4 ms·

...unless they're infected with rabies, in which case they might also be aggressive during the day. I'm also puzzled by what this research wants to prove. That

• pvaldes 4y ago
  The problem with rabies is lack of political will. Vaccinate the feral dogs. They will make a queue waging the tail, come to you and eat the vaccine from your own hands in 5 seconds if you show half a sausage. Save lottamoney in healthcare later and human lives. End of the problem. Vote me. Or if you are more ambitious, caught them, mark the vaccinated dogs with a tatto or a ear tag, and give the poochie the whole sausage before releasing it again at their home, so people can know what dog interactions are safer and what need more care. Thus you avoid losing money vaccinating two times the same dog. "should kill all the dogs because rabies" is stupid. Ecology models predict that that would spread faster the rabies and would made people less safe in that sense. You want territorial animals remaining in their territory.
  • srean 4y ago
    Where I stay, the strays are not only vaccinated but also neutered regularly. All this is not done by the municipal corporation but by kindhearted locals. Unfortunately breeders dump unwanted puppies and unproductive adults on the street. I see a lot of abandoned (by humans) pups too.
    • cheese_goddess 4y ago
      I don't understand how neutering an animal is considered "kindhearted". The fact that this is such a common idea suggests to me that even people who believe they care about animals in truth treat animals as objects, without any rights or personal interests other than what the person thinks are the animal's interests. We don't do that kind of thing to humans anymore, neuter them for their own good and the good of their descenants. Why do we do it to animals?
      • srean 4y ago
        > I don't understand how neutering an animal is considered "kindhearted". You have a good point. That's what I get when I edit to add a word in later. 'Kindhearted' was intended to qualify 'immunization'. On the other hand we do neuter ourselves (some forms of birth control can be considered neutering with different levels of reversibility), but the difference is that it happens with consent and is voluntary. For the 'social problem' of strays neutering is an acceptable compromise struck between the dog lover and dog hater groups. I would rather have a stray neutered rather than killed in a kill shelter or worse, stoned on the streets to death. The latter is not uncommon in a few states in my country. You might be interested in the fact that in India dolphins have some of the human like legal rights. Definitely some progress. Not sure if Orcas would come under the folds of the same law. I dont think Orcas are to be found in Indian territorial waters.
        • pvaldes 4y ago
          > I would rather have a stray neutered rather than killed in a kill shelter or worse, stoned on the streets to death This is a false dichotomy. The kind of people that stone a dog to death, will do gladly the same with a neutered dog. Is just a releasing frustration mechanism. Finding somebody lower in the social scale to pick on him/her, is psychologically comforting in a twisted sense. The ugly truth is that it makes us feel better. The concepts of "good" and "bad people" play a main role and are deeply engraved in human cultures. We do horrible things to "bad people", "nazis" etc, all the time. But I digress. Is really useful to neuter stray dogs?. Most probably not. Would be the same as proposing to neuter coyotes. Top predators self regulate its numbers being strongly territorial. Only the alpha pair in a pack is allowed to reproduce, and the space is filled to its capacity, so neutering the rest would not made any difference (just make vets richer). Is just animal cruelty by part of a pool of people unable to deal with basic concepts of being alive, as pain and death, and that secretly yearn for control over other's lives to hide the lack of control over their own lives.
          • srean 4y ago
            > This is a false dichotomy. The kind of people that stone a dog to death, will do gladly the same with a neutered dog. Is just a releasing frustration mechanism. Hard disagree at least in my local context. You seem to harbor quite a strong conviction but uninformed of the situation here. That doesn't help much other than, as you said, 'it makes us feel better'. Its through adopting these population control measures have locals been able to strike a compromise between, for lack of a better terminology, anti-stray and pro-stray folks. That the strays are neutered and would not by themselves lead to an increase in their numbers have helped persuade residents to be kinder, though somewhat reluctantly. The number of dead puppies per year have gone down, so have calls to the municipal corporation to exterminate the strays. It may sound harsh, but I will readily take that concrete benefit rather than judgements and opinions from the internet. > Finding somebody lower in the social scale to pick on him/her, is psychologically comforting in a twisted sense. This is spot on. I am just thankful that these has gone down some. Funnily enough its not just dog lovers vs those who do not like dogs. There have been instances of setting pet dogs against the strays. So yeah we as people do gratuitously horrible things. The stray population here has a very different dynamics and replacement sources from Coyote population, so I dont think that example generalizes.
• Delk 4y ago
  Why would it try to "prove" something, in the sense of trying to argue for a particular policy or opinion? Most research doesn't and shouldn't. No comment on dog behaviour or policy in a country I don't know, but basic research (and, I'd argue, most good academic research) is descriptive, not prescriptive.
• mola 4y ago
  It's funny you assume research is out to prove something. Usually basic research is either observational. i.e. observe a phenomenon without priors as to gather knowledge, or oriented towards hypothesis testing which is testing your models fit to explain reality. The type of research you assume should be called Adverserial research, fit the research methodology to the desired conclusion. This is not research, it is demagoguery. It's sad, this may be the most common sort of research...
• str34m 4y ago
• hoseja 4y ago
  What about a large uncontrolled population of feral sparrows?