This is fucked up, but is this functionally worse than freezing mice and rats for snake food? Would we be more comfortable if he had been freezing lambs or piglets for his snake to eat? Should he have euthanized the snake once it grew too large to live on rats? Snakes are carnivores and eat meat. Puppies are just a really cute and loveable configuration of meat. Puppy mills, COVID lockdowns, and the increase in living expenses have resulted in a crisis of too many pets that need homes. Too many dogs are being bred, and too many dogs are being euthanized.
I’m not in any way condoning snake owners freezing puppies to death. It’s just weird the way we compartmentalize animal abuse so we can ignore the suffering of animals we arbitrarily choose not to care about.
Mice are cute, but dogs communicate trust and love for us so very clearly. Betraying such trust is for monsters.
dogs communicate trust and love for us so very clearly
So do cows. And pigs are smarter than dogs.
The line between food and friend is arbitrary.
Pigs are better problem solvers than dogs, that doesn’t mean they’re carte blanche smarter. Dogs have a level of social intelligence and selected-for ability to interact with humans that no other species does.
Pigs definitely have a social intelligence that at least rivals those of dogs, if it doesn’t surpass it. Just because we keep them in a way that traumatises them from an early age on, doesn’t mean pigs aren’t socially intelligent. Wild boar and the like form highly complex social structures and are quite able to communicate in between one another. The only thing pigs actually express more than dogs is the utter disregard for anything but their own survival when under duress. This however might be explained by the way they reproduce. Pigs are K-Strategists, whereas dogs aren’t.
I’m not sure about mice but rats can 100 percent do the same as dogs and are smarter than some breeds of dogs.
I used to have some rats, and I agree. Can’t deny the stigma associated though.
Is that crime specific to puppies or in theory they woukd have got into trouble if they froze another animal like a rat or mouse or rabbit ?
Frozen rodents are already a thing for snake food. They feed rats to snakes no problem and rats really intelligent creatures.
The choice of puppies is weird but a snakes gotta eat and you can’t exactly just feed them a head of lettuce. Is puppies really that much worse than piglets or rabbits?
Once a snake gets to a certain size rats won’t be enough anymore. At that size there aren’t any good mass market options so those snake owners will usually take what they can get. I knew a guy that bred reticulated pythons and he wound up having a deal with a pig farm where they would sell him any piglets that happened to die early for dirt cheap (because what else where they going to do with them). But if you don’t luck into an arrangement like that what do you do? If you have an ample supply of unwanted puppies I guess it would make sense to use puppies. As awful it sounds to western sensibilities, dogs are livestock in other parts of the world.
Maybe don’t own an animal you’re not prepared to take care of?
He was taking care of it. Just not with meat that most westerners like thinking of as meat.
never ask a meat eater what the difference between killing dogs and pigs is
One is delicious and has a lot of meat, the other doesn’t and is very fucking expensive in comparison.
That’s about the gist of it.
Anything else?
Never ask a vegan why we can’t use wool products.
the wool industry is exploitative, as is the farming of all animals
Exploitation aside, what’s your alternative?
See even if we actually magically got control of the wool industry so we knew with 100% certainty there was zero exploitation anywhere and producing a lot of wool wouldn’t be the priority anymore, and profits weren’t chased, but just the best care we can provide for sheep. Like the absolute best possible.
In that case, the sheep still have to be sheared, which produces wool. Why shouldn’t that wool — essentially a waste product at that time — be utilised by someone?
Or are you suggesting the sheep aren’t sheared? Because that’s very unhealthy for them in the long term, because it’s an animal that’s evolved to rely on humans shearing them. They literally wouldn’t properly survive, they’d become over entangled with wool and start having all sorts of health problems.
That is animal cruelty, to inflict something like that on purpose. Then the only alternative left is exterminating every sheep in the world.
That or there will be some wool that is completely moral to use.
One can oppose exploitative practices and still use wool. I have several wool items, and they last years and years, despite me getting them from second hand stores. I also have a leather jacket, which was originally made in the 70’s.
Someone who buys cheaply made clothing from some Asian sweat shops is definitely contributing more to the suffering of sentient being than I.
Wool isn’t immoral, exploitative practices are. Eating meat isn’t bad, exploitative farming is.
My brother hunts deer (as a part of a hunter’s association who function as the local nature conservationists essentially by taking care of the populace) and I have absolutely no moral qualms eating the meat from him. I don’t like buying industrially farmed meat, it’s just not ethical.
My point is vegans often take so absolute positions that they are literally impossible to defend without revealing the lack of logic in the absolutist positions.
Look at a bag of frozen baby mice or rats. It’s just as sad as puppies.
Were they frozen to death, or frozen after death? It really does make a difference.
Exactly. If he was humanely euthanizing them and then freezing them for snake food then there really isn’t anything that wrong here. I know most people would prefer that the meat of choice not be puppies but that’s just how western society views dogs. But societal views aside it’s no different than using piglets which are what a lot of large snake owners use.
Pinkies are a thing for feeding snakes already. Basically baby hamsters. These snakes must have been massive if they needed puppies.
So hamsters are okay, but puppies aren’t? As @Fosheze alluded to, it has to do more with the culture that you were raised in than it has to do with any universal standard of morality.
A quick Google search reveals that snakes can eat prey that is the diameter of the widest part of the snake. Some snakes, such as large constrictors, can and will eat a dog. Snakes are carnivores and need to eat a varied diet of prey, so it comes as no surprise that a dog could be a valid option.
Of course, as with everything, it gets more complicated than that. For instance, intent, food viability, local laws and regulations, how the prey was prepared, etc.
I’m with you bud don’t worry, I don’t have issues with puppy’s being used. I’m a rodent lover and I had 10 hamster up until earlier this year when they all started passing away from old age and I understand it’s the cycle of life and snakes have to eat too. I have no problem with any of this as long as it wasn’t done overly gruesome for the animals being eaten. It’s the cycle of life, we’re part of it too.
*horrible story about literal puppies*
Dorks on Lemmy: Ok, but hear me out
Care to explain how this is any worse than what we already do with cows or pigs without invoking cuteness? What about what we do to rats which are just as socially/emotionally intelligent as dogs (and compared to many breeds more so)?
I really, genuinely, fully don’t think you can.
Aside from dlpkl’s loose emotionally driven argument, I personally believe doing it to any animal is just sad and terrible. On the contrary, I do realize the tough world we live in, and these pets need meat to eat. I rather hope this arrest is over the fact that it is possible these puppies could not be put to death in a humane manner. Also, I wish there are more regulations on humane treatment of animals. Even humans are not always treated humanely. I wouldn’t ever want human babies to be used for animal food either, so it’s always a moving line, you know, because that’s what a complex subject like this brings.
