House cats - killers?

[Keroin]

We've been warned about the kitty litter thing. Ick.

Feces eating among dogs is not uncommon and not related to a lack of nourishment. Some dogs will eat all kinds of feces, even their own.

In nature, mothers will commonly eat the feces of their pups to keep the den clean and smell free, which helps keep them safe from predators.

There is a product you can get from your vet to sprinkle on your cat's food that is not harmful to the cat but makes their feces smell really bad to dogs. I can't recall the name but any vet would know. But not all dogs do this so you may not have to worry.

It is not a good habit, for health reasons, and should be trained out of dogs whenever possible.

 

[Recidiva]

Feces eating among dogs is not uncommon and not related to a lack of nourishment. Some dogs will eat all kinds of feces, even their own.

In nature, mothers will commonly eat the feces of their pups to keep the den clean and smell free, which helps keep them safe from predators.

There is a product you can get from your vet to sprinkle on your cat's food that is not harmful to the cat but makes their feces smell really bad to dogs. I can't recall the name but any vet would know. But not all dogs do this so you may not have to worry.

It is not a good habit, for health reasons, and should be trained out of dogs whenever possible.

We've had to block the kitty litter area so the dog doesn't have access or he'll go snack on "kitty crunchies."

We have one of those dogs that has lost most of his sense of smell and is demented from old age and is by and large untrainable.

Fortunately he's not in any pain and has a happy version of puppy Alzheimers where he's not scared or upset by new things, just can't develop any new patterns of behavior. He's always happy to see us even if he doesn't remember who we are any more.

I've dealt with some of his nutritional issues, and he used to chew on his own front paws until they bled because corn in his food made him have dermatitis.

I haven't yet discovered anything that I could put in his food that will keep him from eating his feces - that doesn't also make him entirely averse to his own food. If anybody has any ideas, great. This is definitely a problem I've been unable to solve and I've been advised that it's just a "perfect storm" of dog behavior (finicky eating habits and elderly puppy digestive system make it hard to get enough food into him in the first place, so additives make him turn up his nose, whereas poop doesn't.)

 

[Keroin]

We've had to block the kitty litter area so the dog doesn't have access or he'll go snack on "kitty crunchies."

We have one of those dogs that has lost most of his sense of smell and is demented from old age and is by and large untrainable.

Fortunately he's not in any pain and has a happy version of puppy Alzheimers where he's not scared or upset by new things, just can't develop any new patterns of behavior. He's always happy to see us even if he doesn't remember who we are any more.

I've dealt with some of his nutritional issues, and he used to chew on his own front paws until they bled because corn in his food made him have dermatitis.

I haven't yet discovered anything that I could put in his food that will keep him from eating his feces - that doesn't also make him entirely averse to his own food. If anybody has any ideas, great. This is definitely a problem I've been unable to solve and I've been advised that it's just a "perfect storm" of dog behavior (finicky eating habits and elderly puppy digestive system make it hard to get enough food into him in the first place, so additives make him turn up his nose, whereas poop doesn't.)

Yep, some dogs just love poo.

The name of the product I mentioned above is "For-bid". Have you tried it?

I've heard pumpkin makes some dogs stop eating their feces. And, as Grace mentioned, sometimes Vitamin B helps.

But this may just be something you'll have to live with.

 

[Homburg]

Yeah, maybe so, but let's keep in mind that thinking about stuff like "I wonder whether or not I really NEED to kill this animal that's invaded my territory" is a pretty human thought. I have some serious doubts as to whether animals, dogs or otherwise, really consider the risk levels associated with chasing the vermin out of its territory or killing it. Its an animal.

Animals make decisions and, yes, various species, and certainly individuals, are bright enough to weigh risk. Watch any dog or cat trying to do something they know is a no-no per their owners. They will look around, make sure they aren't being watched, etc. Watch a cat trying to make a jump it hasn't tried before.. Kitty will look at the distance, judge it, weigh the chances of failure, and decide whether or not the jump is feasible.

You are wildly underestimating the cognitive ability of dogs in general.

--

I'm trying to think what. The only animal killings that seem like murderous creepy aggro to me are - big shocker, primates very close to us.

By species, not so much. Individuals can be creepy psycho aggressive. That said, look up kia parrots in Australia. Fucking evil birds. EVIL.

