primate – Pain In The Bud

Animal Rights Groups Are Begging For This UK Influencer To Be Banned From Owning Pets

The woman has been dubbed a “serial killer” of animals after eight of her pets and one of her horses met early ends, and several others simply disappeared. She’s part of an unfortunate trend of influencers and quasi-celebrities popularizing exotic pets, with “ownership” of the animals frequently leading to tragedy.

So apparently Katie Price is some sort of proto-Kardashian, a pioneer of the “famous for being famous” genre of hybrid reality/online celebrity, to use the term loosely.

Wikipedia says she got her first taste of fame in the 90s posing topless for British tabloid newspapers before moving on to loftier pursuits, like appearing on Big Brother and holding court on important topics, like whether toes have bones.

The background really doesn’t matter, except to establish that Price is someone with a lot of money, minimal common sense and extraordinarily poor judgment who has gotten so many of her pets killed or injured, PETA and other animal rights groups in the UK have begged politicians to write new laws preventing serial pet-killers from purchasing more animals.

Sort of a “10 strikes and you’re out” rule, if you will.

Four of Price’s dogs have been hit by cars, including one killed by a pizza delivery driver on her property. Another got stuck in an electric armchair and was crushed after Price gave him cannabis oil, pleading ignorance on its effects.

Previously, one of her breed cats was euthanized under mysterious circumstances at five months old, her rare chameleon fell ill and died because he wasn’t kept in a properly heated enclosure, and her “guard dog” was apparently intentionally killed by someone, although the information on that death comes from Price so there’s no way of telling what the actual circumstances were.

A horse Price owned was killed on the same road where two of her dogs met their end, which would bring the tally to nine depending on whether you consider a horse a “pet.”

There have also been animals — kittens, puppies, animals gifted by boyfriends, fiances, and friends — who were featured on Price’s social media feeds as babies and never heard from again, according to the UK’s Mirror. Some of them were given away to assistants and acquaintances. The fates of the others are unknown.

Price currently owns at least four chihuahuas and five Sphynx cats. An incident with one of the Sphynxes has animal lovers and welfare groups renewing calls to prevent her from buying new pets. (Price, like so many social media influencers, exclusively purchases breed pets for thousands of dollars each.)

In a new video posted online, Price — who has been dubbed a “serial killer” of animals by PETA — makes duck lips at the camera and rubs one of her Sphynx cats, Kevin, explaining that the little guy suffered sunburns.

“Oh Kevin you have been in the sun today, you have got sun burnt despite us putting sun cream on you… look at his little face,” Price said in the video. A caption written by Price claims “Trying to keep the cats out of the sun is hard work.”

A screen shot from Price’s recent video in which she shows one of her cats who suffered sunburn during the ongoing heat wave.

The latest incident is drawing fresh attention to a petition that calls for the UK government to step in to stop Price from owning animals.

As of July 10, there were 37,728 verified signatures on the Change.org petition, which mentions a number of additional disturbing incidents involving Price’s pets. One accusation claims Price’s guard dog — it’s not clear if it was the dog who was killed, or a new guard dog — bit the tail off one of her cats.

“Anyone who warns Katie not to hurt the animals she takes in might as well be screaming into the wind, for all she seems to care,” PETA’s Elisa Allen said. “And here we go again: her cat is sunburnt – something she was likely warned about when acquiring a gimmick cat, bred to look odd and be hairless.”

For her part, Price claims the deaths and unfortunate incidents that have befallen animals in her care are simply the result of bad luck and circumstances outside her control. Her representatives have also accused animal welfare groups of using the influencer’s fame to raise money.

That has not changed the narrative as new incidents continue to pile up. In a 2023 live TikTok stream, Price allegedly slapped her then-puppy, Tank — who she’s since discarded — for sitting on a hoodie. “Get off! You’re sitting on my jumpers, my jumpers that I love,” Price said after the sound of a loud slap off camera, leaving viewers fuming.

