Kategorie: Animals

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PETA is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and cruelty-to-animals conviction of the person(s) who shot two dogs and abandoned them around May 10.

A good Samaritan reported finding the dogs off Forest Service Road 42, approximately 6.4 miles east of Sunset Falls Campground. The two Rottweilers—a male and a female, approximately 2 to 3 years old—had multiple gunshot wounds. The male had already died, and the female was rushed to an emergency veterinary clinic, where she had to be euthanized because of the extent of her injuries. So far, the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office has no leads in its investigation.

“These dogs were left in agony, bleeding from gunshot wounds, alone in the woods,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “Whoever tortured them is a danger to the entire community, and PETA joins the sheriff’s office in urging anyone with information about this case to come forward immediately.”

Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to contact the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office at 509-427-9490, extension 0, and reference case #20-03096.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

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Some years ago, I heard a loud, rather frantic knocking at my door. I rushed to open it and found my next-door neighbor standing on my doorstep with gloves on and a pillowcase in hand. He had stopped by to warn me that his “pet” python had escaped the tank in which he kept him confined and was now on the loose. As if this weren’t alarming enough, he admitted that he had been out of town for “a couple weeks” and wasn’t exactly sure when Bruno the snake had finally gotten hungry enough to make a break for it. Could I keep an eye out?

Well, I slept with one eye open until Bruno was found—weeks later, emaciated and dead, behind the dryers in the apartment building’s laundry room. I was appalled when my careless neighbor blithely announced his intentions to buy a “replacement.” It was only after the other tenants protested that his plan was derailed. Unfortunately, many novelty pets meet the same ghastly end as Bruno. There are no good reasons to buy a snake, but there are many reasons not to:

1. It’s a dirty business.

Breeders sell animals en masse, and most reptiles are stolen from their native habitats for a lucrative industry that treats sensitive and fragile animals with little more care than car parts. During a PETA investigation of a California dealer called Global Captive Breeders, snakes and other reptiles were so neglected that, in many cases, even their deaths went unnoticed. Enclosures were filled with rotting carcasses teeming with maggots.

2. Snakes have specialized needs.

Even though dealers looking to make a profit may minimize what reptiles need, snakes require spectrum lighting and precise diets. They shun contact with humans, and being held, touched, petted, or passed around is stressful and leaves them prone to illness and injury. And since snakes don’t whine, yelp, or flinch, injuries may go unnoticed and untreated.

3. A killing cycle.

Snakes eat rabbits, mice, and crickets, animals you’ll have to purchase at a pet store, further bolstering the industry.

4. Captivity is cruel.

Rather than exploring lush jungles and swamps and experiencing all the sensory pleasures that they’re so keenly attuned to, captive snakes are relegated to aquariums in which they can’t even stretch out to full length, much less move around or climb.

5. Sky-high mortality.

A study published by the U.K.’s Royal Society of Biology found that at least 75 percent of pet snakes, lizards, tortoises, and turtles die within one year in a human home. It’s believed that most of these newly acquired animals die from stress related to captivity.

“Must-have pets” become inconvenient burdens very quickly. Most snakes end up being ignored and neglected in dark basements or garages. And many are simply tossed outside like trash, left to starve or die of exposure or predation—and those who survive may wreak havoc on local ecosystems.

Please, never buy a snake or any animal from a pet store and ask friends and family not to support this deadly industry, either.

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As floods threaten your area and evacuations are taking place, animals are at risk, and could die if left behind.

Never leave animals outdoors, tied up, crated, caged, in hutches, or confined in any way, as they will be unable to flee rising waters. Anyone who sees animals in distress and is unable to help should note their locations and alert authorities immediately.

Anyone who evacuates and intentionally abandons animals to fend for themselves may be prosecuted.

PETA has release a disaster-preparedness public service announcement featuring Dean Winters. Make plans to ensure the safety of animal companions. For more information, please visit PETA.org.

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Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the University of Florida is telling experimenters to “consider reduction of animal census,” which will likely involve killing many animals.

PETA fired off a letter today to the university’s president, Kent Fuchs, demanding to know why the school conducts noncritical animal experiments. The group is also asking the public to e-mail the university via this action alert to urge it to be transparent regarding the number of animals it deems nonessential and euthanizes in response to COVID-19 and to stop all current and new animal experiments.

According to public records obtained by PETA from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the university was cited by the agency for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act after its inspectors found that an unapproved procedure was used to close an incision in a sheep, which could have resulted in tissue necrosis and infection; surgical procedures performed on sheep were carried out in a filthy pen, not in a surgical suite as established in the approved protocol; a live baby deer mouse was found on the floor of the confinement area after staff failed to notice that the animal had escaped from a cage; and there was a high concentration of urine ammonia—that made breathing difficult—in an animal-confinement area.

“The University of Florida’s use of intelligent and sensitive animals in experiments as though they were nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment is shameful,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “The COVID-19 pandemic should be a moral and scientific reckoning for the school, which conducts deadly experiments on animals it keeps inside small steel cages. If it can’t prove that the experiments are essential—and its response to the pandemic indicates that they’re not—it must not be permitted to continue squandering taxpayer money on them once the pandemic is over.”

Numerous published studies have shown that animal experimentation wastes resources and lives, as more than 90% of highly promising results from basic scientific research—much of it involving animal experimentation—fail to lead to treatments for humans. (Please read under “Lack of benefit for humans” here.) And 95% of new medications that are found to be safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.

PETA’s letter to the university’s president is available here.

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