When I was a kid, most of the animals we owned had ear piercings, and it never seemed to bother them — we gave the cows ear tags which were IDs, but more so insecticides, so they were quite likely better off for them. I also remember branding the horn buds off our goat kids — which they definitely did not like, but were also likely better off for having it done.
That said, I’m not so convinced that this rat is better off with his body modification and I’m actually surprised it didn’t bother him. However, the rat’s keeper writes, “it healed quickly and with the tiny jewelery I put in it, he didn’t even notice he had it.”
On one hand, I think we live in a culture of pervasive animal cruelty, be it the simple reality of killing and eating animals, or the even more perverse reality of professing to love animals, keeping one as a slave while having others killed to feed that slave, so I’m not convinced on the scale of things little Dawson the pierced rat is the biggest problem for real animal lovers. On the other hand, I can predict the response to this post already…
Comments
166 responses to “How do you feel about this?”
eirinnske- and the thousands of cows a year go up to their owner and ask to be branded and have id tags stamped through their ears??
Did the rat consent to this??
Has anyone mentioned that this is quite a handsome rat?
Oh, poor little rat. *wants to comfort it* He looks so freaked out. Not cool.
Why must people be so angry? The owner said he didn’t seem to mind it, what’s the problem? She wanted to share something as amazing as piercing with her pet and I’m sure she’d take it out if it was bugging him. *sigh* Why must today’s modification be so dominated by blanket statements? Can’t we attempt to interpret and understand?
#34, when I was home sick once, I turned on the idiot box and watched one of the talking heads have her dog get ID-chipped on camera. No yelp, not even any twitching. No idea if that non-reaction is typical.
oh shannon, you sure like to test people, i like it.
>>The owner said he didn’t seem to mind it, what’s the problem?
The owner wouldn’t know and is unqualified to speak on the animal’s behalf.
Piercing should ALWAYS be done with consent or it is simply abuse.
Eating animals is natural and domesticating animals for pets is seen (by the RSPCA as well as others) as non-abuse.
🙁
As a rat owner, it makes me sad. Why can’t they stick to piercing themselves, and NOT poor animals who can’t say no.
I can’t really believe I’m saying this… but I agree with Giles. That’s something I never thought I’d say. 😀 I have greyhounds that are tattooed and microchipped because they are damned hard to find if they take off running and they have an uncanny ability to lose collars. It’s more for the dogs’ safety than anything else.
hi, popaver. why the fuck are you attacking me? did i come off like a militant jackass, so that you had to respond in kind with baseless propaganda and arrogant aggression? hell fucking no. i was civil, polite, and mentioned vegetarianism offhand because people commenting before me had mentioned the hypocrisy of coddling pets while consuming farm animals.
it’s sort of hard for a pig to be happy and healthy once it’s dead, don’t you think? besides, my primary reason for not eating meat is that i never have SINCE BIRTH, it smells like shit to me and i couldn’t digest it, so therefore likely i never will. i don’t give a fuck that you eat meat, or that anyone does, so show me the same courtesy and leave me the fuck alone. do you subsist on meat alone, or is your diet supplemented by poor tortured carrots as well? as an omnivore, you share all blame for supporting the demand for both farming and butchering. you should probably live on foraged berries and roots if you’re so concerned.
besides, vegetables are icky. i subside almost entirely on muffins. muffins are delicious, and they keep me skinny.
While I think the reasoning for piercing the rat is completely moronic, one of the best statements I read about current exploitation of animals was posted in the comments on a modblog post by Shannon.
Now, if this owner had multiple pet rats, and they had 2 females in with a male and a castration was preformed would that make it any worse than this stupid piercing? While I think this piercing is stupid and I would most likely slap the person who did it, I think declawing a cat, docking a dog’s tail, and Cutting ears are significantly worse than this piercing.
I would even say that the pet store that sold the rat is more offensive than this picture of the piercing.
Almost everything humans do in our civilization exploits animals to a disgusting degree. I don’t eat meat and haven’t for some time. I am not going to lie and say it is better for animals though. Like someone said before in the comments… The soy for my veggie burgers comes from the amazon. Or what used to be the amazon in Brazil. It almost exploits animals worse to buy those than to buy a hamburger made from a tortured downer cow.
This whole mess that we call civilization is a disaster, a
failure…. It needs to end in order to fix our relationship with animals. For an interesting comment on that read “end game” by Derrek Jensen. (not that I didn’t come to these conclusion on my own but he makes a better argument than I”.
Lets have more self harm photos and less animal cruelty please Shannon.
As long as the rat doesn’t notice it I don’t care.
Hell I don’t think that rat gives a shit.
are we arguing the environmental impact of a carrot compared to one steak- or the entire cow?.. just curious.
there will always be someone greener- and rather holier than thou it doesn’t really factor into my personal views- I am a fan of consent.
