animal welfare – Page 19 – Pain In The Bud

Big Cats In US Zoos Are Miserable, Mistreated, Inbred And Unhealthy, Report Says

Roadside zoos persist despite recent law changes, but even the best zoos fail to provide adequate facilities and enrichment for big cats, the report found.

The Amur tigress at Bearsdley Zoo is the lone occupant of her enclosure, which is large by the zoo’s standards, outfitted with a pool, toys and other enrichment, but small compared to what her natural range would be.

When I visited last summer, I spent the better part of an hour watching her pace the perimeter of her enclosure, walking in an endless loop as if in a daze, never stopping, altering her stride or reacting to anything.

But what made me realize how bad captivity really is for big cats was what I saw at the Smithsonian National Zoo, a well-funded world class facility. The tigers there have two outdoor enclosures with a topographic design: they’re vertical spaces separated into tiers, with large trees and narrow “caves” for shelter from the elements. Both enclosures are surrounded by wide moats that ring the perimeter just inside the security fencing.

Smithsonian Bengal tiger exhibit — One of two similar Bengal tiger habitats in the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington. Credit: ZooChat

It was feeding time on a hot summer day. Lionesses chowed down on large slabs of meat and licked blocks of ice, but the lone male tiger next door was pacing in a circle. He paced and paced, covering the same 10 to 12 feet, ignoring his food. I watched him for a long time. His behavior was a clear sign of zoochosis.

If a tiger in a national accredited zoo — where an entire team of keepers and caretakers is responsible for enrichment and welfare — suffers from clear signs of captivity-induced distress, what chance do tigers in other facilities have?

When we think of big cats suffering in captivity, we think of the roadside zoos where the Joe Exotics and Doc Antles of the world exploit them for financial gain, drug them, force them to take selfies with visitors and keep them in cruel conditions. But a new report from Born Free USA goes beyond roadside zoos and says big cat arrangements, even in the best zoos, are inappropriate, unhealthy and demoralizing for the animals.

“Unable to escape the crowds of humans, unable to follow some of their fundamental urges such as hunting and roaming over large distances, unable to fulfil their social needs – whether that be living solitarily or forming a pride with others – big cats show us their mental anguish by adopting abnormal behaviors,” reads the report [PDF], Clawing at the Cages. “These behaviors, known as stereotypies, manifest in obsessive pacing. Some big cats spend most of their days tracing the same, short, tedious route around their enclosures. This behavior is a recognized sign of stress, and only documented in captive animals.”

Jaguar — A captive jaguar. Credit: Yigithan/Pexels

The wild lives of animals like tigers are fundamentally at odds with the concept of zoos. In the wild, tigers range up to 50 miles in a single day, occupying vast ranges. Male tigers protect their home ranges, their mates and their cubs from other males as well as threats of all sorts.

That sort of lifestyle, which is hard-coded into their DNA, is not compatible with a guest-oriented operation in which habitats are designed primarily to give people the best view of the animals.

Lions might have it slightly better, though that’s arguable. As a social species they can interact with each other and they tend to have larger enclosures, but zoos rarely group animals according to their preferred family units or prides, instead matching individuals according to breeding plans as part of conservation efforts.

Yet even the conservation aspect is iffy, according to Born Free USA. Because of restrictions on “importing” animals and a population that is descended from just a handful of big cats, inbreeding is rampant. There’s a lack of scientific research on the captive zoo-held population, but the authors cite a 1983 study that found “six animals out of the approximately 1,000 Siberian tigers held in zoos in 1983 were responsible for 69.4% of the founder representation of the living population at that time. 70% of the population had a positive inbreeding
coefficient.”

Because little has been done to remedy that genetic bottleneck, “genetic viability remains low, and inbreeding of big cats in zoos can only have increased in the intervening years since these studies,” the report states.

Inbred cats suffer more health problems, don’t live as long and are much more susceptible to birth defects.

shallow focus photography of cheetah — A cheetah. Credit: Magda Ehlers/Pexels

Despite the passing of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, Born Free USA’s report notes, roadside zoos still exist, and many of them have simply ignored the new laws because their operators know inspectors are overworked and lack manpower. Years can elapse between inspections, even at roadside zoos operated by serial offenders with long histories of keeping animals in abysmal conditions.

For example, Single Vision of Melrose, Florida — which bills itself as a “conservation” facility — openly flaunts its mistreatment of big cats with enormously popular video content from “Safari Sammie” on Youtube, TikTok and Instagram, despite the fact that it’s been the subject of dozens of violations and has an ignominious record when it comes to the health of its big cats. The facility was charged with 20 violations of animal rights laws in the previous two years, and has had multiple cases of animals dying due to neglect, yet continues to sell “experiences” in which “guests” can interact with heavily sedated tigers, jaguars, cheetahs and other wild cats.

