I think it depends on the animal; some have emotions and some don’t. That said, I think some animals (especially pet dogs, for example) really enjoy living with humans and would not appreciate having to fend for themselves in the wild.

Animals do feel emotions and they even express emotions. I think you can keep them as pets but keeping in the zoo doesn’t seem right, just as volcob said "Imagine yourself imprisoned?"

Many pets, even when allowed freedom such as not having a leash, voluntarily choose to stay near or return home, thus showing that thay seem to enjoy captivity.

It’s probably a mistake to look at keeping pets as an unnatural exploitation of another species. If anything, it’s a form of mutually beneficial symbiosis, and therefore perfectly natural. For example, consider the relationship between early humans and their dogs. Both species freely chose to live together and both benefitted from it.

One of the questions you need to ask yourself about emotion is whether it is a real emotion you’re detecting or simply a physiological response.

For example a baby’s cry is not an emotion of sadness/anger etc…it’s a reflex action to get attention for milk/diaper change etc.

Another from PETA! I joined their site about a year ago, and am now a vegitarian because of it.
Animals are people too!

If you ask me that’s rubbish. A lion doesn’t care that a gazelle has feelings when it goes hunting, why should I care a cow has feelings when I go to the supermarket. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an advocate of cruelty towards animals and generally love animals. But that is how the food chain works.

Honestly I agree with you. I just don’t like how the food is produced and distributed and how dirty and nasty and well, just plain sick the whole thing is.
I don’t care if the end product tastes good, the thought of what our food goes through makes me want to vomit.
Even vegitables, but I like the fact that I can wash and prepare them myself.

Try organic.

I have, but because of where I live, it’s expensive and hard to come by really.

And to add to my last post, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hunting. Hunting is natural if you ask me.

My father once said that animals of course except humans are irrational beings. I was able to watch a documentary film where pigs to be slaughtered for market consumption must be killed at least with less pain. Some countries use electric shock to kill them. In the film I had watched before, pigs were totally tortured to death. The vet said that it results to lower quality of meat and imagine that what you’re eating is already "double dead". I agree here. Now, probably the pigs that were killed then must had felt a very excruciating experience.

Emotions I think is a different level where organisms must be able to understand how things happened that way or what would be its effect. In the case of hunting, the lion might not understand what will happen to the young of a nurturing doe if it kills it. The ferocious beast just responded to hunger. The dear on the other hand acts as well–it doesn’t know why it is being hunted by predators, and would respond in order to escape the predators.

But still, there are some groups that are advocates of the ethical treatment for every animals. I think our responsibility here is that how must we do things the proper way. If we have pets or animals in zoos, we ourselves our responsible for them. We must feed them right, give them shelter, and (…I think that some might contest here) give affection, caring and love. We do not let our dogs stray and bite others. Now if these things are really hard to maintain, let’s bring out these animals from our custody and let the nature do it’s work for their living.

One of the more contriversial issues is if it’s okay to put down an animal if the animal is ‘damaged’ by dog fighting, cars,or if the animal has killed livestock or bitten a human, or anything of natural instinct or dangerous to humans. If PETA gets what they want and animals and humans are created as equal than does the man running the dog fight get put down for being influential to the dog?
Will it be as big of a crime hit a rabbit on the highway as hitting a person crossing the street?
I agree with the overall idea of PETA animals should be treated kindly, but in some aspects it’s absolutly absurd.

I agree with Jones; PETA has good intentions but they’re a little to extreme for my tastes. For example, I enjoy hunting and see nothing wrong with it; it’s a great way to get delicious fresh meat that wasn’t tortured on a farm. I always make it a point to try to kill the animal with my first shot, since I do not want it to suffer needlessly. Sometimes, I am afraid, my first shot is a little off and only wounds the animal, putting it in pain and requiring a second shot to kill it; however, I always try (and usually succeed) to make one-shot kills. However, even if it does take two shots, I do not see how this is any worse than some of the hunting techniques that some predators use to kill their prey.

I have actually been thinking about adopting vegetarianism lately, for a lot of different reasons. I am not quite sure if I will or even to what extent I would want to be a vegetarian (Would I still eat eggs? How about drinking milk?), but I know that if I decide to become a vegetarian I will have to give up hunting. I think it’s wrong to kill an animal if it’s not for food or self-defense.

