How Does Best Friend's Animal Society Balance Human and Animal Needs?

[Evo]

It's a huge sanctuary for all kinds of animals. I'm watching the national Geographic special on their "dog town". It is so wonderful to see people that devote their time to rescuing animals.

http://www.bestfriends.org/atthesanctuary/animals/dogs.cfm

This is the canine version of the Cat Ranch.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/dogtown

 

[lisab]

Aaaawwww...so many of those dogs have grey muzzles. So sad, they didn't deserve such a sad end to their lives!

How can people be so heartless ?

 

[Math Is Hard]

I love the Piggy Paradise!

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I couldn't find the Piggy Paradise, but it sounds nice!

 

[svastikajla]

Ironically, the people who profess most to care for animals do not understand the difference between 'animal' and 'vertebrate' and more often than not even 'animal' and 'mammal'.

Animal protection is largely class justice, if you look cute you get protection. Seals get it, octopodes don't. Seals don't pass the mirror test, octopodes do; the latter species doesn't look as cute alas.

Commander Spock does not approve.

 

[Evo]

Aaaawwww...so many of those dogs have grey muzzles. So sad, they didn't deserve such a sad end to their lives!

How can people be so heartless ?

They take in unadoptable pets, ones that are terminally ill, paralyzed, missing limbs, etc... They try to make their remaining days as good as possible, they spare no expense in medical treatment. It was a great show.

Animal protection is largely class justice, if you look cute you get protection. Seals get it, octopodes don't. Seals don't pass the mirror test, octopodes do; the latter species doesn't look as cute alas.

Well, you don't find large populations of abandoned and abused octopodes roaming junkyards trying to survive too often.

 

[Andre]

Animal protection is largely class justice, if you look cute you get protection. Seals get it, octopodes don't. Seals don't pass the mirror test, octopodes do; the latter species doesn't look as cute alas.

Commander Spock does not approve.

Octopi should not do this, it might help.

That burst of bubbles is a underwater SCREAM. Yes, the mean octi was wrapped up in my hands and refused to let go.

 

[svastikajla]

Well, you don't find large populations of abandoned and abused octopodes roaming junkyards trying to survive too often.

Seals get clubbed for their fur in brutal ways, octopodes get cut apart by fishermen because they hold their own the right tot totalitarian-style empty the oceans of all life. Fail to see any difference except that the seals get the activists helping them en masse and the octopodes don't look half as cute.

And can you teach seals to communicate in moderately complicated sign language? I can't, maybe you can.

Humans are visual creatures, no matter how much we hate it, looks outweigh personality by a vast margin to us. The cute girl gets protected by the boys, the cute animal gets protected by the activists.

Also, just to show off my grammar schooled butt: The English word 'octopus' comes into English via Latin, it is a Latinized transcription of a Greek noun, which would nowadays be transcribed as 'oktôpous', academically. The word is most certainly not of the second declension and does not have a plural in -i, for one, the -us is not a termination and also as evidenced by the 'ou' it was a long 'u', Romans weren't always that good in marking the distinction in writing though they did indeed pronounced it and long and short could not only distinguish different words but also grammatical forms. 'oktôpous' is in reality a contraction of 'oktôpods', this is because both Romans and Greeks had troubles pronouncing things like 'ds' and 'ts', the stem of the word is thus 'octopod-' which as you expect means 'eight-foot', as the stem is not 'octop-', 'octopi' is an absurd plural. The correct plural is 'octopodes' in classical form (-es is applied to the stem of masculine third declension nouns) but as that plural might seem alien to people who don't have a grammar schooled butt, various authorities advise to use 'octopuses' in daily life at least—which my grammar schooled butt ignores—the -i plural is a contamination which arose because in Latin, there is a large class of nouns called the second declension which have a singular on -us and a plural on -i for masculine nouns. Though singular on -um and plural on -a for neuter nouns. Indeed, assuming we can just replace -us with -i for forming plurals is a risky thing as besides a fair deal of third declension nouns which contract (genus -> genera, opus -> opera) we also have the fourth declension where both masculine and feminine nouns end on -us and also on -us in the plural, the difference is that the plural form is the long u, not the short. (status -> status, nexus -> nexus). This entire paragraph can be ignored as I am right and there is no debate and it would go off topic and just serves to criticize the pseudo-classical forms of 'viri', 'stati', 'nexi' and so forth. Another good thing to remember is that it's not dogma but dogmata, again because it's bloody greek and not Latin first declension. Any complaints or errors in showing of my classically schooled butt can be directed to my personal message inbutt.

 

[hypatia]

Be nice Hypatia...Sit on your hands, don't type that!

 

[moe darklight]

[...]

He's... gone?!

I missan hym all-raede!

grammar-school...
O, the ironing.

got to love the bubbles of pure terror!

 

[Loren Booda]

How do we humans, with limited resources, weigh our survival against that of other animals?