--

Or when someone breeds and trains (and/or tortures) a dog to be vicious and agressive and then people are like "That's just a mean dog." No, the dog's PERSON is a dickweed. It's just the same as when someone see's a hamster in a cage and says "Ooooh that is such a sad hamster." No, the person is sad. The hamster is a hamster.

...

This is an epistemological fault. Say you and I go to lunch, and I seem withdrawn, frowning, distracted, low-energy, etc. Your thought will likely be that I might be sad. You ask, and I say that it's nothing, and I'm not sad. You know this to be wrong. Why? Because my external behaviour fits with a pattern that virtually every human uses to express sadness, depression, etc. But are you sure that I am sad? Or that what you think of as the feeling of sadness is what you feel when you are sad? Sans telepathy, you assume that I am sad because of my behaviour. You have learned over the years from watching others what behaviour fits with the set of emotions described in that manner.

No one is saying that a sad dog is exactly analogous to a sad human in what they are feeling, but you can tell that the dog is low-energy, distracted, and giving the dog equivalent of a frown. Is the dog human-sad? No. But the dog is certainly dog-sad. Dogs, cats, horses, monkeys, etc all have identifiable emotional states, and those states can be seen as brainwave pattern differences, just like ours can.

--

Have you ever heard of Temple Grandin? Here is a brief article of hers, a summary of the perspective I'm talking about.

Temple Grandin is incredible.

--

A normal, healthy dolphin life involves traveling large distances every day, hunting live food, and complex social interactions within a big group. Please explain to me how any aquarium, Sea World, or swim-with-dolphins facility can accurately replicate this.

I want to make something clear that I'd not said before - The aquariums that I'm thinking of are ones that do not house mammals. I do not truck with marine mammals in captivity. Fish, on the other hand, I'm not so sensitive about.

This lagoon is very large and very shallow. The section I live on is very accessible, as is most of the west side. I can swim out to the reef and at no point is the water over my head, in most places it barely comes up to my waist. The water is clear, warm, free of jelly fish and other dangers. The only risk, really, is stone fish and if you keep your hands and feet off the coral then you never have to worry. It is one of the nicest, safest, easiest places in the world to view tropical fish.

From shore, you can easily see about 20 species of fish.

Putting an aquarium here would be like putting a sandbox in the middle of the Sahara.

Okay, I can accept that. If the person has gone through the hassle of going that far to see the island, and the lagoon is that easy, I can see why there is no need.

You'll find no argument from me about overpopulation. (Reason #124 I have no kids). The problem with humans is that we keep outsmarting the things that should be keeping our population in check. But I mentioned a ski resort, not houses. Housing? OK, unfortunate but necessary. Ski resort? When we already have more than enough ski resorts in that area? Nope, that's just greed.

I'm just speaking to trends. Overpopulation and lack of awareness are two different animals. I see a lot more of the former, and a lot less of the latter, and I blame the former very heavily for much of the woes of the world en toto.

And I can point to the horde of supposedly enlightened tourists I watched throwing coconuts and sticks at the crocodiles beneath the Tarcoles bridge, in Costa Rica, because they were frustrated with the animals just lying there and they wanted them to "do" something, and my list of examples goes on and on.

How about the tourists who flock to swim-with-dolphin facilities all over the world without any shred of concern for how the dolphins were captured or their quality of life. These numbers are increasing, substantially. (Not to suggest that all tourists do not do their homework about these facilities -many choose to swim at only the most ethical facilities - but the overwhelming majority don't know or don't care).

What about the people like yourself? You tar the general populace with a broad brush due to the examples you've seen, yet you provide just as strong an argument for awareness yourself? I'm not asking about places blike BFE Mexico where education is non-existant. I'm talking about the Canada's and America's. Awareness has improved significantly.

I believe it is possible to teach people to value, care for and protect wild animals without putting the animals in captivity. I've never seen a snow leopard but after watching Planet Earth and learning of their impending extinction, I was motivated to do something. Also, two years ago I attended a screening of Sharkwater in Nelson, with Paul Watson fielding questions afterward. The movie ended with a standing ovation and the crowd had tons of questions. I saw real action regarding shark protection and conservation come from that film. No aquarium needed.