Here’s an interesting thought about PETA’s extreme stance. Would they consider it murder to swat a mosquito? If so, they might not want to visit south Louisiana.

Yes, it right to say if animals would be killed for a very important reason. I see no wrong in hunting and consuming an animal for food. I think that PETA has a strong power over the protection of certain animals that are not likely consumed typically. Moreover, if such animal might not at leat pose a great danger in a paricular community. Killing and consuming local dogs are actually prohibited in our country but some locality do not mind this. However, if certain ethnic tribes must have to kill one for their sacrificing rituals, they are counted for doing the act legally. Recent news I have watched included an investigation on the unknown death of at least 20 stray cats in one of the local municipality here. Cats were found to be shot with air gun pellets. The cats were known to be adopted and were under the custody of a local village in the same municipality. I am seeing here that people behind the case must have tried doing hunting in the city, instead of hunting those typically hunted wild animals, they have tried domesticated breeds since it would be more convenient for them to do "city hunting" instead of going to a forest, which would be more expensive.

Another factor I am realizing here is how people are continuously reminded on their reponsiblity in regards to animal treatment. How are these animals be utilized for a good reason. Well if a mosquito would give me Plasmodium, I will definitely be regretful if I haven’t swat one.

Some vegitarians choose to eat eggs and milk products. I do, but only because here I know the eggs I buy come from farms in the state, and I trust that the cows in milking factories are taken care of because of first hand experience by my father.
PETA said at one point that the cows are not taken care of and that they get huge blisters on their utters but there is no way that a company would jepardize their part in the industry by not keeping the animals healthy.
Doesn’t exactly make sense for them to ruin the animals that they get their money from, eh?

Why would you dissect the animal alive?
Aren’t those kinds of experiments done on animals that have died of natural causes?

PETA is against animal brutality, they just take it to a different level.
It gets to be kind of rediculous. I do agree that PETA has good intentions, just not the best action.
I was watching videos of slaughterhouses, and I found out a few days later the videos had been shot in 3 years time and that the things they had on camera were only instinces when instant death of the animals had obviously failed.

Yeah, brutality. I’m posting this on another forum if you don’t mind?

And I don’t agree with it being done to humans either.

most dissection animals are gassed to death. One of my profs said they used to do vivisections with anethesized animals.

when i went to the national olympiad in the 10th and 11th grade, there were some experiments with nerves and the heart for example that were supposed to be done on a live frog.
At the University of Bucharest they don’t kill frogs prior to taking away their liver….

Besides the fact that i find that very cruel, it makes me throw up..

I would easily protest that.

I agree; vivisection is bit too cruel for my tastes, as well.

Just makes me think of what I would do if someone took out my liver while I was alive…
Probably cry.

Since the animal is still alive, the action of some organs are observed better. Though doing it really makes some shrill. It is just so sad to know that as we learn that life is so wonderful, the counterpart of it is that there is always something needed to be sacrificed.

You know what I thought was weird?
If you put a frog in cool water on a stove he won’t try to jump out as the water starts to getter hot and eventually boil, but he will jump out if you put him in a pan of already hot water.
I am easily amazed.

That does seem to be the pattern; man’s endless desire to learn about his world inevitably leads to destruction.

I don’t see why people can’t just accept the fact that we live and we die and I don’t get why they can’t stop trying so hard to learn about why we are how we are.
I just wanna live.

As Socrates once said, "Knowledge is virtue"

I definitely believe that the pursuit of knowledge is the highest goal a person can strive towards; after all, ignorance has been a leading cause of conflict for millenia. However, it seems to be a bitter irony that often the only way to learn is to destroy.

But isn’t it already enough to at least stop at a point and realize, "hey! I think that must be all for now" However it’s not. We do ANYTHING for the sake of this knowledge. It seems that the quest for this knowledge is exponentially progressing. We had the atom and we are searching more far in the outerspace, but still we are destined grow old , our body weakens,terminate to death. I do not want to sound biblical here, but in the book of Job and Ecclesiastes, we humans always thirst for more and we have so many questions though no matter we strive more, all and everything we have done will be soon forgotten then. The facts we discover will be just replaced by another fact. And everything will be just in pages that are soon to be aged and simply be over and done.