Price is not alone in the world of influencers, quasi-celebrities, Real Housewife types and entertainers who apparently view animals as disposable amusements.

Hilaria Baldwin, Alec Baldwin’s wife, has earned the nickname “Cruella Seville” from her detractors for her alleged treatment of her breed cats and dogs. The nickname is a play on the character Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations and the Spanish city of Seville, where Baldwin claimed to have roots before claiming she was born in Mallorca.

Baldwin with two of her Bengal kittens. New kittens have appeared in her Instagram posts several times in recent years, apparently replacing older Bengals she’d purchased previously.

Baldwin, you may recall, was enthusiastically Spanish until she wasn’t. She was essentially exiled from celebrity-adjacent society in 2020 after Twitter users dug up videos of her fluctuating accent and performative “forgetting” of English words like cucumber, outlet and onion. Former classmates, acquaintances and friends came forward to say she was the Boston-born Hillary Hayward-Thomas and didn’t go by Hilaria — or speak with an accent — until around 2010, when she met Alec Baldwin.

But the actor’s wife never stopped posting to social media, and in addition to animal lovers calling foul on videos that show her allegedly mishandling her dogs, her online posts show a rotating cast of Bengal kittens. Critics have called for action against Baldwin for her alleged treatment of animals, as well as buying Bengals despite the fact that it’s against the law to keep them as pets in New York City. PETA, which previously worked with Alec and Hilaria Baldwin on a publicity campaign, also called on the couple to stop buying exotic pets.

In the music world, mainstream pop artists like Justin Bieber and Rihanna have both come under fire for purchasing baby monkeys — a capuchin in the case of Bieber, and a slow loris for Rihanna.

The Rihanna incident, in which she shared a photo of herself with a slow loris pet to social media, resulted in raids on illegal wildlife markets in Thailand, where Rihanna allegedly acquired the animal. There are nine subspecies of slow loris, ranging from vulnerable to critically endangered in conservation status, per the World Wildlife Fund.

Rihanna posing with a slow loris, a nocturnal, arboreal animal that is notably the world’s only venomous primate. The venom glands are removed from slow lorises sold on the illegal wildlife market. People continue to poach and sell them despite their declining numbers in the wild.

Bieber named his monkey Mally OG and famously ditched the then-infant in Germany in 2013, when officials there seized the primate from his private plane after it touched down in Munich, citing his lack of permits and purchase records for the animal. (They essentially accused Bieber of buying Mally on the illegal wildlife market.)

“Honestly, everyone told me not to bring the monkey. Everybody,” Bieber told GQ magazine in an interview several years later. “Everyone told me not to bring the monkey. I was like, ‘It’s gonna be fine, guys!’ It was the farthest thing from fine.”

Bieber with his pet capuchin monkey, Mally OG, who was just an infant when he was ripped from his mother’s arms so he could be sold to the pop singer.

Bieber with another capuchin monkey as part of a skit in which he joked about German authorities seizing his first monkey pet.

The singer said he’d return for his pet after retrieving the paperwork from one of his US homes, but he never did, and Mally OG was placed in a sanctuary after a long rehabilitation period.

In a follow-up story five years later, Asta Noth of Serengeti Wildlife Park said Mally was still trying to imitate human speech, and didn’t know how to communicate with his own species. That’s a common problem with monkeys who are former pets, as they do not understand the complex social dynamics of troops and family units.

His developmental problems stem from the fact that “he was taken away from his mother and natural family way too early,” Noth said. “He did not learn to be a monkey.”

Wordy Wednesday: Critically Endangered Orangutan Babies

The palm oil and logging industries have killed so many orangutan mothers, there are now more than a dozen major orangutan orphanages in Borneo and Sumatra. The pressure on orangutans, with whom we share 97% of our DNA, shows no signs of abating.

Orangutans are critically endangered, and the biggest threat to their continued existence comes from the agricultural sector, which has razed 55 percent of the species’ habitat in recent decades.