In her videos, “Safari Sammie” — an employee of Single Vision — is routinely seen interacting directly with the apex predators, treating them like house cats and creating dangerous situations.

Other roadside zoos and animal “experience” operators continue to intentionally inbreed big cats to create “exotic” white tigers as well as ligers, tigons and other hybrids that aren’t found in the wild but are big attractions.

Overall, the report found:

Zoos fail to provide adequate environments for big cats, including lack of space, lack of ability to hide from public view, and the regular practice of locking big cats in tiny night quarters during the hours when zoos are
closed. The latter often results in big cats spending the vast majority of their time significantly confined.
Social and behavioral needs are not met in zoos. For example, solitary big cats are often forced to live with conspecifics, and social big cats are prevented from creating natural prides. Big cats are prevented from
hunting live prey – a behavior fundamental to them – while often housed alongside prey animals who also suffer stress from being forced to live near predators.
Inbreeding of big cats has become commonplace due to limited genetic diversity among captive populations, as well as unethical and deliberate inbreeding of color morphs such as white tigers and lions,
resulting in significant health issues for the cats involved.
Due to the inbreeding of big cats in zoos, as well as their habituation to humans, big cats kept in zoos are generally not candidates for release to the wild. As such, extensive and ongoing breeding programs simply serve to ensure that zoos remain “stocked” with these animals.
Monitoring of data on big cats in captivity is incomplete, with significant numbers of individuals disappearing from studbooks – the databases ostensibly responsible for tracking living big cats in captive facilities.
The licensing system intended to implement the Animal Welfare Act in the United States only achieves superficial monitoring of big cats in zoos, due in part to its risk-based assessment protocols as well as lack of meaningful
information in reporting that would allow effective public understanding and external expert oversight.
Despite the introduction of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in the U.S. in early 2023, some facilities continue to engage in dangerous activities with big cats, both in violation of, and in compliance with the new law.
Zoos around the world have killed healthy big cats due to overcrowding and lack of perceived usefulness to breeding programs. Other healthy big cats have been killed when human error or enclosure failure allowed their escape, or when attacked by conspecifics in their enclosures.
Due to all the issues above, and others, the overall health and welfare of big cats is compromised in zoos. This results in high mortality (particularly in infants), and recognizable signs of stress in the form of significant occurrences of stereotypic behaviors.

The report includes detailed anecdotes of typical problems in captive situations involving jaguars, lions, tigers and cheetahs, documents persistent problems with habitat design and security, and outlines loopholes and other problems with existing laws, which still don’t go far enough to ensure some of the world’s most iconic apex predators aren’t exploited and forced to endure lifelong misery.

You can find the report’s landing page, with links to a petition, a summary and the full text here.

Geniuses Pull Wild Bear Cubs Off Tree To Take Selfies, Orphaning One

A group of people in North Carolina plucked two bear cubs off of a tree, dancing and laughing as they took selfies with the traumatized baby animals.

The World Wildlife Federation’s last Living Planet Report warned in 2022 that 69 percent of all wildlife has disappeared since 1970. A terrifying report from conservationists this year brought news that the natural world has fallen silent, with billions of animals erased from existence.

Why?

Because humans reproduce and rampage across the planet, no longer subject to survival of the fittest, with absolutely no regard for the species we share our world with.

That was proven again this week when a group of five people spotted bear cubs clinging to a tree not far from an apartment complex in Fairview, North Carolina, and decided the best course of action was to tear the terrified cubs off the branches so they could take selfies with them.

“So she can say, ‘Here, take my picture, post it all over. I’m holding a black bear,'” a horrified witness, 21-year-old Rachel Staudt, said as she filmed the group on Tuesday. “That’s insane. That’s 100% what she’s doing. She’s taking pictures of him.”

People taking selfies with bear cubs — A still from Staudt’s video shows members of the group holding the bear cubs.

The woman called the authorities, who responded with a biologist from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, but not before the damage was done.

“Did she just drop it?” the woman filming the group said as one of the group members did a “celebratory dance move,” dropped one of the cubs, then chased it to get it back and take more photos.

The group told police and the biologist that both bears had “escaped,” but the biologist found one of the traumatized cubs near a retention pond on the property.

“The cub appeared to be lethargic and frightened. It looked to be favoring one of its front paws and was wet and shivering,” Game Mammals and Surveys Supervisor Colleen Olfenbuttel told CBS News. “The cub’s condition is likely a result of the unnecessary and irresponsible actions of the people involved.”

That cub has now been orphaned, as authorities said it’s not in any condition to be returned to the wild and will have to be raised and rehabilitated for the next four to six years. The other cub couldn’t be found. Hopefully it escaped.

Bear cub — The orphaned and traumatized bear cub that was recovered Tuesday after a group of people plucked the cub and its sibling out of a tree to take selfies with them.

