In other words, it is almost always safe because the animals almost never kill any human. I could hype that easily enough because I don't believe that the one deadly incident each year counts for more than the millions of contacts each year that do not result in injury or death. I am ashamed of the people who whip up the paranoia and who work to get the public to stop seeing the good in the animals. They are the same kind who get us to fighting each other, and they are thousands of times more dangerous than any wildlife that someone might want to make a pet of.
Exactly. Furthermore, these tigers are damned dangerous when running around loose. Better they be in zoos. I sure as hell wouldn't want any anywhere near me. If there were any, I'd shoot them.
The people who "deem" the tigers to be that damned dangerous are often the same vandals who throw paint on people's fur coats and set fire to biological laboratories.
We will start to make progress when we realize that the bans on exotic animals and some dogs are intended as acts of vandalism and are pushed by swindlers whose aims have nothing to do with the safety of animals or humans.
I thought you'd like that link. Where would you get one from anyways? If a government organization such as the U.S. Fish and Game, NFS, or NPS are called in to deal with a stalking cougar, it cannot be turned over to an individual civilian without proper credentials and certifications because then if anything were to happen that endangered or killed someone, the U.S. government would be held liable and would - as is almost always the case - be sued. You can't legally import them into the states. They are not available to the public anywhere that I know of? There are no "cougar farms" that I know of. So where do these people get them from? You're also ignoring everything I said about Roy of "Siegfried & Roy," and the self-proclaimed "grizzly-expert" Timothy Treadwell that they pulled out of the stomach of the bear that ate him, along with his girlfriend. That's what pisses me off about Treadwell. He was so convinced that grizzlies were safe that this influenced his girlfriend to think the same, and so she died with him. Everybody in the Park Service all kept saying it was just a matter of time, and it was. Another issue to think about is the large percentage of abandonments. Having an exotic wild potentially-dangerous pet requires a great deal more care and supervision than a normal domesticated pet. Far too often the owners get tired of it and then discard them into the wild where they not only create a danger to others, but in the case of cougars, would not know how to fend for themselves or to hunt and find food because they were taken away from their mother at too earlier of an age to learn these "essentials of survival" in the wild. Pit Bulls are another case in point. Here we have a "domesticated" dog that has attacked and killed many infants and pets. Should it be legal? Many local cities and counties have banned Pit Bulls, and I agree. They're too unpredictable. One of my previous Elkhounds was happy to greet another dog across the street - a Pit Bull - only to have a fist-size junk of meat taken out of his belly. I had to pry the Pit Bull's jaws off my own dog to rush him to the emergency vet. Like I said, if you do get a large cat, I strongly advise that you find a chat group where you can share experiences, and if you can't find one, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with. My neighbor has a dog that is half timber wolf that often plays with my pup and she's as gentle as can be. But maybe it's not really "half" as my neighbor says. When I was in Idaho they told me that most wolf-dog mixes are only about 10% wolf. Don't know? Again, where do they get the wolf from to breed with the dog?
Valich, actual experience with captured wild cougars shows that they can handle being captives fairly well, but obviously they can't be made housepets. Even adult tigers from the wild have been at least somewhat tamed, way back when, for the circuses. That's just to point out that wild animals aren't all slavering attack machines. Many of them can be and have been tamed to work with humans. I don't know why you believe what you do about pitbull dogs. You should dig deeper for information on that. Part of this includes misidentification of the animals, the fact that there are numerous breeds that are part of the "pitbull" classification, and the fact that the pitbull breeds were originally bred to be and considered to be less human aggressive than other breeds. You probably don't know that much about pitbulls and I know you don't know a lot about how captive bred big cats came to be. I totally disagree with pit bull bans. They are "feel good" legislation of the kind that is very bad for numerous reasons, and one of the big reasons is that it unjustifiably denies the rights of responsible people. There aren't enough deaths to justify the bans. About 20 human deaths a year means that they don't kill people any more often than people do. We have to have a sense of proportion. There must be over a million "pitbull" dogs. I feel safe with any of them who act friendly and I don't feel safe with any dog who doesn't. Don't try to shunt me off to a specialized group. Those things become incestous and everyone hears the same plaints over and over again. We need a lot more than the enthusiasts on board with this. There are also many people who like tigers and wolves who can't keep them or choose not to keep them who will support private ownership. A lot of them are being bamboozled by alarmist stories that most bright morons would be ashamed to buy into or to write. I'll tell you an open secret about the common dog. Almost all dog breeds are 100 percent wolf, to the extent that genetic screening cannot find other canids in their ancestry. Genes have been passed back and forth between populations that lived with humans and populations in the "wild" for thousands of years. Wolves are just another breed of dog. Didn't I already mention