And I again I'll state that these are my beliefs. I have friends who go to zoos and aquariums, I have friends who've swam with dolphins in captivity, I don't look at them as bad, evil, terrible people. I don't preach at them. Once upon a time, I enjoyed watching animals in captivity, just like everyone else. Then I had one of those famous epiphanies - I think it was right at the same time a wild dolphin looked me in the eye and I saw a mind not unlike my own - where I "got" it. So I'm willing to be that obnoxious person who boycotts and protests because I know if it weren't for us then there would still be gorillas in department store displays.

While anyone can go see a movie, few will have the opportunity to watch a screening of the movie with someone like that taking questions afterwards, and VERY few will come face to face with a dolphin in person. Not everyone has those opportunities, and I'm sure you can recognise they are more powerful than watching Animal Planet on TV.

And I will note that my feelings did cause my family to boycott that store. And we passed the message on to anyone who would listen. Very few would, because nobody cared as much in 1977 as they do today.

--

After a while, people start going.... the rain forest, the polar ice cap, the pollinators, the entire world of edible seafood.... floods, erosion, drought, mass starvation - FUCK. What's the point? Sounds like I can either shoot myself now and get things over with quickly, or enjoy myself for a few more years until the inevitable end.

In short - the enormity of all these environmental/sustainability issues can overwhelm one's capacity to process the information and respond in a rational way.

This is the point I reach all too quickly when the environmental doom and gloom crowd gets riled up. We're all going to fucking die anyway, oh well. If Rome is going to burn regardless, we might as well eat, drink, and be merry while we can.

Maybe it is realistic to paint the picture so very darkly, but the net effect it produces in myself, and far too many people that I know, is apathy. Between Peak Oil, impending collapse of the food supply system, Terminator Seed strains, and the death of honey bees, we're fucked. Climate change won't have a chance to kill us off, as we're all going to suffocate under our own shit while trying to kill each other in the upcoming food riots.

 

[Netzach]

Kias?

They're carniverous and opportunistic. I don't think they're evil, though they do kind of seem like parrots gone vampiric. Do they kill their own is the question?

Yeah, birds have the nest fratricide thing but its consistent and its an insurance policy - chimps will just gang up and kill someone every once in a while.

 

[graceanne]

chimps will just gang up and kill someone every once in a while.

Sounds like chickens.

 

[Recidiva]

Yep, some dogs just love poo.

The name of the product I mentioned above is "For-bid". Have you tried it?

I've heard pumpkin makes some dogs stop eating their feces. And, as Grace mentioned, sometimes Vitamin B helps.

But this may just be something you'll have to live with.

We don't have a problem with the kitty poo 'cause it's in a separate part of the house. The kitties have to jump up and behind some barriers to get to their food and such.

But I'll try the For-Bid on his food if it works. Looks like Amazon carries it, so I'll order some. It's just that the description makes me giggle. "Makes stool taste bad." Most of my brain can't comprehend how it doesn't taste bad in the first place, but here we go!

So far no luck, but we love him anyway

 

[Recidiva]

Kias?

They're carniverous and opportunistic. I don't think they're evil, though they do kind of seem like parrots gone vampiric. Do they kill their own is the question?

Yeah, birds have the nest fratricide thing but its consistent and its an insurance policy - chimps will just gang up and kill someone every once in a while.

I think there's a pretty famous video clip of a baboon just tearing into a flock of flamingos and ripping one to shreds. In high def. Eeeegh.

Birds pecking each other to death in the nest, sharks eating each other in mommy shark's womb. I'll have to say nature is oogily red in tooth and claw. High def just makes it worse, though I can't look away.

 

[Recidiva]

Sounds like chickens.

Chickens are dumb and vicious. But I like eggs. A lot.

 

[Netzach]

I think there's a pretty famous video clip of a baboon just tearing into a flock of flamingos and ripping one to shreds. In high def. Eeeegh.

Birds pecking each other to death in the nest, sharks eating each other in mommy shark's womb. I'll have to say nature is oogily red in tooth and claw. High def just makes it worse, though I can't look away.

Again, though, the first scenario - that's usually food for the baboon.
The second - insurance policies, genetic insurance policies.

Chimps have murdered group members in such ways as to leave lifelong researchers going "I don't know what happened there!"

 

[Sayyid]

Seems every animal species is cruel except housecats.

