Clueless Pet Owners

Certain pet owners it seems, hold onto some very curious notions. One of them, is the hope or vague belief, that the actions of a devoted owner of (say) a tiger, a snake, or for that matter a chimpanzee, can overcome millions of years of evolutionary hard wiring. Connected with this idea is the corollary belief, that just anyone should be able to purchase and keep any kind of animal they want.

Both these ideas are straight out false, as well as dangerous. Predatory animals are wild by their very nature. Attempts to make them less wild never can guarantee that their behavior towards humans will always be friendly. Anyone who happens to be in close proximity. of a such an animal is taking a chance of being mauled, bitten, squeezed or otherwise seriously beat up. Anyone who owns these kinds of animals is deluding themselves if they think otherwise.

The fact of the matter is, that animals didn’t evolve to be anyone’s pet. They evolved for Nature’s purposes and this process involved killing other animals. Now, some animals such as dogs, cats and birds do pretty well as pets, but that is only because of humankind’s long experience and knowledge of how these animals behave. Dogs, cats and birds? Not a problem. At least not usually.

Predators taken out of the jungles and plains of Asia and Africa are quite another matter. That certain animals should not be anywhere outside their natural habitat or a well-equipped and well-staffed zoo should be self-evident, and probably is, to most people.

Unfortunately it isn’t and the results have been tragic, horrifying.

In October of 2003, an entertainer in Los Vegas got himself mauled by a white tiger that was being used as part of a show. The animal at that time was seven years old and weighed in at about 400 lbs. The entertainer was dragged around the stage like rag doll and nearly died from bite and scratch wounds. For some reason or another, the tiger decided he would not perform that night. Yet the owner had been working with this particular tiger for some seven years. One would think that he would know something about the behavior of large felines. Maybe he though he did. Yet he didn’t bargain with the tiger’s evolutionary past coming out from behind the animal’s conscious or unconscious mind.

Another tiger story: In February of 2005, a tiger somehow escaped from an owner and had to be killed by the California state wildlife authorities. There’s some suspicion that it escaped from a poorly run private animal preserve in Moorpark California. The tiger was on the loose for about three days. Luckily no one was injured. But the risk to the public was huge. All because some owner was allowed to maintain such an animal in what is probably not more than a glorified back-yard.

And about a week or so ago, in Bakersfield, California, some chimps escaped from their cage at an animal shelter and nearly mauled a visitor to death. It turns out that the party injured was the former owner of a chimp at the facility and was there to give the chimp some birthday cake. This particular chimp was am orphan the visitors had picked up in Africa some years earlier. The escaped chimps were later shot to death. The victim was seriously injured with portions of his face pulled off. There’s not telling how long he will be hospitalized. So far it looks like still another case of a supposedly licensed animal shelter not taking proper care of its charges.

Although the particular chimp the injured visitor had raised did not attack join in on the attack, in fact could have. Chimps have about five times the strength of a man and can be as vicious as any other animal raised in the wild as part of its normal habitat.

The stories go on. The tiger left in an apartment. The snake enthusiast killed by his own constrictor. Not to mention vicious dogs that are left out to terrorize neighborhoods.

All of which means that it is about time for California and other states to rethink policies which allows private citizens to be given licenses to keep dangerous animals.

The fact is, dangerous animals belong in the wild or in a modern zoo; not in private homes.

Punditwalla--