That perhaps is the ultimate irony of mankind’s quest to greatness, that he is doomed forever to mediocrity, if even that.

*Yawns* Can we be new at life for like… 3 minutes?
Not smart, but not biased. Like little kids, that would be nice… No worries, no ideas either way.

That would be glorious, except within about thirty seconds or so we would start hungering for knowledge and forming opinions about everything.

Haha, Yeah I guess so eh?

Ethics is already overcome by science.
Simple living afterwards is a great reward in life.
But it is natural for man to seek and solve.

If only this world would be renewed, but that I think would come to the 2nd life after death. No more sexes, knowledge, opinions and ideas…

For science to truly benefit humanity it needs to be kept under control through proper ethics. Left unchecked, science is dangerous.

Trully. It is just questionable that, some intellectual and talented people have academically gained so many degrees to reach their level today, human mind is somewhat utilized in a great extent after revolutionary discoveries and experiments, but the simple thinking of beneficence or non-malificence over living things, that therefore is really hard to achieve.

I think it’s more a matter of people believing that science represents some ultimate good and can therefor be studied entirely for its own sake. It’s a product of blind faith, if you ask me.

Dreaming is good, however, some of the dreams in their realization could really impose the destruction of the dreamer. The question would be, how can we realize our dreams with less pain with one another?

Not just less pain to one another but also to our surrounding environment. Our power to influence and change the earth gives us a serious responsibility to protect it.

If we lead our home to its great destruction–all of our gains from endeavor we made will just come to nothing afterall.

I have read this one. I think that it’s also related to this topic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-lede-t.html
http://cognews.com/1195706816

Here are a few doctors who do not agree that "Vivisection is a safer alternative to human testing.’

Species difference makes it impossible for medicine for one species to be based on any other species or variety of species. Humans and animals only get the same diseases 1.16% of the time. Humans now have 30,000 diseases yet about 60 million animals are killed in medical ‘research’ each year. Why is nothing cured? How did we get 30,000 diseases? The hundreds of thousands of artificial substances that we consume or come into contact with pass a fraudulent test, ie they are tested on other species of animals, this protects the financial health of the drug/chem co’s via legal protection at the expense of our physical health and that of the environment.

Imagine this… a cat is sick with a feline (cat) disease. We want to help the cat. It is suggested that we observe the sick cat. This gets no funding. It is then suggested that we observe the population of cats to find why some get this disease and others do not and to then eliminate the cause. This also gets no funding. Then it is suggested that we get other animals which do not and cannot get this disease, we artificially induce symptoms in these healthy animals (eg dog, mouse human) and then try to ‘cure’ them. This is called an ‘animal model’ and it has no correlation to the real disease so the ‘cure’ does not work. This is why despite billions of dollars and millions of animals killed no human diseases are being cured despite constant claims of breakthroughs

