide for yourself what you are going to do, but have to do things because of other people.

Very sad indeed.

Wonder if Grout realizes that elephants are considered to be domesticated working animals...

Technically, obviously sans prisoners, humans are free wild animals.

I love Cheeseburgers.

Technically, they're not domesticated but tamed as they're not bred in captivity for use as labor and instead when you see a working elephant (in SE Asia or what not) they're always captured in the wild and then tamed. I'm sure there are at least a few (especially in zoos) which have been bred in captivity but that by itself doesn't make an animal domesticated. Instead it involves hundreds of generations of selective breeding where humans select them for traits which are desirable for humans and attempt to eliminate the undesirable ones.

The Soviets did an interesting 50 year long experiment with Foxs attempting to reproduce domestication and after 50 years they certainly got a fox more like a domesticated animal but it still clearly isn't as tame as a dog though. My guess is it would take a couple hundred years and hundreds of generations to really get an animal fully domesticated like a cow. If you don't believe me you could compare a modern cow to an Aurochs and just see how different the two are. The cows were bred to be smaller (so they weren't as dangerous to farmers), to have less of a flight instinct, bred for better tasting meat, bred for increased milk production, bred for faster maturity, bred for disease resistance, bred for specific types of hair, bred so the skin makes superior leather, etc...