I wasn’t talking about it being cruel to the kids, I was talking about myself! I’m still obsessing over that little prickly ball of joy.
(Yes, I understand I can’t have one and that keeping wild animals in captivity for our amusement is cruel. But STILL…)
Corvids (note there’s an ‘r’ in there) are the chic ‘pet’ for the future. Smart, clean, playful, social, ever watchful security detectors (with optional camera pendant); albeit noisy. forever-more.
I would have assumed that only people who don’t know what they’re doing would want to keep a fox as a pet. I like being wrong about something like that…
I just still don’t understand why?
Oh, that just takes a bit of deprogramming. There are ways to make them seem scary and less adorable.
‘Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’
IDK, Fenneko is kind of a toxic friend in Aggretsuko
Most estimates are that dogs were domesticated 15,000 to 40,000 years ago, not that the process of domestication itself took that long. Studies have suggested that you could get a pretty dog-like wolf within a single human lifetime through selective breeding.
Sure you could say it took many thousands of years for humans to create some specific breed of dog but that’s not the same thing.
#notallfennecfoxes?
Stock up for #peakcorgi
Ein!!!
I remember seeing a video on this some time back. Short version: they’ll pee in your house, and fox pee smells horrible. Also, you can’t really train them out of biting you.
I’ve long wanted to adopt a bunny, but I’m stopped by the fact that despite being domesticated and adorable they often stink, love to chew on anything but especially cables and are masters of escape.
If “That’s it” is the only answer, then talking about pros and cons for wildlife is rather pointless. Animals have basic needs too, like access to food, which they get as a pet.
There are plenty of cons too, but you only asked for the pros. An animal that is used to roam over a big area may hate life as a pet, while an animal that loves chewing on everything may like a house, while it’s the owner who end up hating having it as a pet.
II can’t speak for @FGD135.
But the way I read the comment is that it’s fallacious to ascribe human psychology to non-human animals. From a purely risk-based analysis of survival captivity might be safer (though some animals are more difficult or even practically impossible to keep alive in captivity), but kindness is about more than mere survival.
Then there’s the tangential point that many humans who attempt to care for wild animals are unprepared in commitment and often expertise required for the responsibility, to the detriment of the wild animal aside from the psychological or psychosomatic harm of captivity.
Even when it comes to humans - and again, this isn’t necessarily applicable to non-human animals - if you put in me in a humane Swedish prison I’d be fed, receive health-care and sheltered from most predators, but I still wouldn’t want to be there and wouldn’t consider my captivity a kindness.
Agreed. Sometimes there’s legitimate reasons for rescuing wild animals unable to fend for themselves, but I like caretakers who do their level best to discourage others from enlisting as it likely cuts down on neglect and abandonment of ill-considered choice of pets.
FGD135:s initial question seemed to imply there were no advantages for the pet at all. I pointed out that there are some advantages. I don’t think you have to ascribe human psychology to an animal to conclude that it is not happy starving. Whether it’s a net positive for either the animal or the owner is something quite different. There usually isn’t. At most you can feed a local fox now and then to try to get it friendly.
On the other hand, there is one strong argument in favor of trying to domesticate local wildlife, and that is that pets escape now and then and animals like cats can decimate local wildlife where they are not native.
I have two bunnies at home, and they can be very good pets. Affectionate in their own way, amusing, and clean.
They are best fixed to overcome their territorial nature and aggression (they mark by peeing on things and leaving pellet piles and they fight to establish social dominance). Your home needs to be bunny-proofed (keeping cables off the ground, providing chew toys, firewood and cardboard works well). They don’t have a smell, but their urine does. I call them “my paranoid vegetarian cats.”
I’ve had dogs (poop, pee, and vomit on the floor, chewed up shoes, plastics, and clothes), cats (poop in shoes, on the floor, hairballs, shredded furniture next to the gorram scratching post I bought you!!), and a hamster that went rogue for half a year in an apartment in Moscow (I figure he lived in the couch until I coaxed him back to his cage). My current problem with the bunnies is they had a tiff and now I have to retrain them to use the litter box, and they pulled out the carpet to make a shallow nest (I’ve been planning to replace the carpet for years, so it is only a mild irritant). My fault not understanding their instincts and providing a more attractive alternative to them — (they now have a litter box filled with hay they can bed down in). Most of the problems I’ve had were related to my not really understanding what I was getting into, but once I did the proper research we’ve all been able to get along well. One bunny is easier to manage than two, but they are social animals and do bond, so having more than one is probably better for their mental health. (Just my unscientific gut feeling).
As with any pet, you need to adapt to them and their instincts, not the other way around. Some pets require more adaptation than others. The bunnies have been great companions for me, but they definitely are not for everyone.
(Can you tell I’m a Bunvangelical?)
I’ve adopted dogs, cats and hamsters and had pets my entire life. My wife and I currently have a dog and a cat. As you note, it’s all about adapting to their instincts and needs. For instance, we have some leather furniture and as long as we regularly trim the cat’s claws and provide more attractive scratching surfaces (those congregated cardboard kitty loungers and my penchant for denim jeans have save a lot of leather), he spares the couch and my office chairs.
I suspect we’ll adopt a bunny at some point. My biggest concern is cables as I’m a maker and a major electronics geek. Bunny-proofing will be a project.
I’ve also gotten the impression buns can be litter-trained, but not as readily as cats (obviously results vary even with cats, but I’ve been lucky).
When I was a kid growing up, one house we lived in had neighbors who bred rabbits in a dedicated rabbit shed and a little bunny ranch they built on the back of their large property. They would let us play with them. They were super cute, but the smell of rabbit urine and poop was…impressive. That was also around the time when my family kept rats and one hamster which, though they’d occasionally pee on your shoulder during snuggling, at least weren’t good at escaping their enclosures. I’m pretty sure this was them marking (claiming) their humans, which was at once adorable and slightly gross.