Authorities noted it’s not uncommon for mother bears to leave their cubs briefly to go foraging, much like mother cats do with kittens and cubs when they need to hunt to feed themselves.

Common sense and a basic respect for wildlife is usually enough to keep people from snatching the animals, but much like people who pay money to take selfish with tigers who have been sedated to their eyeballs, any concern for the welfare of animals — if it existed in the first place — is quickly shelved as people can’t resist the opportunity to grab a selfie in the age of narcissism-fueled social media.

Authorities say they’re conducting an investigation, although it’s not clear what needs to be investigated. The people involved documented their behavior with selfies, and Staudt’s video clearly shows them handling the confused and scared baby animals.

The kind of ignorance demonstrated by the group doesn’t remedy itself. Authorities should make an example of them by prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law while redoubling efforts to educate people about keeping their distance from wild animals. And if that’s not enough motivation, or if people can’t be bothered to respect wildlife, they should consider that this would be a very different story if the cubs’ mother had been nearby.

Top image courtesy of Pexels

Pet Theft Up 40 Percent Since Pandemic, Criminologist Says

Incidents like Sunday’s attempted cat robbery are happening more often in recent years, a forensic investigator specializing in animal-related crimes says.

Pet theft is a low-risk, high-reward way for the criminally-minded to make a quick buck, which is one reason why such crimes have become much more common since the pandemic, a forensics professor told the New Haven Register.

Virginia Maxwell, who specializes in forensic investigation of animal cruelty, spoke to the newspaper in the wake of Sunday’s failed gunpoint robbery when two men broke into an East Haven, Conn., home and demanded the victims’ “high dollar value cat.”

But first we’d like to draw your attention to an announcement we made back in February of 2021. At the time pet theft was in the headlines after robbers shot a man walking Lady Gaga’s breed dogs, while across the country in Portland a man stole a van full of daycare-bound pups.

Here’s what we wrote at the time:

“Buddy would like everyone to know he does not actually live in New York, and that his true location is a secret.

“I could be living in Rome,” the troublemaking tabby cat said. “I could be Luxembourgish. Maybe I live in Königreich Romkerhall or the Principality of Sealand. You just don’t know.”

“The one thing you can be certain of is I definitely don’t live in New York.”

We would like to make clear that we continue to blog from Not New York.

On a more serious note, financial woes brought on by the pandemic, painful inflation and a generally difficult economy have attracted the criminally inclined to the petnapping trade, and as Maxwell pointed out to the Register, few people are held accountable for animal-related crimes. That includes darker endeavors like dog fighting and puppy/kitten mills.

“Sadly, animal cruelty in general is under-prosecuted, and very, very few actually end up resulting in jail time,” Maxwell said.

white cat on brown wooden shelf — A cat stays above the fray and surveys her surroundings from an elevated perch. Credit: cottonbro studio/Pexels

Sometimes pet thieves are opportunists who see a cat or dog who catches their fancy, or they believe might be worth money. Those cases often include people luring well-loved animals off porches and property with food.

Most, however, are people who intentionally target breeds that command high prices and are primarily responsible for what Maxwell says is a 40 percent spike in petnappings since early 2020. For felines that means Bengals, Savannahs, Ragdolls, Maine Coons, Norwegian Forest Cats and other breeds that can net the thief a solid payday for minimal effort.

“They’re going to steal your pedigree cat, your pedigree dog that’s worth thousands” and immediately flip the animal, Maxwell told the newspaper.

Social media, it turns out, is a double-edged sword.

While cops and animal welfare organizations warn people against showing off valuable pets online — and urge people to disable features like location tagging — the same platforms are often invaluable for retrieving stolen cats and dogs. Groups on sites like Reddit and Facebook help people find their well-loved four-legged family members and warn others when they identify resellers.

You can help keep your furry friends safe by making sure they’re microchipped, only allowing them outdoors when you’re there to accompany them, and keeping gates, doors and garages closed and locked.

NY Cat Eats At The Table With His Humans, Plus: More Kittens And Climate Change!

A cat eating at the table with his humans? Let’s hope Bud doesn’t get any ideas!

File this under “Information that must be hidden from Buddy at all cost, lest he get ideas.”

Franklin, a cat who lives in Brooklyn, has gone from fending for himself on the streets of New York to a very comfortable indoor existence with two humans who are happy to let him sit at the table with them for meals. Bowls? Pfffft. Franklin drinks from his own glass:

Franklin the cat — Credit: Andrea and Alice via Newsweek

As the dutiful servant to a cat who most definitely believes he’s a human — or should have all the privileges and none of the responsibilities of one — this makes me uneasy. If Bud were to somehow find out about this, all hell would break loose and before I know it he’ll be demanding custom cutlery and a silk pillow on which to rest his behind and elevate him to the level of the table.

