Humane Society

[Tangwhich]

I recently saw a CBC documentary about animals in entertainment.. most (maybe all?) of the animals you see on TV and in movies are trained from birth.. and in some case (specifically the chimpanzees they talked about) are "retired" when they get a little older because they become difficult to work with.

Continue debate...

 

[lusciouslin33]

"domesticated"

 

[passisus]

Why the frack would we do that when we don't to that for for people that have kids??

Hear hear! Some people should never be allowed to reproduce as they can't take care of themselves, let alone a child (or an animal).

 

[Tarkus]

You kind of shot yourself in the foot there. You saw we domisticated cows and sheep yet fail to point out that we also domisticated dogs and cats too.

Sure if you let them out and didn't feed them they would eventually go feral, but so would we if you removed us from "society".

There is domestication and then there is domestication. Dogs and especially cats would do just fine if all decided to leave the planet, (except for the pure breeds that we manipulated). As I pointed out our domestication of sheep and cattle is very different from that of the cat. Cats are still essentially the same animal they were a million years ago... still feral.

The human removal from society is a Discovery program that looks at what would happen to the world, both in terms of animals, plants, and environment if we all just ceased to be here one day. In this case it is an attempt to look at our direct impact on various species to determine whether or not we have truly domesticated then or not. My position is that cats are essentially domesticated about as much as they want to be and in turn suggesting that we have turned them into an indoor animal that somehow requires are care in some Rudyard White Man's Burden scenario is nonsense.

As for advances in declawing, sorry, no matter what advances are made you are still removing their one and only defence (other than running) and also removing their front toes.

Hey the cats are either essentially animals that can exist in the wild or they are poor domesticated creatures that require our protection. You can't have it both ways. So if they NEED to be indoors then why do they need their claws? Especially interesting in the scenario of my friend who clearly had a biting, hissing and obviously 'clawing' cat. Not sure what defenses were being removed here?

As for training adult cats being impossible. That's a crock of shit. Any animal at any age can be retrained but it may take a little longer. Just look at all the animals in movies? You think they trained kittens to do stunts etc 3 yrs in advance? Heck I've seen adult cougars and bears trained for a particular stunt a couple of months before the shoot.

Never said it was impossible at all. I did say that some mature cats might be so mentally scarred due to abuse or other reasons that they may remain untrainable.

As per animals being trained for movies? I have dealt with some of those animals back when I did some behind the scenes commercial and feature film work and no you cannot take an adult animal and try to train it. All of these animals are trained from birth or a very young age to gain the trust with their xxxxxxx and when they get old enough you can train them. There used to be a farm up near Schomberg, (I am sure long since moved further rural), where one trainer had a tiger, lion and two leopards. The lion thought it was a dog and lived in the house. Apparently leopards are very hard to train and may turn on their xxxxxxx at any time so the other role for the tiger, when he wasn't being used on a shoot, was to be just out of camera view as the enforcer because the leopards would not attack anyone as long as the big striped guy was keeping the peace.

All of these animals were brought up as cubs and there was NO way you could train any of them as mature animals. To date I don't think anyone has figured out how to train a polar bear or a wolverine. It seems that some innate behaviours are beyond our ability. So no you cannot train any animal because some are simply too wild. In this case the animal was just crazy. Probably not its fault but that does not change the fact it was just psycho and as much as the THS staffers wanted to check off one in the win column they misrepresented the animal and themselves by not having the honesty to say "thanks for trying, we were afraid he would not be able to adapt."

But that would mean accepting that some self serving philosophy might be wrong. Not going to happen with the THS.

 

[Tarkus]

I recently saw a CBC documentary about animals in entertainment.. most (maybe all?) of the animals you see on TV and in movies are trained from birth.. and in some case (specifically the chimpanzees they talked about) are "retired" when they get a little older because they become difficult to work with.

Yep. The retired factor applies to some dolphins and orcas as well who will become aggressive with their handlers later in life.

It is all really a rather conceited aspect about us as a species. We are so certain we have dominion over every animal and believe they think like we do. I always get a charge out of all the 'dog people' who are utterly certain that their Rottweiler would never hurt anyone and then are the first to scream that it was somehow the 3 year old's fault that their dog chased down and mauled. Maybe they consider it an affront to themselves as if the dog's misbehaviour is somehow a demonstrated failure on their part?

 

[Tarkus]

Yeah... right.