DOCTORS AGAINST VIVISECTION
"The reason why I am against animal research is because it doesn’t work, it has no scientific value and every good scientist knows that."
– Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., 1986, Head of the Licensing Board for the State of Illinios, paediatrician & gynaecologist for 30 years, medical columnist & best-selling author, recipient of numerous awards for excellence in medicine.
"Since there is no way to defend the use of animal model systems in plain English or with scientific facts, they resort to double-talk in technical jargon…The virtue of animal model systems to those in hot pursuit of the federal dollars is that they can be used to prove anything – no matter how foolish, or false, or dangerous this might be. There is such a wide variation in the results of animal model systems that there is always some system which will ‘prove’ a point….The moral is that animal model systems not only kill animals, they also kill humans. There is no good factual evidence to show that the use of animals in cancer research has led to the prevention or cure of a single human cancer."
– Dr. D.J. Bross, Ph.D., 1982, former director of the largest cancer research institute in the world, the Sloan-Kettering Institute, then Director of Biostatics, Roswell Memorial Institute, Buffalo, NY.
"Practically all animal experiments are untenable on a statistical scientific basis, for they possess no scientific validity or reliability. They merely perform an alibi for pharmaceutical companies, who hope to protect themselves thereby."
– Herbert Stiller, M.D. & Margot Stiller, M.D., 1976.
"Like every member of my profession, I was brought up in the belief that almost every important fact in physiology had been obtained by vivisection and that many of our most valued means of saving life and diminishing suffering had resulted from experiments on the lower animals. I now know that nothing of the sort is true concerning the art of surgery: and not only do I not believe that vivisection has helped the surgeon one bit, but I know that it has often led him astray."
– Prof. Lawson Tait, M.D., 1899, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (F.R.C.S.), Edinburgh & England. Hailed as the most distinguished surgeon of his day, the originator of many of surgery’s modern techniques, and recipient of numerous awards for medical excellence.
"Experiments have never been the means for discovery; and a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions."
– Sir Charles Bell, M.D., 1824, F.R.C.S., discoverer of "Bell’s Law" on motor and sensory nerves.
"Atrocious medical experiments are being done on children, mostly physically and handicapped ones, and on aborted foetuses, given or sold to laboratories for experimental purposes. This is a logical development of the practice of vivisection. It is our urgent task to accelerate its inevitable downfall."
– Prof. Pietro Croce, M.D., 1988, internationally renowned researcher, former vivisector.
"Vivisection is barbaric, useless, and a hindrance to scientific progress. I learned how to operate from other surgeons. It’s the only way, and every good surgeon knows that."
– Dr. Werner Hartinger, 1988, surgeon of thirty years, President of German League of Doctors Against Vivisection (GLDAV).
"Normally, animal experiments not only fail to contribute to the safety of medications, but they even have the opposite effect."
– Prof. Dr. Kurt Fickentscher, 1980, of the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Bonn, Germany.
"Experiments on animals lead inevitably to experiments on people…As if an animal experiment could ever predict the same result on a person. And as if an experiment on one human being could enable us to foresee the reactions of another human being, whose biology and metabolism are different, whose blood pressure is different, whose lifestyle and age and nourishment and sensitivity and genes and everything else are different…We recognise that each single organism, whether human or animal, has its very own reactions…Today’s orthodox medicine and suppressive surgery don’t understand the purpose of disease and therefore don’t know how to treat it. A real doctor’s experience derives from his natural intuition coupled with his observation at the sickbed, but never from invasive, violent experiments on people, and much less on animals. Instead of vital hygiene, which aims at preservation or reconstruction of health by natural means and shuns all use of degrading, destructive chemicals, today’s medical students are only taught to manipulate poisons and mutilate bodies. We demand that this be changed."
– Prof. Andre Passebecq, M.D., N.D., D.Psyc., 1989, Faculty of Medicine of Paris, then President of the International League of Doctors Against Vivisection (ILDAV).
"Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it."
– Dr. A. Sabin, 1986, developer of the oral polio vaccine.
"Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them."
– Linus Pauling, PhD, 1986, two time Nobel Prize Winner.
"Not only are the studies themselves often lacking even face value, but they also drain badly needed funds away from patient care needs."
– Dr. Neal Barnard, M.D., 1987, President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), Washington.
