Showing posts with label exploitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exploitation. Show all posts

Thursday, 2 May 2024

Owners trick dogs with lemon slices in new animal exploitation trend on TikTok

A veterinarian, Dr. Anna Foreman, is yet another who has expressed concern about videos on TikTok in which animals are abused and exploited. TikTok has acquired a bit of a reputation for animal abuse videos; videos to attract viewers at any cost and the animal is there as a convenient subject to be used for this goal.

Owners trick dogs with lemon slices in new animal exploitation trend on TikTok
Owners trick dogs with lemon slices in new animal exploitation trend on TikTok. Screenshot.

On TikTok there is a hashtag  "#DogVSLemon" which has amassed 20.1 million views on the social media platform. That said, we should recognise the fact that TikTok statistics are heavily distorted by the way videos are looped to replay immediately after you've stop viewing it. I would estimate that all TikTok videos have received accurate views which are somewhere near a quarter of that which is stated adjacent to the video.

In one video which has apparently been viewed 16 million times, we see an uncomfortable puppy after its owner throws a lemon into its mouth. There has been a 65% increase in online searches for "dogs eating lemons".

It would seem that the amusing aspect of these videos is to see a dog's discomfort when they chomp down on a bitter lemon. Dr. Anna said that: “Many dogs will eat anything thrown at them (or grab any food on the floor etc.) without a second thought, often not even sniffing or tasting it first. “This can be good in a few scenarios, for example with giving a dog a tablet, however, it can be quite dangerous in many others.”

She added that “Sour citrus fruits such as lemon and lime tend not to be palatable to dogs, however if eaten in anything more than minimal quantities can cause gastrointestinal upsets or more severe clinical signs like collapse.

“Throwing food at a dog for them to catch is a choking hazard, particularly if the piece of food is too large to swallow whole.”


Owners who do this might at least slightly erode the relationship between themselves and their dog. They might undermine the trust that the dog has in them.

And it is also worth saying that this trick cannot be repeated with the same dog over and over again because they will learn that if they participate they'll be uncomfortable. It is a good example of negative reinforcement or punishment to alter behaviour. It is a clear-cut case of owners exploiting their companion dogs.

We have seen on numerous occasions owners exploiting companion cats in the same way. They are called "funny cat videos" but they aren't so funny for the cat because a study found that more than a third of cats in these videos are stressed.


Finally, a cat or dog might become stressed when performing the lemon throwing trick for a social media video. This may lead to aggression and that aggression might, on rare occasions, be directed at their owner or somebody else in the vicinity.

It is unwise behaviour and TikTok should stop it. They do promise to moderate videos but as usual for successful platforms like TikTok, the administrators have an impossible task. 

There are too many uploaded videos and they are therefore reliant upon other users to notify them of animal abuse or other policy breaches. This doesn't happen enough and never will. It is a failure within social media.

---------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.


Monday, 1 May 2023

How much did Grumpy Cat earn throughout her 7-year life?

There was a lot of talk all over the internet and on news media about Grumpy cat earning around $100 million in her life or part of her life (April 4, 2012 – May 14, 2019).
 
You'll see this number repeated all the time but since her premature death on May 14th, 2019 at the age of 7, there has a correction by Tabatha Bundesen, Grumpy Cat's owner. She denies that the $100 million figure is accurate. She does not tell us the true figure. 

How much did Grumpy Cat earn throughout her 7-year life?
Bundesen and Tardar Sauce, the cat she exploited to make millions. Image in the public domain (believed).

It is hard to envisage her earnings being higher than $100 million, therefore they were lower. 

In fact, the language that she used in her denial hints at the more likely true figure. She described the report as "completely false" to the Huffington Post.

'Completely false' indicates that $100m was very wide off the mark and in my view a greatly overestimated number. For example, if Bundesen had said that the $100m was 'slightly false' we'd know that it was fairly close and a little high.

'Completely' indicates that the $100m is probably about 3 times too high on a guess. If I am correct Bundesen made around $30m from all the endorsements and appearances over her life.

