Many animals today are becoming extinct or have already been considered endangered. Although there are many animal breeders in the world, the death rate of animals does not equal to the number of animals born each year. Animal cruelty is what makes our world less diverse because many animals are being beaten, left on the streets to die without care, or are getting killed for unlawful reasons such as animal testing.
People do not realize how important it is to keep these animals safe because without animals the world would be a completely different place and that might not necessarily be a horrible thing, but it still is not right or just to harm these animals. Animal cruelty is not only the horrific things that are being done to the animals, but it also includes not properly taking care of them. According to an article in the Pennsylvania Bar Association, Debbie Jugan states “Most of the laws against animal cruelty can be summed up in one phrase: common sense.
It is simply common sense to take care of the animals we human beings keep captive. They must be provided clean, fresh water on a daily basis. They must be fed a quality diet that meets their nutritional needs. They must be provided adequate shelter, protected from cold and heat, wind, rain and snow. They must receive veterinary care, both preventative and diagnostic, and receive veterinary intervention immediately upon need. ” What Jugan means by that is that animals also deserve to be treated equally and just because they do not exactly have a voice to speak up for themselves that they are heard by some people.
In the state of Pennsylvania there have been laws passed to protect the animals, but in cases the owners are negligent. Statistics show that 34 of the 50 states in America consider animal abuse or cruelty to be a felony whereas the remaining 16 states consider it to be a misdemeanor. In the states that consider animal cruelty to be a felony the fine varies from $1,000 to $150,000. Not only are there fines to be paid, but there is also the possibility of being incarcerated for up to 5 years depending on the intensity of the crime and the state that the case is tried in.
Animal populations around the world are slowly decreasing as more people mistreat or take advantage of the life of an animal. Every day, animals get treated like they’re nothing. An example of animals getting treated badly is when dogs or cats are left in the street to die. Going down the street, many people will see dogs or cats walking around alone. These animals are prime examples of animals getting left behind to fend for themselves. In addition, many animals take advantage of other animals. Such as, dogs.
Some dogs are taken advantage of because a person will take them off the street to give them a home, but they will later train them to fight. These dogs are taken advantage of because they believe they are getting a home to be loved but some will lose their life because the human found the dog and decided to use it as a bait dog. According to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or PETA there are “millions of mice, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals locked inside cold, barren cages in laboratories across the country. Animals should be cared for and not taken advantage of for our personal gain. PETA also stated that “more than 100 million animals every year suffer and die in cruel chemical, drug, food, and cosmetic tests as well as in biology lessons, medical training, exercises, and the curiosity- driven medical experiments at universities. ” These experiments sometimes cause the animals that are being tested to have neurotic deficiencies causing them to act differently from when they were born.
It is interesting how the government is against harming humans, but they can harm animals and put them through all kinds of excruciating pain with no problem at all. These animals that are being tested on and being harmed also have feelings and groups like PETA feel that they should be acknowledged just like a person’s feelings would be. Also from PETA, there were “3. 3 million animals used in experiments and 128,873 animals that were subjected to “severe pain or near, at, or above the pain tolerance of unanesthetized conscious animals” in Canada alone.
Those numbers don’t include the “4. 12 million experiments on animals and the 2. 94 million without anesthesia in the United Kingdom”. So from the looks of it animal testing is mostly done in foreign countries, but the United States had “1. 04 million animals” being tested and the “estimated 100 million mice and rats. ” These experiments are not even guaranteed to help people when they are tested on animals which is terrible because that basically means that the animals are going through unnecessary pain for no reason. According to Dr.
Richard Klausner from the National Cancer Institute “we have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans” which is a sign that we should stop animal testing all together. There have been laws put into place to try to protect the animals that are being tested, but unfortunately not all animals are covered by the laws. It is very unfortunate when animals have to go through this excruciating pain while we humans experiment on them. Animal cruelty is not only about animal testing, but it is also about the unlawful killing of animals.