"All our current knowledge of medicine and surgery derives from observations of man following especially the anatomical-clinical method introduced by Virchow: symptoms of the patient while alive and the alterations found in the dead body. These observations have led us to discover the connection between smoking and cancer, between diet and arteriosclerosis, between alcohol and cirrhosis, and so on. Even the RH factor was not discovered on the macasus rhesus. The observations of Banting and Best on diabetes, attributed to experiments on dogs, were already well-known. Every discovery derives from observations on humans, which are subsequently duplicated in animals, and whenever the findings happen to concur, their discovery is attributed to animal experimentation. Everything we know today in medicine derives from observations made on human beings. The ancient Romans and Greeks gained most of their knowledge from epidemiological studies of people. The same goes for surgery. Surgery can’t be learned on animals. Animals are anatomically completely different from man, their reactivity is completely different, their structure and resistance are completely different. In fact, exercises on animals are misleading. The surgeon who works a lot on animals loses the sensibility necessary for operating on humans."
– Prof. Bruno Fedi, M.D., 1986, Director of the City Hospital of Terni, Italy, anatomist, pathologist, specialist in urology, gynaecology and cancerology.
"My own conviction is that the study of human physiology by way of experimenting on animals is the most grotesque and fantastic error ever committed in the whole range of human intellectual activity."
– Dr. G.F. Walker, 1933.
"Why am I against vivisection? The most important reason is because it’s bad science, producing a lot of misleading and confusing data which pose hazards to human health. It’s also a waste of taxpayer’s dollars to take healthy animals and artificially and violently induce diseases in them that they normally wouldn’t get, or which occur in different form, when we already have the sick people who can be studied while they’re being treated."
– Dr. Roy Kupsinel, M.D., 1988, medical magazine editor, USA.
"It is well known that animal effects are often totally different from the effects on people. This applies to substances in medical use as well as substances such as 245y and dioxin."
– A.L. Cowan, M.D., 1985, Acting Medical Officer of Health, New Plymouth, N. Z.
"The growing opposition to vivisection is understandable both on ethical and biological counts. However, a certain scientistic culture says they serve to save human lives. But reality is quite the opposite. Let’s take the case of pesticides. These dangerous products, used in agriculture, are classified according to their acute toxicity, graduated with the Lethal Dose 50% tests on animals. This represents not only a useless sacrifice of animals, but it’s an alibi that enables the chemical industry to sell products which are classified as harmless or almost harmless, but are in reality very harmful in the long run, even if taken in small doses. Many pesticides classified as belonging to the fourth category, meaning they can be sold and used freely, have turned out to be carcinogenic or mutagenic or capable of harming the fetus. Also in this case, animal tests are not only ambiguous, but they serve to put on the market products of which any carcinogenic effect will be ascertained only when used by human beings – the real guinea-pigs of the multinationals. And yet there are laboratory tests that can be used, which are cheaper and quicker than animal tests; in vitro tests on cell cultures, which have been proving their worth for years already. But the interests of the chemical industries which foist on us new products in all fields may not be questioned."
– Prof. Gianni Tamino, 1987, biologist at Padua University, a Congressman in the Italian Parliament.
"Animal model systems differ from their human counterparts. Conclusions drawn from animal research, when applied to human beings, are likely to delay progress, mislead, and do harm to the patient. Vivisection, or animal experimentation, should be abolished."
– Dr. Moneim Fadali, M.D., 1987, F.A.C.S., Diplomat American Board of Surgery and American Board of Thoracic Surgery, UCLA faculty, Royal College of Surgeons of Cardiology, Canada.
"Experiments on animals do not only mean torture and death for the animals, they also mean the killing of people. Vivisection is a double-edged sword."
– Major R.F.E. Austin, M.D., 1927, Royal College of Surgeons, Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians.
Cawadias (1953) has said that "The history of medicine has shown that, whenever medicine has strayed from clinical observation, the result has been chaos, stagnation and disaster."
(British Medical Journal, October 8 1955, p.867.)
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The above quotes were taken from the book 1000 Doctors (& many more) Against Vivisection, (Ed. Hans Ruesch), CIVIS, 1989.
For further information or to purchase the book contact Hans Ruesch Foundation/CIVIS – POB 152, via Motta 51, CH-6900 Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland

German researchers Drs H and M Stiller, “In praxis, all animal experiments are scientifically indefensible, as they lack any scientific validity and reliability in regard to humans. They only serve as an alibi for the drug manufacturers, who hope to protect themselves thereby”. Peter Tatchell, “Animal Research Is Bad Science”, 2001.

Nobel Prize winner Sir Ernst Boris Chain, under oath at a hearing investigating the Thalidomide tragedy, said, “No animal experiment with a medicament, even if it is carried out on several animal species including primates under all conceivable conditions, can give any guarantee that the medicament tested in this way will behave in the same way in humans; because in many respects the human is not the same as the animal”. Tony Page, Vivisection Unveiled, Jon Carpenter Publishing, 1997, p. 103.
Thalidomide only causes birth defects in 3 of the 63 species it was finally tested on.
http://www.caare.org.uk