I am guessing a large number of members here are American- a country that still has more then half of all it’s healthy baby boys cosmetically altered at birth- we all have our issues- leather pants- pierced babies- animals- the ravages of farming carrots…
I don’t think it has to be a contest anyone has the right to feel what they feel.
7- The rat’s life span is only 2.5 to 3 years anyways. To say that they’re lifespan is shorter because of humans is ludicrous. They have shorter lifespans because of their much much faster heart rate and metabolism.
26- Have you had rats? Every one I’ve ever had/breed only ever go in one spot in their cage, and cover it with bedding afterwards. If the floor is dirty they go up a few levels. Also, if you were to watch them; they’re constantly cleaning themselves. More so than my cat.
Other than thaaaat…..
I couldn’t imagine any of my current 8 rats, or any of my many past ones holding still enough to pierce. Let along do a jewelry change on.
Agree With #61. It just doesn’t bother me. people do so much more then that and i honestly dont see how that i so cruel. what a hell i’ve done the same to my cat ( but i didn’t pierce him actually.one day i just noticed that my cat was bitten in the ear probably in the fight. so it had a perfect hole at the top of his left ear. so i decided to put a ring through it. he never even noticed it.)
Number 59 – all those things you mention as worse are illegal in *civilised* countries. :o/
Shannon, Congrats on being so accurate!
I think people suffer more from this than the (this) animal itself. morality is something that will hunt us and us alone while the individual will adjust and live on..
This bothers me.
number 1 said it; just because you can doesnt mean you should! tagging cows and such like is pretty much for their own good, but piercing a rats ear simply because you can borders on cruelty – i’m disturbed by the fact the person did it. did they suddenly decide to shove a piercing in their pet rats ear…for what purpose? if so… where will they stop or draw the line?
I love rats and I’m outraged.
I don’t belive that this one “don’t even notice”… Rat’s ears are very sensitive…
and i need to add @ number 12: the ID tattoos are done under anaesthetic to reduce stress to the animal, ID chips are inserted under a layer of fat in the animals neck that is barely felt and never causes issues to the animal afterwards.
piercing a babies ears is, in my opinion, wrong. i realise some religions and belief systems pierce their childrens ears after a few weeks of being born…i accept this but it doesn’t mean i agree.
an animal cannot tell you directly, if it is in discomfort or pain – we have to work it out from whines, yaps, meows, scratches and other such.
tagging / piercing / tattooing an animal for any other reason than ID or health is, i believe animal cruelty.
[/end rant – for now]
…could be worse, at least he’s not being used for scientific research. That said, i still don’t agree with what’s been done here. But there are worse animal mods that we generally wouldn’t bat an eyelid at.
I really don’t see the huge deal in this. I don’t see the rat suffering, I’ve seen my cat’s have CHUNKS ripped out of their ears, and they act like nothing has happened. I think the big issue with a lot of ‘hardcore’ animal lovers is that they don’t realize, animals are not the same as humans. I doubt the rat even acknowledges it’s there. In the case it did it might consider it a mild irritant and it would’ve been long gone by now(rats are awesome at getting things off their bodies, regardless of if they have to lose some body tissue)
Anyone who’s ever had rats, knows this is bound to go wrong at some point.
1. Rats are social animals. They groom eachother, they play together, sometimes they fight or chase eachother. Other rats might be very interested in the foreign object. So many situations in which severe damage can be done to this poor rat’s ear.
2. Rats are not very clean. They often lie in their own pee or poo and I can see how a pierced ear can become horribly infected. There’s just no way you can keep this clean.
3. Rats groom themselves as well. He could get it caught or just tear it out himself.
I don’t want to join in on the whole right/wrong-discussion… But from a rat owner’s point of view, this is a huge risk to take, one you should not put your animal through.
Modifying an animal for any other reason than health or ID purposes is cruel.
#77 – Rats are actually very clean creatures, I have never owned or heard of a rat that would willingly lie in its own excrement. However, you do raise a valid point about aftercare.
Lix, my own rats would very often have poo on their feet from just stepping in it, or smell of pee. Sometimes they leave tiny droplets of urine on eachother (to mark the other rat), so while rats do like being clean, they don’t always succeed in it!
Haha, cool. I’d totally give my dog an ear piercing. Just afraid that when he scratches his ear, it’ll snag on his foot and rip off. But still, looks rad!