An example of unlawful killing would be poaching. Tens of thousands of African elephants are killed every year for the ivory in their tusks. According to World Wide Fund or WWF “Their ivory tusks are the most sought after, but their meat and skin are also traded. ” WWF also states that “the ban of international trade was introduced in 1989 CITIES (or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and it allowed some populations to recover, especially where elephants were adequately protected. Another animal that is being affected by unlawful killings would be the Giant panda. It is really sad how people are hunting pandas for their fur causing their population to decline. According to WWF “by protecting pandas, we’re helping to safeguard the broader environment, which so many people and animals depend on. ” But if people are killing pandas by isolating them from their natural habits there will be nothing to protect.
Although there are many land animals that are being killed for unlawful reasons there are also sea animals that are being affected like the Marine Turtle. According to WWF hunting and egg collection for consumption are major causes of the drastic decline in marine turtle populations around the world. Green turtles are caught for their meat, eggs and calipee (the green body fat which is the main ingredient in turtle soup). ” It isn’t right to kill there turtles for food or for any reason at all, but unfortunately it is done every single day.
WWF also stated that “Researchers estimate that each year poachers take 30,000 green turtles in Baja California and that more than 50,000 marine turtles are killed in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. ” These animals didn’t do anything to harm humans, yet we are constantly killing them whether it is for pleasure or for survival. Animals are being abandoned by their “owners” and it is beginning to become a huge problem because we now have stray animals who used to have an owner roaming the streets putting not only their own lives in danger but also the lives of humans.
These animals can cause car accidents and that’s not good because people are concerned for their wellbeing so while they are driving they tend to swerve in the road to avoid hitting the animal, but that only creates danger for their own lives because a person could potentially die trying to save the life of an animal that is roaming the street. According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (or the ASPCA) “approximately 2. 7 million animals are euthanized every year.
These animals are being euthanized because they have been in the animal shelter too long and the shelter has to be able to provide for all animals that come through their door. Unfortunately, more animals are entering the shelter then exiting the shelter. Yes, although some of the things that are being done to animals are for the benefit of the human race animals shouldn’t be treated the way they are no matter what the reason is. We have become accustomed to eating cows, pigs, and animals of that sort, but there comes a point that the killing of an animal for a source of food has gone too far.
It is gotten to the point where animals are being injected with all kinds of steroids to “improve” the quality of their meat, but in reality it is only making things worst for those who consume the steroid-injected animal. It is amazing the things that people would say to try to justify the wrong we’ve done as a society. We need to understand that animals have as much of a right to life as humans do, but very few people actually understand that. Our world has become less diverse because we are slowly removing animals and that would destroy human life slowly because so many people count on these animals to survive.
Some people count on the animals for their meat, some care about the well-being of the animal, some care about the good of the animal for society, and then there are those who just want the world to remain a place that can be enjoyed by all living organisms that inhabit the earth. Some people do not understand the intensity of animal cruelty, but they will be surprised when they notice that someone is being incarcerated because of what they did to an animal that probably did nothing to them to begin with.
Some people think of animal cruelty as just leaving an animal out on the street to die, but in reality it is so much more than that. Gullone has studied and discovered that people who abuse animals at a young age or any age at really also abuse humans. These people and animals do not deserve to be harmed for any reason, yet they are because a person thinks that the situation is just a game and nothing too serious. Gullone also stated, “The data revealed that animal cruelty was uniquely associated with disorders characterized by low self-control, including lifetime alcohol use, pathological gambling.
Conduct Disorder, and a number of personality disorders, including Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder and Historic Personality Disorder” meaning that animal cruelty or abuse is not only harmful to the animals, but to the human as well. In order for the animal population to stop decreasing people should take better care of their pets, the environment, and the natural habitats of the wildlife. As a society, humans should start to pay more attention to their surroundings and help out if there is an issue whether it involves humans or animals.