Jarang, a baby orangutan born in 2023. Credit: Blackpool Zoo

Logging companies clearing irreplaceable, old-growth jungle to claim more land for palm oil plantations have no compunction when it comes to flattening jungles despite the presence of orangutans hiding in the trees. The loggers often shoot the large apes on sight, leaving terrified, traumatized babies still clinging to their dead mothers, or taking them to sell as pets.

Of those left to die, the lucky babies are rescued before they starve and are brought to one of the many orangutan orphanages in Borneo and Sumatra, where they attend “school” to learn how to do everything from climb to forage. It takes at least eight years to teach them how to survive on their own, which is about the time it takes orangutan mothers to do the same job in the wild.

The unlucky babies end up as local pets, sold off to entertainment troupes or shipped off to places like Dubai, where wealthy clients will pay a premium for them.

Caretakers must start by teaching rescued orphans the most basic things, like how to climb and move through the jungle Credit: Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation

Logos, an orphaned baby orangutan who was rescued in 2023 by the Jakarta Animal Aid Network (JAAN) Credit: International Animal Welfare Fund (IAWF)

Baby Galaksi (Indonesian for galaxy), was found wandering the jungle without his mother in 2021 by a villager in Borneo. He’s now in a “school” that teaches orphaned orangutans how to do everything from evading predators to discerning edible fruit from harmful and poisonous varieties. Credit: Samboja Lestari Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre

So what is palm oil, and why are countries in Asia bulldozing ancient jungles and forests to clear room and make more plantations?

Per the WWF:

“Palm oil has been and continues to be a major driver of deforestation of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitat of already endangered species like the Orangutan, pygmy elephant and Sumatran rhino. This forest loss coupled with conversion of carbon rich peat soils are throwing out millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. There also remains some exploitation of workers and child labour. These are serious issues that the whole palm oil sector needs to step up to address because it doesn’t have to be this way.

…

Palm oil is in nearly everything – it’s in close to 50% of the packaged products we find in supermarkets, everything from pizza, doughnuts and chocolate, to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick.”

Palm oil is in constant demand, and it’s an easy to grow, incredibly efficient crop. Indonesia and Malaysia, the only two countries in the world where orangutans exist, produce 85 percent of the world’s palm oil.

Images of orangutan babies in wheelbarrows are common on social media, but usually stripped of context. Orphanages use the wheelbarrows to bring infants and toddlers to and from “school” every day. Credit: International Animal Rescue

Asoka was found crying in the jungle by a fisherman in Borneo. He was brought to an orphanage in Borneo. Credit: International Animal Rescue’s rehabilitation Centre in Ketapang, West Kalimantan

We share 97 percent of our DNA with orangutans, making the species our second-closest cousins from a genetic standpoint. Some studies claim orangutans are our closest relatives based on our phenotypical similarities.

Orphaned orangutans attending “school” to learn how to survive in the wild. Credit: Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation

A baby at an orangutan orphanage is fed by a caretaker. Credit: Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation

Want to read more and learn how to help?

Here are some links to get you started. PITB is a big fan of the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, which successfully pushed Jakarta’s municipal government to ban the incredibly cruel “topeng monyet” monkey street shows:

World Wildlife Fund: Orangutans
Jakarta Animal Aid Network
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
The Orangutan Project
Rainforest Trust

Hilarious News Report Claims ‘Black Pumas’ Are Rampaging Across The UK

Big cat sightings across the UK have a lot in common with UFO sightings in the US.

Shhhhh!

No one tell NewsCorp that “black pumas” don’t exist, pumas are native to the Americas, leopards are native to Africa and Asia, and a “black panther” is a color morph, not a species of cat.