what Roy Horn said about the "attack"? Maybe I didn't. He said that he had the stroke, fell, and the tiger caught him. Did you think the tiger would try to catch him in its paws? It's a reflex like catching a ball and the puncture wound was unintentional. Tigers do become protective of their friends. There's a story about Clyde Beatty's tiger almost killing a lion who gave Clyde some trouble. Can you differentiate between what you know and what you think you know? A lot of the "truth" about wild animals is in fictional stories, some of them written to titillate the same part of the brain that likes to read horror stories. A story becomes "the truth" to a lot of people when it is written in the most pessimistic, frightening way. I've seen several people who were caught up in this system of thinking who eventually recovered as they matured. Some never recover. They get/got the breeding stock for wolf/dog crosses and big cats from at least three sources that I know of. One source that is hardly mentioned is the few tame animals, for example tigers and bears, who have been kept by various people around the globe for centuries. I'm not sure why they aren't talked about much. There are live captures and when the captured animals breed, someone socializes the cubs. There is also adoption of orphaned animals, like Elsa the lioness. I might as well throw in the fact that "fully" domesticated animals aren't necessarily any safer with humans than their wild ancestors. Domestication can give them bad breeding, genetic defects that cause violent tendencies, and bad habits. Then there is my bottom line. Even pleading the fact that it is relatively safe to play around with wild animals is in part accepting the idea that it should be banned if someone thinks it is dangerous. I think that the basis for the bans is faulty, and this is the idea that we should set aside essential liberties for a bit of safety. Asking me to accept the bans is asking me to set aside very important principles that are far more important than the occasional death or injury. The idea that safety is less important is heavily illustrated by the fact that people accept other people's children being bombed to death to "fight for freedom" in another country. I feel like only an idiot keeps shouting "but think of the children!" when they go into activities like these bans, when the human population is outgrowing itself and the result is that we think we have the God-given right to exterminate millions of other living creatures to make life a little safer for "our children." To hell with that very stupid and selfish idea. "Ecosystem" isn't just a word, you know. We still don't know how dangerous it is to ravage an ecosystem and to thoroughly destroy any of the genomes that participate in it. We borrow our world from our children, our children will eventually become adults in spite of our best efforts, and many of them will want the opportunities that a lot of us would deny them.
You asked where I would get a cougar? There are legal sellers of tame cougars, you just have to know where to look. Yes, a captured wild one would have to be handled by licensed professionals, but this can be done, and one of the bad effects of the bans is that they help limit the number of new licensed professionals in the field. The goal of the pushers of the bans is to eliminate the profession entirely. I don't know how to tell you how sick I am of hearing how dangerous wild animals are. Humans kill millions of animals just to eat, which makes them the most dangerous animal on the planet, and you can look at the homicide rate to prove this also. The number dead of wild animal attacks is nearly non-existent. Don't even think of trying to convince me that we should not have a sense of proportion about this. Any time more than half the public really wants something, human casualties don't mean a thing to them. Animals sometimes kill people, get off your damn high horse, get over it, and be part of the life of the planet instead of being part of the forces that try to use extermination just to make us feel a tiny bit safer. Funny, I don't feel safe, and that's because I realize that those who exterminate animals will do the same thing to humans. Think about it. I would preserve their lives in comfort. The other side would exterminate them because of contrived fears. the other side is not safe for humans at all.
The ancestor of all dogs was the ancestral wolf, not really the wolf as we know it today. Most all dog breeds have been developed within the last 300 years, but dogs were first domesticated about 100,000 years ago. This is what we know. Thanks for the update on pitbulls: I didn't know that the death rate was that high!!! Twenty deaths of innocent children a year are twenty deaths that can all too easily be avoided. Are pitbulls even recognized as a breed by the AKC? I'm not sure what you mean by stating that, "we should set aside essential liberties for a bit of safety." For the safety of the wild animal or the safety of humans? As far as "essential liberties" go, don't wild animals have the right to be free and free-roaming? What right do we have to confine a wild animal in a cage. My dog is not a wild animal. She is a domesticated dog, but still not confined to any small area, although she seems to like being confined to the house rather than running free as I often let her do. You couldn't do that with a pet cougar. I am not advocating exterminating any animal. Quite to the contrary, I advocate species diversity and animal rights and do what I can to promote this view without endangering them. But also without endangering others, as this would cause further constraints on having exotic animals as pets. I believe in doing what is humane for both the wild animal and humans. I advocate against the encroachment on their natural domain, but I don't advocate capturing them or placing a wild undomesticated animal in a confined area. Again, domestication is a genetic process that takes hundreds, sometimes thousands of years.
