Animals – Seite 84 – Global-Affair.net

2023-11-01

While Honoring the Dead, Don’t Forget Corky’s Babies

The leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and the final harvests are upon us in the U.S. At this time, the veil between life and death thins—at least, that’s what many of us believe.

People from many cultures, faiths, and backgrounds use this opportunity to the fullest, taking up rituals in remembrance of deceased family members, friends, and others who inspired them during their time on Earth.

But what about those who are forgotten?

Remembering—and Honoring—Victims of Exploitation

Often, the victims of normalized exploitation fall by the wayside in our memories. When it comes to the nonhuman victims of human atrocities, they’re lucky even to get a passing thought.

Enter Corky the Orca

SeaWorld San Diego 2010 | Martin Wippel | CC by 2.0

The marine park industry took everything from Corky. The orca lost her family in 1969, when she was violently taken from her mother in the waters off British Columbia. She lost her freedom when she was sold into captivity. And during her imprisonment, she lost every one of her seven babies, all within an agonizing decade of her life.

In the absence of altars, incense, and other means to help guide their spirits closer to our world, please hold Corky’s seven dead babies in your memory. They were all needless victims of the animal entertainment industry.

Corky’s Calves

From 1977 to 1986 at the now-defunct Marineland of the Pacific in California, Corky was used as a breeding machine. She was bred with her own cousin six times. Then, after she was sent to SeaWorld San Diego in 1987, she suffered a miscarriage.

Here’s the story behind every baby she had.

February 28, 1977: Corky gave birth to the first live calf born in captivity. The male calf failed to nurse, and he died of pneumonia in about two weeks.
October 31, 1978: Corky’s second calf, named Spooky because he was born on Halloween, was born. He also failed to nurse and died of pneumonia. It’s believed that the formula he’d been fed was contaminated.
April 1, 1980: Corky gave birth to an eight-week premature stillborn calf.
June 18, 1982: Corky’s longest surviving baby was born. She lived for just 46 days and also failed to nurse. After about a month, Marineland reportedly feared for the calf’s safety as Corky became increasingly rough with her, so the calf was put in a separate tank. She died a couple of days later.
July 22, 1985: Corky gave birth to a female calf who survived for about a month.
July 27, 1986: Corky’s last pregnancy at Marineland of The Pacific ended in a miscarriage.
August 1987: Corky miscarried her last baby, who was found dead at the bottom of her tank at SeaWorld. After suffering this miscarriage, Corky stopped ovulating and was unable to have any more children.

Corky Likely Remembers Her Calves—We Should, Too

After she went through her devastating series of pregnancies, Corky spent a lot of time close to a young female orca named Orkid when they shared a tank at SeaWorld. Orkid’s presence may have filled an aching hole in Corky’s heart, but that peace didn’t last.

One day, Orkid’s mother, Kandu, attacked Corky. While forcefully charging at her, Kandu broke her own jaw, severing arteries in her head. It took 45 minutes for Kandu to die, as her own calf watched.

Never Again

If she had been left in her ocean home, Corky might have had grandchildren of her own. If she had stayed with her family, she’d likely be with her brother and sister Fife and Ripple, who are still swimming free. So then we mourn not only her babies who died but also her potential for a better life, dashed by violent, selfish humans.

Her calves may be dead, but Corky lives on. Please urge SeaWorld to send her to a seaside sanctuary, where she could live out her days in peace and experience some semblance of the life that she has been denied for so long.

SeaWorld: Show Corky Mercy

The post While Honoring the Dead, Don’t Forget Corky’s Babies appeared first on PETA.

2023-11-01

Two Monkeys Burned in a Federal Lab—PETA Demands Action

PETA is calling for an investigation after inept staffers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) improperly handled the simplest equipment, causing two squirrel monkeys to sustain agonizing burns.

Experimenters subjected two sensitive monkeys to a PET scan in order to capture images of their organs and tissues, according to a National Institutes of Health report obtained by PETA. During the procedure, they exposed the animals to a heat lamp and a wet blanket that likely caused the burns because they were either too close to the monkeys’ skin or too hot.

The heat lamp was so powerful that the body temperature of one of the monkeys rose to 107 degrees. Experimenters put the monkey through the scan anyway. Painful burns developed on the forearms of one monkey and on the back of the other, according to the report.

Inflicting Unnecessary Pain Calls For Imposing Necessary Consequences

Experimenters failed to pay attention to the temperature and function of the heat sources, and it wasn’t until after the monkeys were burned that staff thought to move the heat lamp to a safer location and replace the water blanket. The utterly avoidable agony inflicted on the victims also suggests that the laboratory’s animal oversight committee failed to review the experiment adequately and ensure proper equipment inspections.

PETA is urging NIDA to institute a zero-tolerance policy for staffers who don’t uphold even the most basic animal welfare guidelines and permanently bar them from contact with animals.

No Animal Should Suffer

Not only were these scorching injuries avoidable, there’s also no justification for monkeys—or any animals—to be in laboratories in the first place. PETA is urging NIDA to ditch worthless animal experiments and instead invest in effective, human-relevant methods that can provide much-needed help for the millions of Americans and their loved ones who suffer from substance use disorders.

NIDA has previously used squirrel monkeys to study human opioid addiction, but the results of such experiments don’t translate to humans. Unnatural laboratory conditions, physiological differences between species, the relative inability to measure emotional states in animals, and the complexities of human addiction are just some of the problems with using animals.

