"Elephants learn crucial social and behavioral skills from their mothers and other relatives, with whom they share intense emotional bonds."

"Instead of experiencing all this in their natural homes, elephants used in circuses are exploited—made to do meaningless circus tricks on the road."

A statement from PETA, quoted in "Elephant escapes circus, roams streets of Montana" (WaPo).

People are finding this amusing...

... but it isn't, really.

"We’ve often disregarded the feelings of those we don’t relate to. Sometimes this has been other humans..."

"... but humans aren’t the only ones who think and feel. There are animals that cherish their offspring, feel lonely if their life partner dies, and jump for joy. If you burn an insect with a cigarette, it feels pain. If insects were automatons, ants wouldn’t be able to build fungus farms or form boats; bees wouldn’t be able to communicate complicated directions to hive mates; and cockroaches wouldn’t have learned not to eat certain baits that kill them....  So, I quit giving a milquetoast answer to the question of where I draw the line. Now I say: 'We know insects think and feel, so if we ever have an option to avoid harming them, let’s go for it.' If there are insects in your home, Peta has developed a handy guide to non-chemical, non-lethal methods of asking them to please go somewhere else to think things over."

Writes Ingrid Newkirk, in "He hid, hoping against hope I’d leave: how a cockroach changed my mind about killing insects" (The Guardian).

Also at the link to the handy guide:

The lanternfly and the unborn baby.

Meade texts me the link to this NYT article: "In the Lanternfly War, Some Take the Bug’s Side/Even as the invasive pest spreads across 11 states and threatens agriculture, lanternflies are winning sympathizers who resist kill-on-sight orders." 

He pulls this quote...

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals offered a less than full-throated defense of the lanternfly. The advocacy group did advise people, however, to carefully consider their actions if it involves “killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar,” said Catie Cryar, a PETA spokeswoman.

... and says:

"Killing any living being, no matter how small or unfamiliar"

Like an unborn living human being? 

He quotes...

The bugs “didn’t ask to be invasive, they are just living their own life,” [said Catherine Bonner, 22, a Temple University student in Philadelphia]. “I would be bummed if I suddenly started existing somewhere I wasn’t supposed to exist and everyone started killing me for it.”

... and says: 

Like suddenly existing somewhere like your mother’s body?

"Superglue"? Really? I'd use Elmer's Glue.

I'm seeing this in The Washington Post: "Incensed by the 'senseless upcharge' at Starbucks for nondairy milk, 'Succession' and 'Babe' actor James Cromwell and other members of PETA, where he serves as an honorary director, staged a protest Tuesday at a Midtown Manhattan location of the coffee chain.... As he reads his statement, the masked baristas behind him generally appear to continue working as if there isn’t a 6-foot-7 Oscar-nominated actor attached to the counter — and later they continue to as he leads the other protesters in chanting, 'Save the planet, save the cows. Stop this vegan upcharge now.' Eventually, the police arrive and tell customers the Starbucks is closed — though they can still pick up any outstanding orders. Cromwell and the other glued protester detach their hands from the counter and leave." 

I assume the vegan milks are more expensive than cow's milk, but Starbucks could average it out and adjust all the prices and thereby avoid giving people a money reason to choose cow's milk.

But I want to question whether it was "superglue."

"When she was performing, she didn’t slither out of her mink or her chinchilla as though she was doing a flirtatious little striptease for her audience’s pleasure."

"Instead, she discarded her fur coats as though she was shedding bothersome earthly shackles in order to commune directly with the Holy Spirit. The coat drop was a signal that Franklin... was ready to loose her full vocal power in a transformative sermon of gospel, soul and rhythm and blues. That voice was more lush and valuable than the coat. Still, she did not want to sweat out her coat. She threw it off. The coat was dismissed."

From "Aretha Franklin, secret style icon: With the drop of a fur coat, she proclaimed her worth" by Robin Givhan.

What about the usual criticism of wearing fur? Givhan refers to it but only in passing:

Franklin had earned [the furs], and they were worn with pride and pleasure and in spite of all PETA’s begging and bullying. So, so many furs. Worn against the cold and worn in the face of adversity. Worn with hauteur. Worn because she was a star, and furs are what stars wear.

In the comments at WaPo, I see:

Having a good singing voice is no justification for deplorable behavior. Flaunting big, gaudy fur coats is insensitive to the animal torture that it is.

And:

Does your "religion" or "church" have anything to say about torturing and killing other sentient beings?