"domesticated"

Somehow I sense the only thing domesticated about is your disdain for any wine carrying that label!

 

[The Cunning Linguist]

These links provides some excellent information about declawing.

The latest procedure involves using a laser to remove the cells that produce the nail tissue. It is expensive, but the cat gets to keep it's toes and is not "mutilated". Conventional declawing is a surgical amputation of the toe up to the first joint. I am vehemently against declawing, but I know several people who have had the laser declawing done, and it seems to be the best alternative.

http://marvistavet.com/html/body_declawing_and_its_alternatives.html

http://www.petdr.com/declawdesc.htm

We have four cats. Two are shelter cats. One is a feral rescue. One was adopted as a kitten from a family down the street. All our cats are indoor cats. Two are declawed. The feral rescue, even though rescued at eight weeks, has never bonded with us, and never will like the other three. Although he has made great progress, he panics when he is picked up, and is not shy about using claws and teeth if he thinks he is even remotely threatened. He does not enjoy physical contact with us like the others, but will endure it. He's not really much of a pet, but at least we saved his life.

The THS is an excellent organization, but not without some faults. It is the only charity we contribute to, and is in our wills as well.

 

[Tarkus]

The THS is an excellent organization, but not without some faults. It is the only charity we contribute to, and is in our wills as well.

The THS is a vested organization. This concern about it didn't start last week it began over a decade ago. No doubt it does a lot of good but I fear in that pursuit both its leadership, (whom at times have attacked legitimate farmers who it seemed were more political fodder than problems), and staff have at times lost perspective.

While not THS related similar mind set... do you recall about 10 years ago a Palestinian dragged a donkey into a market and did the whole suicide bomber thing. PETA went nuts and when asked for comment pronounced, "we really don't care if any people, bomber or innocents, were hurt. The big issue was the donkey.

To paraphrase Janeane Garofalo, "there is a big difference between loving your pet and LOVING YOUR PET."


And despite what you dog and cat owners might think from a guy who has pretty much always had a flock of cats. Who can approach the most aggressive dog and talk him down. I have no malevolence to these beasts but I do recognize their role.

And again despite all the railing against me and my friend and granted it is anecdotal, I just keep finding more and more people in my world who have sworn of the THS for life. At this point it is starting to look as if the THS was in charge of teach Hitler's SS their people skills!

 

[JessiMae]

You kind of shot yourself in the foot there. You saw we domisticated cows and sheep yet fail to point out that we also domisticated dogs and cats too.

Sure if you let them out and didn't feed them they would eventually go feral, but so would we if you removed us from "society".

As for advances in declawing, sorry, no matter what advances are made you are still removing their one and only defence (other than running) and also removing their front toes.

As for training adult cats being impossible. That's a crock of shit. Any animal at any age can be retrained but it may take a little longer. Just look at all the animals in movies? You think they trained kittens to do stunts etc 3 yrs in advance? Heck I've seen adult cougars and bears trained for a particular stunt a couple of months before the shoot.

Anyhow, I'll let you get back to bickering with scouser lol......

Agreed!

As for the training of cats; many (if not all) cats in movies come from breeders and have dedicated their lives to these animals. The cats would have had some foundation in terms of training. Yes, they can train a new stunt within a matter of weeks, but keep in mind they are working with an animal that has a solid foundation, and not an animal that has a questionable past.

However a questionable past can be overcome. Personally I hate Cesar Millan (his methods suck), but he does have some good points, one of those being that animals live in the present and not the past. It is us humans that dwell on things like "he was beaten by his last owner, straved, etc". Pets while they may remember these things happening to them- they don't dwell on it. Thus pets regardless of their past can be re-trained with extra effort and can get over their ill behaviours.

 

[JessiMae]

Never said it was impossible at all. I did say that some mature cats might be so mentally scarred due to abuse or other reasons that they may remain untrainable.

Not sure if I would say mentally scarred, but I agree with you to some extent. As you most likely know there are sensitive periods for certain types of learning. For example sociability should be taught between 8-16 weeks in dogs. This is a time when a person who has a puppy should be exposing the puppy to new places, people, dogs, other animals, etc. Dogs that miss this sensitive period will have difficulty training, may develop behaviours that are hard to break and may have difficulty "bouncing back" from certain events.

Dogs that are easy to train are ones that have been socialized properly during that sensitive period.