Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Hsus Uncovers Cruel Puppy Mills

Close Up Reports

Investigator exposes hidden misery on mass breeding farms

Hsus Helps Bust Cruel Dogfights

Close Up Reports

The HSUS believes that dogfighting, along with other blood sports, is nothing less than torture for fun that is degrading and unfit for a civilized society.

The HSUS' dogfighting program is one of the most extensive in the nation. We are frequently contacted by other animal welfare groups, law enforcement agencies, and the media to provide assistance or expertise. Our investigators frequently travel undercover to dogfights, risking their lives to garner information from the heavily armed and often drug-using dogfighting fraternity. It is often information that only we are interested in providing that enables dogfighters to be caught and arrested. …

Hsus Helps Bust Cruel Dogfights

Close Up Reports

Thirty-eight arrested in raids in Georgia and Ohio

Fight For Alternatives Gathers Momentum

Close Up Reports

Commitments to help lab animals are extracted from industry and government

People At Zoos: A Sociological Approach, Edward G. Ludwig

Zoos and Aquariums Collection

This is a participant observation study of animal/human relationships at zoos. Both zoo personnel and zoo visitors were observed intensively over a period of four months and less intensively for two years. While young zoo employees tended to be naturalistic, ecologistic and scientistic in their value orientation toward animals, these attitudes were often frustrated by the day to day routines of the job involving hosing and feeding, and the realities of limitations placed upon zoos by strained budgets and antiquated buildings. The public tended to be an additional source of frustration due to their apparent lack of sensitivity and desire …

The Metaphysics Of Anthropocentrism: A Review Of Paul Ehrenfeld's "The Arrogance Of Humanism" And Mary Midgley's "Beast And Man", Bernard E. Rollin

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

Our attitudes and behavior toward nature and toward other forms of life are clearly in the forefront of contemporary ethical concern. It thus becomes necessary to examine critically the metaphysics which has traditionally grounded these attitudes. Unquestionably, the key feature of the dominant underlying conceptual scheme has been the positing of a clear-cut dichotomy between man and the natural world. For most of the Greeks, man is radically separated from nature- he lives in the realm of nomos, convention, somehow above the realm of physis, nature. He can reason, communicate, choose, create a social order, apprehend ultimate reality, and even …

Where To Put Your Choker, Roger A. Mugford

Pets Collection

The choke chain has come to be regarded as an indispensable aid to training dogs, but even the most time-hallowed practices deserve an occasional critical review. The author has recently completed an investigation into the uses and abuses of choke chains, and failed to find any benefit from using a choker rather than a conventional leather collar. Indeed, there are some very considerable dangers and disadvantages associated with the device. These charges may sound like heresy to many dog-trainers, but to others, it may strike a sympathetic chord.

The Limits Of Legislation In Achieving Social Change, Theodore S. Meth

Laws and Legislation Collection

This paper is about law, not laboratory animals or philosophical ethics. It proceeds from the premise that law is an appropriate, perhaps inevitable, instrument for dealing with ethical issues related to the use of research animals.

The Leopard In Africa: Biological And Cultural Realities, Norman Myers

Conservation Collection

The leopard in Africa may once again come under pressure from the U.S. Fish an~ Wildlife Service, which is considering the prospect of changing the leop~rd s legal status from endangered to threatened, thus opening it up to sport huntmg. The motivation is to enable American hunters to bring leopard skin trophies back to the United States.

Injuries To Birds Of Prey Caught In Leghold Traps, Katherine Durham

Conservation Collection

173 birds of prey, including 32 Bald Eagles, have been treated for trapping injuries at the University of Minnesota Raptor Research and Rehabilitation Program since 1972. These were birds caught primarily in "open" bait /eghold sets incidental to furbearer trapping in the Minnesota region. The differential outcome of the injuries with respect to crippling or mortality is presented for large versus small raptors, toe versus leg injuries, and fracture of the leg versus soft tissue damage only.

There is only limited potential for mitigating the effects of trapping injuries to raptors because of the irreversible soft tissue damage usually associated …

A Strategy For Dog-Owner Education, Ian Dunbar

Animal Welfare Collection

By conservative estimates, the humane societies and societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals in the United States euthanize over 15 million pets each year. It is a great shame that people who have devoted their lives to animals should be forced to destroy the majority of animals that pass through their hands. In addition, the Pet Food Institute's 1975 Survey revealed that a high percentage of pet owners were unsatisfied with their animals and ended up giving them away, taking them to animal shelters, or losing them in accidents. It would appear that only a minority of pets …

A Response To Dr. Ian Dunbar, Graham Henderson

Pets Collection

In his article, "A Strategy for Dog Owner Education," (2(1):13-15, 1981), Dr. Ian Dunbar reveals his masterplan: Pet owners are not, he claims, irresponsible, they are for the most part merely "ignorant." We must, therefor, educate them, and to do this we must somehow contrive to have potential pet owners apply for a license before they may obtain their dog. At the same time as this initial application is made, the hopeful candidate would be issued with an information package, the content of which he or she would be tested on at some indeterminate future date. Although a failure to …

Animals In Film And Television, D. B. Wilkins

Sports and Entertainment Collection

People have always had a fascination for large, "exotic" types of animals and as a result many zoos were set up all over Europe and North America. For many years there was a great deal of money to be made from exhibiting animals, and very little regard was paid to their welfare.

With the advent of cinema and television we have come to appreciate these animals in their own environment. Some modern zoos have attempted, therefore, to reproduce a type of natural surrounding for the larger species of animal, but the compromise between providing an animal with its natural environment …