A story from Fox News — prompted by a similar story in the UK’s Sun, part of the same Rupert Murdoch-owned media conglomerate — claims the British are “unnerved” by an “uptick” in sightings of cryptid big cats. The mysterious creatures are supposedly running rampant in the British countryside and in the suburbs, according to the article, which identifies them as black pumas, black panthers and black leopards.

Oddly, the story says the sightings are up significantly because there have been three “big cat” sightings in October, immediately before informing readers there are 2,000 such sightings in the UK every year.

Little Buddy and I are not exactly known for our math skills, but 2,000 sightings a year works out to 167 sightings per month, which is a lot more than three. Fifty five times more, in fact. So the story should really be about a dramatic dip in phantom big cat sightings, shouldn’t it?

What evidence does the Fox report cite for its breathless claim about big cats taking over the UK? A pair of grainy security camera videos, including one showing a “big cat sighting” at night, and the word of a “big cat sighting expert,” alternately called a “countryside expert” in other media reports, who by the way happens to be hawking a documentary on the sightings.

“It’s a crucial issue,” self-described wildcat expert Rick Minter told The Sun. “How do we come to terms with living alongside big cats in Britain?”

Pumas, also known as cougars, mountain lions, panthers and catamounts, are native to the Americas. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

For readers unfamiliar with the highest echelons of reputable journalism, The Sun is the UK’s foremost bastion of trustworthy reporting, a tabloid par excellence whose editorial staff are known for breaking stories about “crazed werewolves” and immigrants barbecuing the late queen’s swans when they weren’t running topless photos of models on Page 3. The Sun is owned by NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox News.

As for the two pieces of footage, one is the aforementioned blurry mess recorded by a home security camera at night, and shows a few frames of a cat’s behind and a tail as the felid walks out of the frame. The other is a blurry clip the credulous claim depicts a large cat feeding on a sheep. There’s no indication the figure is a felid of any type.

As far as we’re concerned, there are a few possible explanations for the sightings:

They’re former pets

India the tiger was found wandering the suburbs of Houston in 2021. In this photo, he’s enjoying life in his sanctuary’s large enclosure where he’s got plenty of room, stimulation, toys and even his own rock pool.

If there are indeed big cats roaming the British countryside and suburbs, they would have to be former pets of people who acquired them on the illegal wildlife market, broke the law by “importing” them into the UK, then broke several additional laws by keeping them as pets until the cats quickly grew and the owners realized keeping them is untenable.

Such situations aren’t unheard of, obviously, but they can’t account for a dozen big cats on the loose at any one time, much less more than a thousand as Minter claims.

More importantly, big cats who are taken from their mothers as days-old cubs, sold as pets and later dumped are universally confused, terrified and unable to fend for themselves. They end up roaming suburbia in broad daylight, like a nine-month-old tiger named India who was spotted wandering around the outskirts of Houston in 2021, sniffing out potential food in garbage cans because they don’t know how to hunt.

If these phantom big cats were former pets, they’d be spotted, captured and taken to sanctuaries within a matter of days.

They’re small wildcats formerly native to the area, like the Eurasian lynx

The problem is, the Eurasian lynx was extirpated from the UK about 1,400 years ago. There have been debates among conservationists about reintroducing wild populations to the British countryside — and to Ireland — but no concrete plans as of yet. Proponents say the lynx could be beneficial, keeping deer populations level without major human intervention.

Eurasian lynx adults can grow to about the size of medium dogs, so it’s possible they can be mistaken for “big cats” in blurry video, especially when perspective and/or lack of other objects makes it difficult to place their actual size in context. However, as with big cats, any Eurasian lynx spotted in the UK are likely to be former pets.

They’re housecats

bigkitty — This feral cat, a plain old member of the felis catus species, was repeatedly mistaken for a big cat in western Australia back in 2018.

If witnesses in the UK are mistaking house cats for big cats, they wouldn’t be the first.

Stories abound of little cats prompting “big cat” sightings, from Vancouver (a Savannah cat) to Scranton, Pa. (a missing house cat), to San Jose (a Maine Coon) and even Australia. (A feral cat.)

