The very concept of pets is unethical towards animals.
The classic example is wild dogs to work dogs to pet dogs. I think this is healthy and remains symbiotic.
And the classic example of excess is all the sad purebred dogs, developed by bad people to accentuate some aesthetic values with inadequate regard for the (sometimes life-long) pain and discomfort caused by side effects of the genetic selection.
Agreed on birds though. They are pretty and entertaining, but how can it not be cruel to cage a bird?
Do all those African Grays who amuse and seem to enjoy their humans really just suffer from Stockholm Syndrome?
I don't know, but I don't trust that the humans have thought about it in a non self-serving way.
And don't get me started on zoos... :(
I can’t stand when I see “my fur baby is lost!” when describing the escape of large adult social dog. No, that dog knows how to get home. It escaped its prison.
That dog may know how to get home initially and enjoys the freedom having slipped the leash and exploring. But there's no guarantee that when the dog decides it would like to get home that it can, nor is it making an informed decision about the risks that it faces.
As soon as they saw our faces over the wall they'd follow us to an opening or the gate and then find their way home.
Ultimately, one of them met an untimely end from some stray dogs. But that's life.
Dogs like to be with people. Even free-roaming street dogs will usually live in close proximity to people. A well-cared for household dog or cat is one of the most happy, pampered beings who ever lived, often cared for at a level akin to human children.
Absolutist anti-pet thinking is how PETA ends up euthanizing 97% of the pets it receives at its shelter.
Dog domestication is generally thought to be an example of commensalism, and potentially mutualism. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.6623... In other words, it only happened in the first place because a group of wolves benefited from association with people. Pleistocene hunter-gatherers did not have the physical ability to force a grown wolf to be captive if it did not want to be.
If your dog wanted to run away it probably had a shitty life.
I know some well-trained dogs that will still gleefully run away and explore the woods if given the chance... and then return sheepishly 20-30 minutes later. If they ever do get lost, or someone else "finds" them, etc, it'll be a tragedy.
They also tend to come back covered in thorns, with cut-up paws, etc, etc.
Not a feedlot nextdoor to OP.
They have to be on guard every single second because something might eat them. If they get injured, that is an absolute death sentence. There is no safety net. They have to weather harsh weather conditions. They are at risk for being eaten alive and enduring a slow agonizing painful death by other animals that do not care one iota about their well-being
At least in captivity they are safe. I don’t see how we as humans are all that different in how most of us choose to live our lives
An equivalent comparison would be jailing all humans to keep them safe from each other. Humans having a home for occasional safety from environmental hazards is not the same as free-flying birds being caged in isolation forever.
Keeping other life captive for your own sporadic amusement is pathologically self-centered.
I’d say that it is sometimes, but it gets complicated fast.
Do chicken feel that being the most successful bird in the planet is unfair?