Help End Animal Experiments

This isn’t the first time that animals have been subjected to pain, violence, and distress in federal laboratories. The National Institutes of Health funnels billions of taxpayer dollars into laboratories for cruel animal experiments that don’t advance human health.

Please take action today and urge your legislators to support PETA’s Research Modernization Deal, which outlines a strategy for getting animals out of laboratories and instead investing in modern, human-relevant research methods:

Take Action

The post Two Monkeys Burned in a Federal Lab—PETA Demands Action appeared first on PETA.

2023-10-31

PETA Statement: Incompetence at MRIGlobal, a Contract Lab, Kills 32 Rabbits and 2 Endangered Monkeys

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding the critical citation posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against MRIGlobal, a contract laboratory based in Kansas City, Missouri, after staff negligence led to the deaths of dozens of rabbits and two endangered monkeys:

Incompetent staffers at MRIGlobal don’t follow simple instructions, and 32 rabbits and two monkeys suffered and died because of it. PETA is urging the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to bar the company—a scalpel-for-hire that experiments on animals for the highest bidder—from receiving future federal contracts.

According to a just-released U.S. Department of Agriculture report, staffers at MRIGlobal jabbed two long-tailed macaques—an endangered species—with an experimental substance in the wrong muscle. The monkeys were killed 11 hours after. Just two days later, staffers failed to follow instructions on how to dose 32 rabbits with eye drops for an experiment, giving them the wrong dosage and causing them unrelieved pain. The rabbits were euthanized as a result.

PETA urges federal agencies to direct funds away from hellholes such as MRIGlobal and toward modern, non-animal research methods that will actually help humans, and we urge officials there to adopt PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

The post PETA Statement: Incompetence at MRIGlobal, a Contract Lab, Kills 32 Rabbits and 2 Endangered Monkeys appeared first on PETA.

2023-10-30

PETA Complaint Prompts State Investigation of University After Monkey’s Death

Following a PETA complaint, the Washington State Department of Health’s Veterinary Board of Governors has opened an investigation into the University of Washington (UW) following the gruesome death of a monkey during a botched procedure.

On August 7, PETA reported the monkey’s death, which is included among other violations in a just-released U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report. Staffers sedated an 8-year-old male rhesus macaque for a procedure to remove dead tissue accumulating around a metal device implanted in his skull. When the monkey showed signs of trouble, there was no veterinarian available nor was appropriate emergency equipment nearby, according to the report.

A staffer had to take an elevator to another area of the center to retrieve a donated portable anesthesia machine. The faulty machine caused a traumatic pressure injury to the monkey’s lungs, essentially blowing them up like balloons. The monkey went into cardiac arrest and died, the report said.

On October 11, the UW Board of Governors authorized an investigation into the incident. A week later, the university published a statement about the death that downplayed both the severity of the incident and the latest raft of USDA citations.

“As is painfully common for monkeys subjected to neuro-experimentation, this macaque’s skull implant became infected, requiring aggressive treatment, and he was apparently killed by unprepared staff who didn’t know what they were doing,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA is grateful to state officials for taking this monkey’s death—and the apparent incompetence of UW staff—seriously.”

The new USDA report also reveals that another monkey undergoing skull surgery sustained brain damage when a UW experimenter left the room to take a phone call, leaving an unskilled trainee to botch the procedure, piercing the monkey’s brain and causing noticeable neurological damage. Other citations include subjecting a monkey to two surgeries when only one was approved; subjecting 16 rabbits to a combination of unapproved procedures and 18 squirrels to unapproved surgeries, leading to complications for six of them; and failing to give monkeys a daily water ration.

PETA has previously exposed that UW experimenters have left needles, gauze, and other surgical equipment inside monkeys’ bodies; that infant monkeys have died from undiagnosed diseases and malnourishment; and that days-old monkeys have been mutilated and killed by other caged and stressed primates, among other horrors.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

The post PETA Complaint Prompts State Investigation of University After Monkey’s Death appeared first on PETA.

2023-10-30

CODE BLUE! PETA Issues Survival Tips for Animals During Arctic Blast

As an arctic blast threatens much of the country—with record-breaking below-average temperatures expected—here’s PETA’s tips for keeping animals safe. Dogs and cats are especially vulnerable in cold weather and winter storms, which lead to multiple deaths, injuries, and near-miss rescues each year. (And most incidents aren’t even reported.) A glimpse of just some of the dogs PETA’s fieldworkers have found suffering in the cold can be seen here.

The following steps can go a long way toward helping animals survive cold weather.

Bring them indoors: Companion animals should always live indoors. Dogs who are kept chained outside and “outdoor cats”—like those featured in Breaking the Chain, a documentary produced by Oscar winner Anjelica Huston—often go without adequate food, water, shelter, and veterinary care. They’re no better equipped to survive freezing temperatures or extreme weather conditions than humans are, they suffer terribly from frostbite, and they can die from exposure.
Gear up: Coats will keep dogs comfortable in cold weather —just (be sure to remove wet jackets the moment dogs return), home—secure harnesses can help prevent them from getting loose on walks, and booties will protect their sensitive paw pads from the frozen ground. Keep walks short in cold weather, especially for shorthaired dogs.
Don’t forget wildlife: During extreme winter weather, provide birds and other wild animals with access to an emergency water supply by filling a heavy nonmetal water bowl (tongues can freeze to metal) and breaking the surface ice at least twice a day.

Good Samaritans who see companion animals kept chained or penned outside 24/7 or without adequate shelter from the elements should note the animals’ exact location and alert local law-enforcement authorities immediately. Anyone who leaves animals outside to suffer in severe weather may be prosecuted.