Bundesen successfully sued one business for $700,000 for example. That gives us a clue as to the type of numbers involved.

Wikipedia plays very safe and says that she earned between $1m and $100m! Not very precise!

Tardar Sauce (her real name) was very big at the time. He earnings must have been in the many millions. We just don't know how many millions.

Bundesen was a waiter before her cat became the world's biggest ever cat celebrity. I'd expect her to be set up for life financially. She won't have to work again.

The sad part is that Grump Cat owed her considerable fame to her deformed anatomy. Her short legs and diminutive body and importantly her downturned mouth giving the grumpy appearance were all due to dwarfism. This was a distorted anatomy and her health was poor as she died well before her time.

She was exploited really. Harsh to say that but it has to be true. If we did the same thing with a human the person involved would have been successful prosecuted for criminal behavior! It is a funny old world.

Sunday, 21 November 2021

Camilla Long doesn't know the difference between Pen Farthing and Joe Exotic

Camilla Long is a well-known journalist writing for The Sunday Times. She comments on the news and I guess anything that interests her. Today, she has written something which irritates me. I'm sure she doesn't give a damn. In fact it probably pleases her because her provocative articles are meant to irritate and delight at the same time. She is a consummate writer, very bright, Oxbridge educated and blah blah blah. She is talented. But she's got this completely wrong.

Camilla Long doesn't know the difference between Pen Farthing and Joe Exotic
Camilla Long. Photo: Twitter.

She is criticising animal lovers and "animal people" who, I presume, are the same species of human. And she can't tell the difference between the behaviour of the well-known animal rescuer, Pen Farthing, who was until the mass evacuation based in Kabul, Afghanistan and the obnoxious but made-for-television personality, Joe Exotic.

I'll tell her what the difference is. Mr Farthing saves the lives of unwanted and discarded animals. He shipped many dogs from Afghanistan to America. This is because American military personnel rescued dogs in Afghanistan and became close to them. When they came to the end of their deployment and returned to America they had to leave their dogs behind. Mr Farthing rectified that problem. He raised considerable funds to ship these dogs to America for a reunion and to allow the dogs to live out their lives happily. He saved lives and did good work. He also ran a vet surgery in Kabul. He founded and ran the best animal rescue organisation in Afghanistan for years. He alleviated pain and distress in animals.

RELATED: Taliban likely to ban dogs but accept cats

He bent over backwards and struggled enormously to save the lives of about 200 cats and dogs during the mass evacuation when the Taliban took over. Camilla Long criticises him for euthanising 32 older dogs at that time because they weren't enough crates to transport them all, she said. She also criticises him for the death of six cats who were tear-gassed after a suicide bomb went off at the airport.

I'm sure Mr Farthing reluctantly euthanised the dogs that she mentions. Sometimes rescue animals have to be euthanised despite best intentions. Under the most dire and critical conditions, Mr Farthing saved lives. If he euthanised these dogs it would have been an absolutely last resort that he was compelled to take. It would have been a humane decision.

RELATED: 25-30 cats at US Embassy Kabul have been abandoned

By contrast, Joe Exotic, for many years, ran the biggest private zoo in America and exploited big cat cubs for financial gain on a treadmill basis. They were used for photo shoots but when they grew up they were redundant. They were surplus to requirements. There were sometimes shot. Basically he was exploiting animals in the most abusive way for many many years. And he is serving a 22-year sentence for plotting to murder Carole Baskin, one of the world's 'animal people'. He is a thoroughly obnoxious individual.

These two individuals are in stark contrast to each other. You cannot say what Camilla Long has written about them which is as follows:

What's the difference between Farthing and the execrable human beings who run roadside tiger parks in America?

Well, I agree about the execrable human beings who exploit big cats and abuse them in the process but as mentioned there is a big difference. There's a big difference between exploitation and saving lives. In fact, they are at the opposite end of the spectrum of our relationship with humans.

Featured Post

i hate cats

i hate cats, no i hate f**k**g cats is what some people say when they dislike cats. But they nearly always don't explain why. It appe...

Popular posts