One wildlife ranger in Australia became so annoyed with fielding frequent big cat reports that he implored people to educate themselves.

“People need to get over the idea the cats are panthers,” wildlife ranger Tim Gilbertson told Australia’s ABC news. “It is just not on. They are big feral cats, at least 50% bigger than a house cat and they are powerful.”

The usual issues are in play here: Fuzzy security camera footage, night sightings, confused witnesses. You’d think there would be more phantom big cat sightings in the US, since pumas can grow to the size of jaguars and could be mistaken for lions, but people who live in areas where pumas range tend to know they’re around and what they look like. They’re also the definition of scaredy cats, reluctant to let humans spot them or get anywhere near them.

Frequently mistaken for a tiger: Buddy the Cat.

Ultimately, witness reports count don’t count for much, and not just because memory is malleable.

Thousands of people have reported seeing Bigfoot, chupacabras, the Jersey Devil and the Loch Ness monster, but those creatures are all firmly in cryptid territory.

There’s Occam’s Razor, and there’s common sense: For a primate species like Bigfoot to exist, for example, there would need to be a breeding population, enough prey for the creatures to feed themselves, and someone somewhere would have found remains at some point. (Bigfoot sightings go back to the days before Columbus set foot on New World shores, but it’s only been in the last century or so that the cryptid has entered the popular imagination via folklore and media.)

Likewise, if there are indeed 1,000 big cats prowling the British countryside, as Minter claims, there would be a breeding population, ubiquitous tracks and the remains of prey animals killed in ways consistent with big cat ambush techniques. Cats of all sizes are ambush hunters and have a distinct way of killing prey which is unlike other animals.

The UK’s big cat sightings should be treated more like the UFO sightings in the US and particularly around Area 51. They start with a kernel of potential truth — the existence of a secret base to test experimental military aircraft, or the possibility that big cats who were former pets have been let loose — which leads people to consider the possibility, then when they see something they can’t easily explain, they reach for the exceptional.

But as Carl Sagan famously said, exceptional claims require exceptional proof, and it’s no accident that things like UFOs, cryptid primates and phantom big cats only appear on the grainiest, blurriest and darkest footage.

My money is on domestic cats mistaken for their much larger cousins. Maybe Buddy’s been taking some transatlantic flights under my nose. I’ll have a little chat with him about it and ask him to kindly stop terrifying our friends across the pond.

Humans Are An Alien Invasive Species, New Study By Feline Science Institute Finds

Humans are an invasive species who are spectacularly adept at destroying life, a new study has found.

Homo sapiens are an invasive species who do irreparable harm to the environment and other animals on an unprecedented scale, a new study by the Feline Science Institute has found.

The results prompted feline scientists to add homo sapiens, commonly known as humans, to a database of destructive and invasive animals maintained by the Academy of Scientific Studies.

Cat scientists have only just glimpsed the breadth of human-initiated impact on other animals, Dr. Oreo P. Yums, lead author of the newest research paper, told reporters.

“We found humans are astonishingly, almost indescribably destructive,” Yums said. “For instance, although they fret about birds, humans kill more than a billion of them a year just with their skyscrapers, which birds are prone to fly into due to their mirrored surfaces. Add in wind turbines, cell towers, power lines, habitat loss and slow die-offs due to chemicals, and by conservative estimates we’re talking about billions of birds killed by humans every year without even tallying active measures like hunting.”

Humans have killed off an estimated 70 percent of the world’s wildlife in the last 50 years alone and show no sign of stopping. Oceans are overfished, animals like pangolins and big cats are ruthlessly hunted to extinction to feed demand within the Chinese traditional medicine market, and human addiction to palm oil means the “two-legged demon monsters don’t even have sympathy for their fellow primates,” mewologist Charles Clawin said.