 

[Recidiva]

Again, though, the first scenario - that's usually food for the baboon.
The second - insurance policies, genetic insurance policies.

Chimps have murdered group members in such ways as to leave lifelong researchers going "I don't know what happened there!"

There was an experiment about learned behavior. Simple idea: Take a cage of monkeys, teach them something unpleasant. Some group behavior to stimulus. Then over time, a few weeks or months, one by one take out an old monkey that was there for being taught and swap in a new monkey. Say it's something random like "beat the crap out of the smallest one when this light turns on red"

Over time, remove every monkey that was there for the original teaching of bad behavior, and eventually you have a whole new cage of monkeys who weren't taught by humans, but followed monkey group behavior and they're enforcing it themselves now.

I think that's what happens to monkeys and humans.

I think birds are more hard wired and have less choice about it, but I'm not sure that's more noble or more scary. I don't think you can teach a bird not to peck or to peck. I could be wrong, but bird training isn't my specialty. But "genetic insurance policy" isn't thought or choice. Neither is ant behavior or otherwise. So I'm not sure the behaviors can be compared. Ants and chickens can't be taught to alter their patterns.

But that's partly why I think lots of humans haven't exerted their judgment or choice in many situations, and are responding to that group dynamic that ends up not being taught by anyone anymore, but is just somehow in the psyche and reinforcing itself through habit and the fear of what happens if you don't do what the group does. i.e. - you get the crap beat out of you or killed for not joining in or bucking the mindless trend.

Theoretically thought can overcome that pattern, if one monkey stands up and refuses to do so or if one human stands up and defends the smallest human.

I think that gives human an advantage in choice, but a disadvantage in being exposed to all the BAD group behaviors we're prone to observe.

I know enough humans prone to peck others to death in groups because they're afraid if they don't, if they show a moment's weakness or hesitation, they're now IT.

 

[JMohegan]

Seems every animal species is cruel except housecats.

HAHAHAHA!

 

[Keroin]

We don't have a problem with the kitty poo 'cause it's in a separate part of the house. The kitties have to jump up and behind some barriers to get to their food and such.

But I'll try the For-Bid on his food if it works. Looks like Amazon carries it, so I'll order some. It's just that the description makes me giggle. "Makes stool taste bad." Most of my brain can't comprehend how it doesn't taste bad in the first place, but here we go!

So far no luck, but we love him anyway

Love is the important part.

The clients at the animal hospital who used For-bid almost always had positive results. It's worth a try. Let us know how it goes!

Good work with the litter box relocation, sometimes that's all you can do.

 

[graceanne]

Chickens are dumb and vicious. But I like eggs. A lot.

I hate chickens. Nasty little fuckers. Don't like eggs, either. But I love fried chicken. *sigh*

 

[JMohegan]

Ohhhh, yeah. It's the chickens who are vicious.

 

[Netzach]

I think most people here are alluding to chicken personality based on interaction with the experience of loud, relatively unintelligent, and aggressive free-range chickens.

I don't think they're factory farm workers.

Have you ever seen what chickens do to the lowest bird on the pecking totem? I mean chickens who get plenty of room and live off vegetarian feed under sunny vermont skies and have nothing to fear till chicken menopause.

Personally, whatever, I chalk it up to birds being birds. Birds are not all March of the Penguins Awwwww. But I don't know of any particulary value-neutral language to describe the behavior.

 

[graceanne]

I grew up on or around farms. I saw a chicken attack my baby cousin (age two) and try to take out her eyes. It took two of us, with sticks, to driver that fucker off. He mysteriously disappeared soon after. My mom suspects my grandpa. I've seen them kill any other chickens for a tiny flaw. If a baby chicken gets injured you have to remove it from the other chickens or they will kill it.

Chickens are mean, stupid, and nasty.

 

[JMohegan]

I think most people here are alluding to chicken personality based on interaction with the experience of loud, relatively unintelligent, and aggressive free-range chickens.

I don't think they're factory farm workers.

Have you ever seen what chickens do to the lowest bird on the pecking totem? I mean chickens who get plenty of room and live off vegetarian feed under sunny vermont skies and have nothing to fear till chicken menopause.

Personally, whatever, I chalk it up to birds being birds. Birds are not all March of the Penguins Awwwww. But I don't know of any particulary value-neutral language to describe the behavior.