As a vegetarian I don’t necessarily have to worry about Bud eating my food, but he sure does love sticking his face in it and giving it an exploratory lick or three.

“Is that…? Dude, let me in there, I just wanna stick my face in your mashed potatoes and confirm I don’t like them,” I imagine him saying. “Yep. Still don’t like them. Oh stop being so dramatic, you can pick the fur out!”

A reasonable take on the kitten/climate change claims

The Grist has a new story about the alleged connection between an “increase” in kittens and climate change, and while it unfortunately links to one of the bunk studies that uses meta-analysis to make wild claims about feline impact on the environment, it does include the most measured and reasonable take so far on the claims:

“Others, like Peter J. Wolf, a senior strategist at the Best Friends Animal Society, think the increase comes down to visibility rather than anything biological. As the weather warms, Wolf said people may be getting out more and noticing kittens earlier in the year than before. Then they bring them into shelters, resulting in rescue groups feeling like kitten season is starting earlier.”

As we noted on Sunday, the claim that there are more kittens, or that kitten season is longer, is entirely dependent on anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately no one has any data for baseline population numbers when it comes to cats in the US, let alone historical data that allows us to say there are more kittens born in recent years.

The best we’ve got is the excellent but single-city DC Cat Count, and to establish a convincing link between climate change and kittens we’d not only need hard data, but we’d also need to eliminate dozens of other potential factors like ever-increasing light pollution, urban heat islands and wave effects from 2020, when society went into lockdown and animals were mostly left to their own devices.

Once again, there’s only one measurement that really matters in the end, and that’s the number of cats euthanized annually because there aren’t homes for them. Spaying/neutering and education efforts have driven that number down dramatically over the past 20 years, and ultimately that’s the best solution we have.

Some Cat Advocates Claim Kitten Season Is Getting Longer Due To Climate Change

Is there any evidence to support claims of a longer kitten season?

Is kitten season getting longer because of climate change?

Some rescuers in California think so, according to a story in Santa Rosa’s Press-Democrat.

“Heat and warmth is what it’s all about,” said Mary Pulcheon, trapping coordinator for Forgotten Felines of Sonoma County.

Pulcheon and the executive director of Forgotten Felines, Pip Marquez de la Plata, told the Press-Democrat that strays in their care had given birth as late as December in 2023 when kitten season generally runs from late March through October.

They say the typical kitten season has shifted and is now longer due to rising temperatures caused by climate change.

It’s an unverifiable claim for several reasons.

First, we don’t have reliable estimates for how many cats there are in the US, let alone stray and feral cats. Any estimates are guesses, and they vary wildly from 20 million on the low end to 120 million, which seems an excessive and unrealistic number.

To date there’s been a single comprehensive feline census in the US, the D.C. Cat Count. It took three years, several million dollars, hundreds of trail and trap cameras, and the efforts of an army of volunteers and staff.

The final tally: 203,595, with only 6,533 unowned cats fending for themselves and drifting between managed colonies.

adorable tabby kittens — Credit: Ejov Igor/Pexels.com

The DC Cat Count is historic and has already proven its value by facilitating informed debate, showing rescuers/TNR volunteers where to direct their efforts, and yielding valuable data on local ecological impact.

Alas it’s a one-off, so we don’t know anything about how the population has changed over time.

Secondly, while there absolutely is scientific consensus that human activity is driving global temperatures up, there’s debate about how much temperature flux is directly attributable to modern civilization. We’re also looking at planetary timescales here, tracking changes that happen not just over decades, but centuries and millennia.

Attributing shifts in kitten season to climate change is a bit like attributing single storms to climate change. These are single data points from which we can’t draw conclusions.

close up photo of person holding white kitten — Credit:Cats Coming/Pexels

Lastly, there could be dozens of factors skewing “normal” kitten season, and that’s assuming the March through October season is normal by historical measurements. We don’t know that for sure, and we can’t know it without data.

I’m limited by a lack of imagination here, but changes in kitten season could be regional, reflect non-climate weather patterns, or adjust according to cyclical patterns. Things as seemingly unimportant as ambient light pollution can have a profound effect on animal behavior, and it always helps to remember that felines are sensitive to stimuli that we literally cannot detect. Cats can pick up high frequency sounds we can’t hear and smell things beneath the notice of our own weak noses. They even have a second form of olfactory input, a literal sixth sense that is unmatched by anything in human biology.

We understand very little about how those things impact feline behavior.

With all things considered there could be hundreds of reasons for changes in kitten season, and that’s assuming the changes are real and people aren’t mistaking outliers for trends.

Ultimately we don’t need to draw conclusions about whether there are more kittens born each season. We know TNR, while imperfect, is the best way to humanely reduce stray and feral populations, and we still have a way to go before cats are no longer euthanized because we can’t find homes for them.