And:

Aretha was able to wear fur because she was grandfathered (grandmothered?) in. Mad about a legendary black woman being allowed to do something no one else is allowed to do today, black or white? Tough. Watching that move was like watching living black and feminist history. Until the 1980s or so few people thought much about wearing fur. By the 2000s virtually no one in polite company wore fur any longer. Aretha was at heart an old fashioned church lady through and through. As Robin alludes to, those in the church community with enough means definitely wore furs and wore them proudly. Aretha pulling off her fur coat mid-performance was similar and perhaps even more powerful than James Brown shedding his coat (which in his performance was more a cartoon statement of need and desperation). Hers was a statement of shedding oppression and gaining freedom.

Another thing that happens in the comments — because it has to happen everywhere — is Trump. Someone drags in that Trump wrote that Franklin "worked for him" and others add things like "Trump is a cockroach" and Trump (unlike Franklin) "has made nothing and has shared nothing, his entire life," and — this is good, dark humor:

I think that what the Trumps did to those animals should be done to them. Satisfied?

"Animals have no place in art."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wrote to the artist who sat — for 23 days in a Paris art museum — on a nest of chicken eggs until they hatched.

"There is nothing to celebrate in the birth of this chick born alone in a museum," the organisation said in an open letter to the artist. Considered merely as a part of an 'artistic' performance, it will never meet its mother. ...."

What do you think of PETA's criticism of the "human hen" artist?

It's exactly right. Don't use animals in art. It's ethically wrong.

It's wrong because the eggs didn't know and the chicks have a better life than most chicks.

It's obtuse because the real issue here is that it's bad art.

I don't know. I need to brood about it for 23 days.

 

pollcode.com free polls

The selfie monkey cannot own the copyright to the photo he took.

The Copyright Act doesn't extend its protection to nonhuman animals, says U.S. District Judge William Orrick. 

Of course, a monkey wouldn't know he had legal rights even if he did. Some human beings would need to purport to represent the monkey, and that's what was going on here. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sought to capture the income stream from Naruto the monkey's beloved photography and offered to spend the money for the benefit of him and the various other crested macaques on the island of Sulawesi.

Here's the beloved and apparently uncopyrightable monkey selfie:



Naruto is delighted with the public domain.

ADDED: Here's an earlier post about why the copyright isn't seen as belonging to the man who set up the camera, setting up the conditions and predicting the last step, a monkey's pushing the button.

"We often encountered Professor Yin’s frisky and playful cats, peering curiously around a corner or darting by at top speed or jumping into our laps."

"Those cats got more attention and care and love than most pets."

From the the UW School of Public Health Department of Neuroscience letter defending the professor who experimented on cats and was reviled by PETA. The full text of the letter appears at the end of my January 25th post titled "PETA's campaign and the intense public pressure it brought to bear on UW-Madison have ended this horrendous laboratory's legacy of cruelty at last." The post title isn't my statement, but a quote from a PETA press release.

(Please note that my use of the tag "animal cruelty" doesn't mean I think there has been cruelty to animals, only that the topic of animal cruelty is under discussion. I could say something similar about many of my tags, most notably "torture.")

"PETA's campaign and the intense public pressure it brought to bear on UW-Madison have ended this horrendous laboratory's legacy of cruelty at last."

Said the PETA press release on the occasion of the closure of UW's cat research lab, which was "quietly closed" last month.

Neuroscience professor Tom Yin had run the lab for nearly 40 years, and said it closed Dec. 1 when his research funding ran out. Yin said he is on a path to retirement and did not apply to renew his research grant from the National Institutes of Health. Yin researched how auditory and visual stimuli affect the brain....

The university issued a statement Friday that said the closure had nothing to do with PETA. Yin said he simply decided to retire for personal reasons.

"That was actually a regret I had when I decided to retire, that they would think they had forced me to close down," Yin said of PETA. "Nothing could be farther from the truth."

At the link — to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — there's a photograph of a man, but it's not Professor Yin. It's the actor James Cromwell, who was arrested in 2013, protesting at a meeting of the university's Board of Regents. There's also a photo of a Madison bus with a bus-sized ad featuring a cat and the words "I am not lab equipment."

There is no photo of Professor Yin or a word of explanation as to why cats were the animal of choice for neuroscience research. Let's look elsewhere for that. Here, in Isthmus, we learn that Yin studied hearing, and cats and human beings have similar auditory systems. The question was whether deaf human beings would benefit from having 2 rather than one cochlear implants, and the cats were deafened and fitted with cochlear implants. Much more at that link about the details of the experiment and the aggressiveness of the PETA campaign.