“In Borneo and Sumatra there are entire schools, filled to capacity, for critically endangered orangutan babies who were orphaned by human contractors clearing ancient jungles to make room for more palm oil plantations,” he said. “Often, the humans use industrial equipment to tear down trees while the orangutans are still in them. Other times, they dispatch the mothers with pistols, not realizing there are babies clinging to them.”

In Africa, where the elephant population has plummeted in the last century, more than 110,000 elephants have been slaughtered in the past 10 years alone for their tusks. The elongated incisors are used to make jewelry and piano keys, and items made from ivory have become a status symbol in China, where growing middle and upper classes seek to show off their wealth with luxuries.

In 2019, Chinese businesswoman Yang Felan, dubbed the “Ivory Queen,” was arrested and charged with smuggling $2.5 million worth of tusks from Tanzania to her home country. Yang, “a key link between poachers in East Africa and buyers in China for more than a decade,” was a respected businesswoman, investor, restaurateur and vice chairwoman of the China-Africa Business Council.

“Poachers continue to slaughter elephants and our big cat brothers and sisters,” said Luna Meowson, who tracks the illegal wildlife market for the University of Nappington. “Having extirpated tigers from virtually their entire range, poachers are turning to South America, where jaguar poaching increased 200 fold between 2015 and 2020. It never stops.”

Big Bruce the Lion Slayer — A human hunter poses victoriously after heroically slaying a lion (panthera leo) from atop his trusty steed, a mobility scooter, after a team of guides drove him around the bush in an air-conditioned SUV, then lured the animal directly into his line of sight. A female of the species, presumably his mate, looks on proudly.

Although the earliest details remain murky, fossil records show Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The invasive species, which has a gestation period of about nine months, began rapidly breeding and immediately went to war with fellow members of the genus Homo.

After wiping out two-legged rivals including Homo neanderthalensis, Homo altaiensis, Homo denisova and Homo bodoensis, the victorious Homo sapiens set their eyes on other species. Throughout their history they’ve also proven remarkably adept at murdering themselves and continue to hone their skills.

“Those OG humans, they had to really work at slaughtering other species and extirpating wildlife,” said Chonkmatic the Magnificent, King of North American cats. “They didn’t have attack helicopters, stealth bombers, tanks, carrier battle groups, daisy cutters, artillery, mortars, phosphorous, napalm, biological weapons, or even small arms like rifles. In those days a pimply kid from Oklahoma sitting in an air-conditioned base in Virginia couldn’t wipe out an entire city 5,000 miles away by pressing a button ordering a drone to drop a nuke. They had to put some sweat into violence, you know?”

522616 — *Breakthroughs in recent centuries have led to innovative and more convenient ways for Homo sapiens to author mass destruction and render entire sections of the Earth lifeless.*

The species, known for its aptitude for tool-making in addition to eating ultra-processed foods and staring at screens, began with simple tools of destruction like the Mark I Spear, early bows and even torches. Over the centuries they innovated, coming up with clever and inventive new ways to inflict pain and end life until the advent of electricity, the industrial era and the brutally destructive war machines of modern times.

Human scientists have tried to obscure their species’ impact on wildlife and the planet by declaring species like felis catus “invasive” and “alien,” but even if cats are “guilty of grabbing a forbidden snack every now and then,” they don’t have the coordination, technology or will to carve up habitats, render entire swaths of the Earth uninhabitable with nuclear fallout, create Everest-size mountains of garbage, or effortlessly drive millions of species to extinction, Clawin said.

“They’re so good at it, they don’t even have to try,” he noted, pointing out human accidents or incidents of negligence like oil spills and chemical run-off into rivers. “We tend to think of humans out there with shotguns and rifles, cackling maniacally as they shoot anything that moves. And, sure, they do that, especially in places like Texas where the sight of any animal always prompts the question ‘Should we shoot it?’ But our research shows they can wipe out entire categories of fauna in their sleep. It’s remarkable.”

Additional reading: Polish institute classifies cats as alien invasive species