This is so offensive. Less than one in a million children dies because of a certain very broad type of dog, and you think that it is easy to stop this from happening, simply by violating the rights of others? Maybe less than one in ten thousand of these dogs kills and you want me and the rest of the world to believe that makes the breeds a dangerous breed? I am not fighting for the right of wild animals to be wild because the last wild areas are not going to last very long. If I were fighting for that right, then I would be fighting for the rights of wolves and cougars to run around the U.S. without ever having to fear being shot for being a danger to someone's neighborhood. The cages are for the safety of the animals, not the safety of the humans. The right to keep an animal is a human freedom. Taking away that right may add a little bit of safety, but it would take away a whole lot of freedom. You don't deserve either if you advocate taking away that freedom. Freedom isn't divisible, either.
And no, pitbulls as such are not a breed recognized by the AKC. The arrogant SOBs who make the laws have to create definitions that are not recognized by dog experts, and have to have them applied by people who pretend to be able to do what the foremost experts can't, and that is to identify a breed with enough certainty to justify confiscating a person's private property. All dogs have some characteristics in common with pitbulls, so a dog's appearance would have to widely diverge from that of an alleged pitbull to avoid being caught in the sweep. This "dangerous animals" legislation is a crime against humans and animals. If you can't see that maybe you should deprive yourself of the company of the animals you choose the way that you would deprive me of the same. You should watch them die the way that I will have to if I get a dog or a big cat legally then some of these swindlers get the law changed. You're one of those people who never wake up to what's wrong unless it's your ox being gored.
Well I want you to keep this in mind. A playful swipe from a Tiger can seriously severe your neck- and thats a playful swipe. An intentional swipe can send your head rolling on the floor. No known Dog can do this. Tigers can weight up to 600 pounds, thats like wrestling six Rottweiliers at the same time. Domestication is a viable choice, but you can be rest assured some Tigers will seriously do harm to Humans when they do become demisticated. Dogs already do it from time to time. Tigers may even be worse because Tigers like all cats are unpredictable...But you never know.
I'm really disappointed in humanity and what many individuals seem to believe is permissible to use as persuasion.
There really is no limit to the scorn, contempt, and even hatred that is deserved by people like the Safe the Tigers Fund, PETA, HSUS, and others who are involved in these efforts to get animals away from the people who love them. Propaganda efforts by these agencies and people have made it look like they are just organizations that look out for the safety of the animals. It is a big lie. None of these organizations ever take responsibility for the lives that they destroy. If there even is a case for taking the animals away from people, there is no case for also destroying them. Destroying them is destroying the one reason that an animal rights organization has to exist. It is destroying the rights that animal rights organizations pretend to protect. I don't accept the excuses that they make. No one with a mind should. A lot of people came to accept those excuses, more or less, because of the propaganda efforts, because the craziness makes it so that people don't want to look too closely at what animal rights people do, because a lot of effort has been made to convince people that the AR people are simply fanatics about the rights of animals, so people just assume. What they assume is wrong. No animal rights organization supports the rights of animals to live or to propagate. The AR people do what it takes to make sure that the insanity persists until each and every non-human animal on Earth is dead, then they will work on humans because what they do to animals they will do to humans. Even if they wanted to stop it they couldn't because they have thousands, maybe millions of adherents, many of them who don't know that they are adherents, who will carry the same killing urge with them that they had when they killed off the animals. In a big way, when you shoot my dog, you really are shooting at me and my family. If I didn't have a dog, you would probably shoot me because you didn't have my dog as an easier target. A lot of this comes directly from the kind of people who shoot your dog just because it got into the trash or just for existing, too. It's AR people who tell us that this kind of person would also be homicidal. It's AR people who line them up to shoot our dogs. Take their warnings literally. This wouldn't be good if they really weren't after all life, but looking at what they do, they are after pretty much total sterility for the planet. The results will be the same because the one sure way to kill humanity is to take away all the other animals and leave us to overrun every acre. We're going to learn a few things the hard way that we could have learned the easy way. Why in hell would I be unwilling to go the hard way, huh? What would I gain from it that is worth all the destruction that has been done and is planned? The other life on the worth is worth risking our lives, even the lives of our own children, to protect, and the risk to our lives is anywhere from miniscule to minus, in that if we save them, we save ourselves. We already know a few reasons, reasons that the AR people try to take away from us, why having the animals has made a larger human population sustainable, thus proving that our children are not in danger from them. They are supported by them.