Eric Sandgren, director of UW-Madison's Research Animal Resource Center, says what is happening to Yin is a case study in the outsized power of activist groups like PETA.

"Underpinning this whole story is this tremendous pressure that PETA put on the regulatory agencies and UW-Madison," he says. PETA "besmirched" the UW's reputation, he adds, and "did so in a way that had no basis of fact.... Animal researchers are less willing to participate in [the UW-Madison Forum on Animal Research Ethics] or any similar public event in the face of PETA's misleading public campaign."

Sandgren says he received a razor blade in the mail recently.... "The letter inside said 'Doctor Sandgren, UW School of Veterinary Torture -- Use this razor blade to slit your wrists.' "I work with activists, I talk with activists and I try and have this dialogue, acknowledging the things we have in common... It's just sad when it comes to this."

ADDED:  I received a letter dated January 26, 2015from the University of Wisconsin—Madison School of Public Health Department of Neuroscience:

On behalf of our colleagues in the Department of Neuroscience we write to express our appreciation for our colleague Professor Tom Yin. The false claim that the closing of Professor Yin's laboratory was a PETA victory reminds us of the fable of the rooster who believed that his crowing in the morning made the sun rise. Professor Yin is 70 years old and, after a distinguished career that has lasted for 45 years, he plans to retire.

Professor Yin’s work has changed care for deaf children. Because of his work, we now know that implanting two cochlear implants helps children make use of the neural circuits that allow them to hear where sounds come from.  His work is recognized worldwide as being insightful and of the highest quality.

We often encountered Professor Yin’s frisky and playful cats, peering curiously around a corner or darting by at top speed or jumping into our laps.  Those cats got more attention and care and love than most pets. Dr. Yin is a gentle and unselfish man who has inspired many with his scholarship, dedication and passion for teaching. He repeatedly took on administrative tasks he did not really want. His research continues in the laboratories of the younger scientists he has trained, who now direct their own laboratories throughout the world.  The department and the University of Wisconsin take immense pride in his enduring legacy.

Donata Oertel                                                             Meyer B. Jackson

Professor and Chair                                                    Professor and Associate Chair   

Bill Maher, anti-science?

"Stand-up comedian and television host Bill Maher called more than 100,000 Madison-area numbers Tuesday to warn University of Wisconsin-Madison students, faculty and the Madison community about animal cruelty in campus research labs.... But the university said in a statement Tuesday the claims have no factual basis...."

"Slaughterhouses are so filthy that more than half of all meat is contaminated with fecal bacteria."

The message on the toilet paper supplied — by PETA — to the city of Trenton, which, in a budget crunch, was running out.

PETA appeals denial of roadside memorials for cows that died in the wrecks of 2 cattle-hauling trucks.

"The state previously denied the application, saying the [Illinois] Roadside Memorial Act specifies that only relatives who lost loved ones in highway crashes may request memorials."

So, it's not that the dead were not human. It's that nonhuman animals have relatives who are incapable of requesting a memorial. PETA says "the cows suffered and are 'worthy of remembering.'" But Illinois can't be accused of discriminating against nonhuman animals, which seems to be the issue PETA is pushing. Roadside memorials are for relatives who request them, and no relatives of the dead have applied. And let's be sensible, even assuming cattle remember their dead relatives, symbolic displays don't jog their memories.

"Where is the outcry from PETA?"

Asks a commenter at the Isthmus post about the camel the "Daily Show" brought to the protest.

Where's the outcry? Probably hanging out with the outcry from the Freedom From Religion Foundation over the Reverend Jesse Jackson leading a prayer (with the crowd of protesters in the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda):



(By the way, Jackson's prayer does not violate the Establishment Clause, and in fact, he has a free speech right to do what you see in that video. That is my official professorial opinion.)

On swatting a fly.

1. BBC gives you 10 ways to swat a fly — including a technique called The Barack.

2. PETA doesn't appreciate The Barack: "We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals. We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

3. There's a song called "Never Swat a Fly." I'm familiar with the old Jim Kweskin version ("Don't do that, Delores/You should never swat a fly"), but here's the 1930 Abe Lyman version. Lyrics:

Never swat a fly, he may love another fly
He may sit with her and sigh the way I do with you
Never harm a flea, he may have a favorite she
That he bounces on his knee the way I do with you
Never stop a moth when he is gliding through the air
He may have a date in someone's flannel underwear
Ah! Ah! Be careful!
Never spray a nit with a great big can of Blitz
He may think some nit has it the way I do with you