I haven’t read all the posts on this but as a vegan I can say I disagee with this for the reasons I imagine have already been mentioned (e.g. consent, infection, tearing etc) but on the other hand there are much bigger problems in the way of animal liberation than someone piercing a rat’s ear. The issues of factory farming, killing animals for the pleasure of human tastebuds, animal testing and such are far greater issues to be debated than this. However it is obviously still wrong.
anabot: I didn’t mean to arouse a hostile reaction. I agree that your comment was civil. I apologize to you and to anyone else who disagrees with what I said. This is not the forum for that discussion (I know that I brought it up).
The choices people choose for their diet fascinates me, and I am well aware that I also participate daily in our cruel system. My comment was meant to bring up the point that vegetables and a vegetarian (or even vegan) diet can be (directly or indirectly) harmful to creatures everywhere. That’s all.
PS: muffins rock.
if you are not a vegan, you have absolutely no right to bitch about this while sucking down your mickey d’s.
Not read all the comments, but #42 – If you look at statistics, it takes a LOT more energy, land, water and grain to feed animals than it does to make vegetables. Plus I’m guessing even if you eat meat you eat carrots too :p and what does the pig eat before it dies? If you want an argument for eating meat, talking about the environment is NOT the best way about it. Theres no other reason to eat meat other than enjoying the taste, face it. Fine if you do, but don’t try and justify it by saying vegetarians kill the environment more because they don’t
ANYWAY!
How the hell did this even heal? I’m surprised the rat hasnt tried to yank it off! (and with that thin gauge it’d probably come straight out)
I think “theres bigger problems” is a pretty shitty attitude to have towards anything in life. Yeah theres bigger problems than some idiot shoving a needle through a rat, but that doesn’t mean this rat deserves it or hasn’t suffered from it.
disclaimer first, the picture isn’t loading for me, but i think i get the drift.
75, i couldn’t agree more. having watched rodents under anaesthesia have their live organs removed (and much worse), not to mention the practices of declawing, involuntary castration/neutering and tail docking all mentioned above (let alone blood sport and other severe animal cruelty), in the scheme of things this just doesn’t seem like something worth getting outraged about. yeah, it probably wasn’t the nicest of things to do to your pet, and you possibly inflicted more long term pain than you realize, but compared to “routine” procedures performed by pet owners on a daily basis, never mind research labs, it’s really not that severe.
As a rat lover and breeder I find the fact that someone could do this to the poor little blighter
If I saw this at someone’s house I’d smack them in the mouth and take the rat off them.
Idiots. Why the hell would you pierce a rat or any other animal for that matter. I’m just going to leave my comment at that before i start ranting about how obviously stupid the owner is.
Rats need to be kept in a MINIMUM of pairs, preferably more. I have 10 boys in one cage, and I can tell you that they will attempt to remove any foreign body from their cage mates via grooming.
Unless this rat lives alone, which is just as cruel as the piercing itself, it runs a huge risk of the other rats pulling this out.
Also, rats scratch their ears as part of their daily grooming ritual, super fast as well. Its highly likely he would catch a claw on this and yank it.
Its just sick. The epitome of people who get pets just as accessories or living toys.
Blurgh.
Thats just mean 🙁 imagine he accidentally ripped it out whilst having a scratch or a clean? The rat might swallow it as well, and choke and die. 🙁
popaver: thanks for the response, it made my morning that you’re a cool human 🙂 muffins are indeed amazing, i’m schooling up to be a baker.
Just because worse exists doesn’t mean it’s wrong to feel disgusted by much less, and does not make the less any more acceptable.
Poor rattie muffin 🙁
I think it’s terrible… enough said.
I feel horrible for the rat and would honestly love to slap the person who did it. Its just so not beneficial….
Would you want someone else to throw a needle through you without your consent… probably not!
I don’t have time to read all these comments. I’m maybe the only one who doesn’t really care about this, am I? Honestly, it’s just a small little prick for the rat. Someone stated
“You wouldn’t pierce a humans ear without their permission would you?”
Too bad people do this all the time. At least the rat has a good home in someones house and not a snakes stomach. CHILL.
Also “what if the rat accidentally ripped it out”
a rat could accidentally scratch itself with its nails and have the same effect. its not anything bad in my opinion. animals get slaughtered everyday for humans want, why cant someone pierce a rat for their own “want”?
Just because worse things happen to animals doesn’t make this okay.
Although they are not the same at all and I’m not comparing the two what-so-ever, would you say that a woman getting slapped around a little bit is okay since there are people dying every day from violent crimes?
That is fucking sick rats scratch their ears all the time I have 7 and they have enough issues with health problems so this ass is causing more.
I love body modification and all but this angers me because unlike humans, animals can’t state an opinion for themselves the rat had no choice in this, and body modification is all about choice. I have modifications myself but I would NEVER dare modify any of my animals. 🙁
That’s not “tiny” jewelry, either. I’m coming down firmly on the “Come on dude, that’s just stupid.” side of this. Poor fragile rat ears.