Pitbulls are living killing machines and that's what they were bred for: as an amusement for people to watch them kill each other in a pit, like bulls. Hence the name. The mountain lion incident that killed the female jogger in California could have just as easily been someone's exotic pet that got loose and then had to resort to its natural prey instincts for survival. The killing happened in a populated residential public park frequented by joggers and bikers. In Tucson, the mountain lion that had to be put down was the culmination of a series of extremely dangerous near-death stalking events: "Two mountain bikers (Roggow and Romero) were riding down the Green Mountain Trail. Roggow says he saw a mountain lion running behind Romero and outpacing him. Roggow shouted a warning to Romero, who began throwing rocks at the lion. Roggow then joined Romero and the two used their bikes as a shield against the animal. They described the animal as crouching, tail down, and slowly crawling towards them. The men also say they shouted at the lion and continued to throw rocks at it, but say it showed no fear and kept comimg. Eventually, the two men say the lion ran off after being repeatedly hit by rocks." Game and Fish Department officers were then called in after the 911 call, the same mountain lion began stalking them as well, and they had to put it down. In the case of Roy Horn, the fact remains that he was a "professional" lion tamer with 50 years of experience, yet his "baby" - as he calls it - bit him in the neck and dragged his body off stage "like a rag doll" to the horror of the spectators: "The white tiger named Montecore was born in captivity and raised by humans. The seven-year-old animal had been performing on stage since he was six months old. Yet neither his upbringing nor his apparent "tameness" could have altered what happened on Friday night, October 3, at The Mirage in Las Vegas. Montecore, a 600-pound white tiger, acted on instinct, like a typical wild animal, and attacked his long-time handler, Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy, in a horrific incident that played out in front of a live audience. Horn, celebrating his 59th birthday that day, had just brought the leashed animal onstage and ordered the tiger to lie down. Montecore apparently refused and proceeded to wrap his powerful jaws around Horn's right arm. The illusionist struck the animal in the head with a microphone, which apparently caused the tiger to lunge at Horn's neck. Montecore then carried Horn off the stage by the throat. Only after a quick-thinking carpenter hosed off the big cat with a fire extinguisher did the tiger let go. Horn, who had lost a lot of blood, was rushed to the hospital where he remained in critical condition on Thursday. He suffered a stroke after the attack, and has undergone two surgeries." Source: "Siegfried & Roy Incident Underscores the Dangers of Exotic Pets." October 6, 2003. http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/wildli...t_underscores_the_dangers_of_exotic_pets.html This article is posted by the Humane Society. No matter what Roy says, the fact remains that he was attacked by a tiger (a large cat), was in critical condition, and was saved after they had to remove part of his skull to relieve the blood pressure that was caused by the stroke that occurred after the attack; and he was only able to walk again six months later. The case is currently under a lawsuit for immigration violations. PETA is suing the US Department of Agriculture for improperly withholding records related to the investigation and Roy is refusing to hand over the videptapes of the performance: "PETA suspects favoritism or bribery may have played a role in the USDA's repeated failure to cite Siegfried & Roy for the unsafe handling of adult tigers who were routinely allowed dangerously close to the audience with no safety barrier. We kindly ask that this matter be fully investigated and that appropriate actions be taken. It's clearly a conflict of interest. The USDA has turned a blind eye to red flags that they clearly should have noticed. This may explain why earlier this month Roy Horn was mauled by a white tiger onstage at The Mirage. The 59-year-old is still in critical condition at Las Vegas' University Medical Center." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182299/news I'm all for promoting the survival and rights of wild and dangerous animals such as mountain lions and bears. If you're arguing against what I am stating as fact, you're attacking your best friend and fellow advocate. Male mountain lions have a natural home range of 100 square miles or more: females generally about 60 square miles. You cannot be humane to the lion by locking it up in a cage or your home and denying it of its right to have a natural free range. This would be just like sentencing an innocent person to life imprisonment. Both bears and mountain lions are predatory carnivores by instinct and you can't remove that innate instinct just because you raise them away from their mother when they are young, which is another form of animal cruelty. The basic instinct of large predators, such as mountain lions, is to chase and catch moving prey. There is also the risk of the "all-too-often" abandonment issues that I outlined above. The answer is to minimize the encroachment and to set aside sanctuaries and government protected areas (sanctuaries, national parks and forests, and refuges). I don't even like the idea of putting them in a zoo, but this is a way of allowing children and the public to safely view wild animals from a distance and stimulate their interest and education about them. Capturing a mountain lion and placing it in a zoo is not a viable option anyways. There is only a limited need for mountain lions in a zoo and those needs are already more than filled by captive breeding programs. Aversion techniques do not work and fencing is not an option either.
