Is it cruel to keep pets?

[J-E-N-O-V-A]

The people who think their dogs would not survive in the wild need to consider whether they would survive in a pack of about 60, that's how I imagine the numbers would naturally start off if they were released into a wild (not "the", we don't have much of a wild in the UK in which they'd survive without being splattered by cars).

[evilsoup]

It depends on the dog. I'm pretty sure my Jack Russell could survive in the wild just fine, but my Springer spaniel... not so much.


Anyway, maybe they could survive - but it'd be a relatively nasty, brutish and short existence. Nature is red in tooth and claw, remember, and unforgiving.

[kurt18947]

my 2 cats spend the most of the day in the same room as me, they follow me around and sleep near/with me every night and wait in the windows/doors when i go out
usually cats own humans, they let you think you own them but in reality you are there servant and caretaker

here is a little something you may enjoy reading
http://pastebin.com/wUD5Bd0z

Or stated another way, dogs have masters, cats have staff .

[forrestcupp]

There are two kinds of cats in my street. One kind is well adapted to hanging around while I'm helping Mrs Lisati with domestic chores, getting under my feet while I'm hanging out the washing, and having a prowl looking for food it can bludge off me. The other kind is better adapted to running away as soon as it notices me.

All of the cats around my home have grown accustomed to running away from me.

There was one time that my wife and kids really took to a neighborhood cat. Until I found out it was living and defecating in my garage. I closed off the hole it got in through, and it wasn't happy. When it got mad and scratched my son, I made sure we never saw it again. (I didn't kill it).

The people who think their dogs would not survive in the wild need to consider whether they would survive in a pack of about 60, that's how I imagine the numbers would naturally start off if they were released into a wild (not "the", we don't have much of a wild in the UK in which they'd survive without being splattered by cars).

Yeah, and when you start getting packs of 60 wild dogs, part of their survival might include mauling little kids. Great idea.

[pinballwizard]

So do you think your cat would enjoy freeloading off you eating processed food more than taking care of its own healthy litter in the wild whilst eating tastey raw flesh? I don't. There's risk involved, but the rewards are much better imo. We should release them all into a wild environment in which we are not allowed to enter imo, but instead we maintain it, build heavy and humane security for our farms and ensure it's a purely wild environment that spans continents.

I think you're a real riot.

Modern day domestic pets are species that have had the wild bred out of them over centuries. If we left them at birth (or worse, turned them out after we'd raised them) in the wild, they'd die a very swift and unpleasant death.

But thanks for the larf.

[evilsoup]

Man, domestic pigs revert to wild boars in two generations when they're released into the wild.

There are probably some dogs that wouldn't survive at all - toy dogs - but they'd have as much of a chance as wild-born animals, in general (except that they wouldn't know to fear humans). They certainly wouldn't live as long or as comfortably as pet dogs, but they could certainly survive.

This applies doubly triply to cats, who are pretty much apex predators with almost no natural predators.

[deadflowr]

60 dogs in a pack will soon be 10 dogs in a pack as there wouldn't be enough resources to sustain that big a cluster of dogs before they started killing each other.
That and that big a pack would threaten the people whose very lives are dependent upon the resources the dogs would be scavenging. And people when threatened, fight.

[hainen]

I suppose a dog could survive as street dog in a city. Outside of cities, if the area is usable for predators, its likely it already exist predators in the area. Usually dogs don't do well in competition with other middle sized predators. Here around free dogs is sooner or later usually killed by the local wolfs as wolfs defend their feeding territory. If they survive the wolfs they are probably killed by a train, car or starve to deaths in the winter. If they try to take livestock the local farmer probably shoot them.

[J-E-N-O-V-A]

I think you're a real riot.

Modern day domestic pets are species that have had the wild bred out of them over centuries. If we left them at birth (or worse, turned them out after we'd raised them) in the wild, they'd die a very swift and unpleasant death.

But thanks for the larf.

Ah yes because evolution is on a scale of centuries (/sarc)

[mJayk]

The answer is no.

^-- That didn't take 5 pages .