Welcome to Gaia! ::

Metalic has a good point in that humans are overpopulated. If we could figure out how to live in Antarctica and ship a good chunk of, like, India or China or other highly populated countries there, then it'd probably be alright. My science professor said a few years ago that some countries are already past their carrying capacity.

(*sigh*) I think it'd be way better off for the planet if things were like the olden days - we'd have to defend our turf from the animals and stuff, and people wouldn't live long enough to make a huge impact on the environment. I'd sorely miss my electricity, though xd

Now, carrying on an argument with the owner of this guild probably isn't a good idea, but I'm judgementally impairred.

I have a survival instinct. I would not willingly die to "save a monkey from getting a makeover". Nor would I die for any number of people. If you must know, there is only one person I would die for, but I'm not gonna get emo on you. So I say that I wouldn't die to save my entire family, or a million people. But I'd go more peacefully if I knew that, say, a million bears would be saved. Oh wait. . . that's right. . . there aren't a million bears. Nor are there a million wolves. Nor a million buffalo. No, anything larger than a dog has to die when we encroach on their territory.

Call me a hypocrite. It's not the worst I've been called.


Where do most rats and mice thrive? Why, in urban areas! Yes, we have a rare case in which the animals aren't devastated by our presence.

Mouse and rat overpopulation isn't as devastating as human overpopulation for several reasons.
_1: The average mouse (or rat) is far smaller than the average human.
_2: The average mouse (or rat) uses far less in the way resources than the average human.
_3: The average mouse (or rat) produces far less waste than the average human.

I'm all for animal treatment in ethical ways...I do eat meat though.
All the meat I do eat is from organic farms and all the animals are treated humainly biggrin

I believe her point is that PETA's methods are getting them nowhere. Trying to intimidate people into changing is no better than the actions of terrorists, and will not work.

Of course, that was my interpretation, and as I already admitted, I'm judgementally impairred,

Humans like improving things - we know the world is going to end but we're still living and doing things just to say - "Hey! I did that!"

As for the rats & mice, they have similarties to humans and that's why they're tested on... they're not in danger since they reproduce so fast. Besides, what's more valuable the life of one rat or a human being?

If I'm going down, I'm going down swinging. If our world is going to end, I want it to end knowing that we did everything we could to make it a better place. That's why.

And a counter-point: If the world is going to end, why bother protecting animals? They're getting the axe with the rest of us, you know.

While in University, I worked in the mouse lab in the Psych department. We were conducting studies on the effects of Ritalin. These mice were bred specifically with ADHD. We called them popcorn mice because they bounced around a lot. We did not hurt the mice at all. We administered Ritalin to them in their food and they became calm. We published our findings about the effectiveness in the end. The only part I didn't agree with was the gassing of the mice at the end of the experiment. Of course, the rationale was that they have a two year life span anyway and we had them for at least that long. We couldn't give them Ritalin forever. They were euthanized only because no one would take them. I took some home, as did my lab partner, but there's no way a pet store would take over a hundred hyper mice. LOL! blaugh

If animals can help find a cure for diseases, I'm all for it. I prefer they didn't treat them cruely for it though. Our mice were well cared for and had lots of room to play in clean, well-lit cages with wheels for exercise and fresh food and water. I know some places are deplorable and there's no excuse for that. gonk