I'm just engaging in a bit of wry humor in response to factory farm customers slamming the pecking order as "vicious."

Personally I find considerable irony in the aspersion.

 

[graceanne]

I'm just engaging in a bit of wry humor in response to factory farm customers slamming the pecking order as "vicious."

Personally I find considerable irony in the aspersion.

I wasn't slamming it. I was pointing out that primates aren't the only ones who're vicious.

 

[Recidiva]

I think most people here are alluding to chicken personality based on interaction with the experience of loud, relatively unintelligent, and aggressive free-range chickens.

I don't think they're factory farm workers.

Have you ever seen what chickens do to the lowest bird on the pecking totem? I mean chickens who get plenty of room and live off vegetarian feed under sunny vermont skies and have nothing to fear till chicken menopause.

Personally, whatever, I chalk it up to birds being birds. Birds are not all March of the Penguins Awwwww. But I don't know of any particulary value-neutral language to describe the behavior.

My chore as a kid was to watch the chickens. We bought bunches of them in baby chick batches that arrived in boxes. Cute as hell for a few weeks. But then they get a little bigger, get mangy looking and start getting real feathers instead of fluff, and they start killing each other.

I may not have been a factory farm worker, but I've had close association with chickens with years. Enough to not be endeared to them in any way and to think they're dumb and vicious and fucking loud at 4 am.

I like eggs. But I don't like chickens. I don't hate them, I just find them to be entirely lacking in individual personality and what group personality they have is unremarkable except for its entirely ugly bits.

They had free range of our suburban yard. Annoying to our neighbors (and me). They were just as likely to be stupid and vicious out on the grass as they were in a pen.

Vicious in my opinion means you never find a chicken being particularly nice to another chicken (in anthropomorphic terms) or grooming or caring or being beneficial to the group. The only group behavior is "GET 'EM!"

This doesn't apply to all birds, but chickens are domesticated and that accounts for a lot of intelligence and personality loss and loss of good learned behavior from any sort of normal family unit with caring parents. All I see that's left there is meat and mean.

 

[JMohegan]

This doesn't apply to all birds, but chickens are domesticated and that accounts for a lot of intelligence and personality loss and loss of good learned behavior from any sort of normal family unit with caring parents. All I see that's left there is meat and mean.

One of the chapters in Grandin's book, Animals in Translation, describes the selective breeding of chickens, and explains how the result is that "bad becomes normal."

Here's a preview, in which she talks about murderous rapist roosters.

 

[Recidiva]

One of the chapters in Grandin's book, Animals in Translation, describes the selective breeding of chickens, and explains how the result is that "bad becomes normal."

Here's a preview, in which she talks about murderous rapist roosters.

Yeah, that'd be a good example of what I was mentioning. Domesticated animals aren't gems of their species. Chickens, cows and sheep aren't all that bright, though cows do better than chickens or sheep as far as personality and higher functioning goes.

Pigs are still damned smart no matter what you do to them. Go pigs!

Horses, dogs and cats managed to maintain a lot of their individual personality and intelligence and don't exhibit the same chicken phenomena. Probably because we work with them and train them instead of raise them at the lowest possible cost for meat. But we've also managed to breed out a lot of healthy and smart in order to get something like a shinier coat (but a tendency to die at age 2.5 due to some recessive and reinforced medical horror show as a result).

There are lots of "hard wired" behaviors in nature that makes little sense. Why on earth do female insects bite the heads off of males? Although nature can be majestic and wonderful and have a great wisdom to her, there's also those weird ass things that make no damned sense except that some brain managed to get "hard wired" and stay that way. I'm not sure it's all part of some amazing plan, some of it just seems like vicious dumbassery.

That's an interesting article. It's kinda funny that they compare a chicken brain to a computer, so a "hard wired" behavior can be "deleted" in some way. I don't think there's a good definition for "hard wired" yet.

 

[graceanne]

To be fair to chickens, my cousin's had some fancy chickens that they'd train for competing in the county fairs. They were generally pretty tame.

 

[Recidiva]

To be fair to chickens, my cousin's had some fancy chickens that they'd train for competing in the county fairs. They were generally pretty tame.

Just occurred to me too that cock fighting is pretty common. I think training dogs or chickens to fight is abuse, but I guess it occurred to people all over the world because they did it so much to begin with. *sigh*