Valich, my best friend and fellow advocate of exactly what? If you say that you are, what planet have you been living on for the last nine pages of this thread? You can't be humane to them by sentencing to death for living on territory that humans encroach upon. Environmental laws have proven to be a total failure. Also, caging them is not inhumane. AR people only use complaints about the "inhumaneness" of caging them to gain some political control over owners and their purpose is to actually destroy those animals, so letting them have any say about how animals are kept will end badly. I don't give a fuck about the abandonment issues or the people who don't treat them humanely. If I have an animal in a cage and I treat it according to a reasonable set of humane rules, I have the right to be left alone about what other people do, no matter how horrible it is. In too many places now I not only have to answer for what I do, people like you and Chatha will force me to answer for things done by people who I don't even know and who have not one goddam thing to do with what I do. And the answer you demand is that I cease and desist activities that I have the right, even the obligation to indulge in. Once gain, Valich, exactly how have you ever been my friend on this? Please explain in detail. You made the claim. Prove it. As near as I can tell you only mentioned friendship to manipulate me.
Another fact here for my advocate, who advocates I know not what in my favor: CDC about dog bites It says that about 12 people die each year of dog bites by all breeds, in a 27 year study by the CDC. This hardly makes "killing machines" out of pit bulls, breeds that are extremely popular, when the actual total according to the CDC is 60 deaths in 27 years. That's a bit over two for each year. I felt like 20 per year was more than tolerable because there are millions of humans and millions of dogs. That's still pretty damn safe. Then you, who makes noises about being my staunchest advocate, want to call them "killing machines." Once again, if you are my advocate, what do you advocate that I can even tolerate? They're not killing machines if less than one in ten thousand kills. It looks like it's less than one in a hundred thousand. They're safer to be around than humans. I'd like to know what and who in the hell you are advocating and whose friend you are, not that you are going to tell me.
Useful weblinks: Phoenix Exotic Wildlife Association http://www.phoenixexotics.org Exotic-Pets.eu http://www.exotic-pets.eu Pet Hobbyist http://www.pethobbyist.com "Pets or Prisoners?" http://www.petmonkey.info/pets_or_prisoners.htm 20 Reasons Not to have a Pet Raccoon http://www.isleauhaut.net/maskd/twentyreasons.htm Does a raccoon make a good pet info http://www.mnsi.net/~remocoon/remofaq.htm Inside the Siegfried and Roy Story http://www.kvbc.com/Global/category.asp?C=45924&nav=menu107_8 The Cougar Fund http://www.cougarfund.org The Mountain Lion Foundation http://www.mountainlion.org The Lion Conservation Fund http://www.lionconservationfund.org The World conservation Union, Cat Specialist Group http://www.catsg.org Cougar Fact Sheet - NatureMapping Program http://depts.washington.edu/natmap/facts/cougar_k6.html Ontario Puma Foundation http://www.ontariopuma.ca/ Cougars in Canada http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/Magazine/mj04/indepth IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Puma http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/18868/all UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine: Mountain Lions http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/whc/scp/mnt_lion.htm Florida Panther Net http://www.panther.state.fl.us/ San Diego Zoo http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-puma.html
One of the cruel things about this is the thinking that to associate with humans, an animal must be "domesticated." When I read about the actions of animals like the half-breed wolfdog who saves the lives of her human companions, or of lions who save families from fires, and know how loving almost all of them are, I realize that nothing needs to be changed about those animals. "Domestication" is bullshit.
