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Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

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Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#121

Post by samus »

troupo wrote: post #109
samus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since they have been doing it for 15 years, they now presumably have structures and processes in place to keep up with sterilizing more dogs. They also had lots of volunteers helping. If this keeps going, it's probably manageable in the future.

The thing is, you don't want to keep sterilizing 10k dogs a year indefinitely.

If it's a step down from 100k, it's progress! Also, the numbers have been decreasing for a long time already, else Bhutan couldn't conclude that they are done.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#122

Post by cheschire »

stef25 wrote: post #100

Quite the achievement. Many years ago on a Thai beach there were a few stray dogs and the locals said one was called "Balls" because he was the only one that they couldn't sterilize. Every time the vet arrived Balls would smell him a mile away and just bolt, disappearing for a few hours.

It's sunrise and a vet stands at the edge of a parking lot, at the top of a short flight of stairs leading down to the beach below. Off in the distance a few hundred meters away, a dog jogs off down the empty beach. The vet, arms hanging by his side and feeling dejected, simply says "Balls..." and turns away.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#123

Post by samus »

saalweachter wrote: post #105
rantallion wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine sterilising the ones you've caught is the easy part. How do you actually catch them all though? They claim to have sterilised 150000 dogs. At the beginning of the programme, you could reasonably assume that every stray dog you see needs to be processed. Later on in the programme, you'll be releasing a lot of dogs that have already been processed, which seems like a lot more effort for the last 10% compared…

Yes and no. In these programs it is standard to mark the animal in some way. In NYC, for instance, you clip the top of one ear of a cat after it's been processed. So you catch ten animals, immediately let go any ones that have been marked, process the last one or two -- still more effort to catch, but less effort to treat.

They could just not bother to catch them if they see ones with clipped ears. Also, catching them might be quite simple if you attract them with treats and treat them decently.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#124

Post by autoexec »

okasaki wrote: post #93
t-3 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a government had a goal to prevent humans from reproducing and forcibly sterilized and cynically used the population they could reach to pressure and control the population they couldn't, it would be called genocide.

Plenty of people won't have or will delay having children because they can't find stable housing.

A lot of families around the world aren't able to have the number of children they'd prefer to have. There's a lot of reasons for it many of which come down to people not having enough money for a family. Lack of affordable housing and childcare are big ones. Uncertainty about the security of our future is another. If a government did want to prevent humans from reproducing, they've got a pretty good head start and plenty of examples of what to do more of.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#125

Post by blackle »

cheschire wrote: post #122
stef25 wrote: post #100

Quite the achievement. Many years ago on a Thai beach there were a few stray dogs and the locals said one was called "Balls" because he was the only one that they couldn't sterilize. Every time the vet arrived Balls would smell him a mile away and just bolt, disappearing for a few hours.

It's sunrise and a vet stands at the edge of a parking lot, at the top of a short flight of stairs leading down to the beach below. Off in the distance a few hundred meters away, a dog jogs off down the empty beach. The vet, arms hanging by his side and feeling dejected, simply says "Balls..." and turns away.

The sound effect of a Disco Elysium skill chimed in my head when I read this

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#126

Post by Propelloni »

Adverblessly wrote: post #118
Propelloni wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This number seems a little bit off. About 900 million pigs are slaughtered in Asia per year [1] That's 2.5 million dead pigs a day. Since we need live animals to breed more for killing them and it takes time before they are killed, this suggests that at any given time more than a billion pigs are alive in Asia. But good thing that we sterilized those 150000 dogs, anything else would have been inhumane [2] [1] https:/…

According to a random page I found online, pigs are typically slaughtered at 5-6 months old, so assuming a stable population, you'd expect the number of living pigs (raised for slaughter) at any time to be 42%-50% of the yearly amount, so 375,000,000 - 450,000,000 going purely off of your 900,000,000 figure, making 500,000,000 a reasonable estimate, no?

Wow, that is sooner than I expected. I was thinking along the lines of 12 month and thought, nah, that's too quick. Thank you!

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#127

Post by dncornholio »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #111
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though in certain Buddhist countries animals get slaughtered for food, taking lives of animals is a big thing in Buddhism. There is fundamentally no difference between animal consciousness and human in the buddhist view. But to take it to a human level: you dont see a difference in (chemical) castration of people with mental disability and killing them?

taking lives of animals is a big thing in Buddhism How do explain (South) Korea and Japan that eat plenty of meat and have a Buddhist majority? Sri Lanka also has lots of Buddhists, and also eats lots of meat. This seems like nonsense to me.

Animal welfare is a thing in Buddhism though. India has animal welfare in their constitution. Buddhism is also the only religion that notes animal rights.

I think you can compare it with Christians, there are plenty of sinners.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#128

Post by autoexec »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #111
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though in certain Buddhist countries animals get slaughtered for food, taking lives of animals is a big thing in Buddhism. There is fundamentally no difference between animal consciousness and human in the buddhist view. But to take it to a human level: you dont see a difference in (chemical) castration of people with mental disability and killing them?

taking lives of animals is a big thing in Buddhism How do explain (South) Korea and Japan that eat plenty of meat and have a Buddhist majority? Sri Lanka also has lots of Buddhists, and also eats lots of meat. This seems like nonsense to me.

The first precept of Buddhism is not to kill humans or animals. Not everybody is going to be crazy strict about it, but that core value of not taking life is there.

Personally, I eat meat too, and I'm also not a huge fan of needlessly killing dogs, and I'm not even Buddhist! I feel like there's a middle ground where I can care about animals, respect life, and also have a cheeseburger. I'm certain some people will find that to be hypocritical, but it's really not a huge gotcha to me.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#129

Post by samus »

saalweachter wrote: post #102
samus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they are the offspring of dogs that escaped or were abandoned long ago. Probably they also took over the population of any related species they can interbreed with.

That's an interesting historical and semantic question. So there may not be any such thing as a "wild pigeon". Pigeons were domesticated so long and widely that all modern pigeons in the wild may be the feral descendants of ancient domesticated pigeons. But we still view modern pigeons as just a thing that exists out in the world. If street dogs have been a self-sustaining population for long enough does that change…

IMHO, the crucial point is whether they are populations that were wild all along (never domesticated) or whether they wholly originate from domestic dogs. But that's hard to say since domesticated dogs might have taken over the first group. Similar to how modern humans are hypothesized to have supplanted Neanderthals and other pockets of ancient human populations.

Re: Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated

#130

Post by dncornholio »

zmgsabst wrote: post #88
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though in certain Buddhist countries animals get slaughtered for food, taking lives of animals is a big thing in Buddhism. There is fundamentally no difference between animal consciousness and human in the buddhist view. But to take it to a human level: you dont see a difference in (chemical) castration of people with mental disability and killing them?

Why is forcibly sterilizing animals better than forcibly sterilizing humans, in such a view? Or in their own framework, did Bhutan just engage in genocide against an unwanted demographic?

If we believe that animals were created by someone for men, it would follow that men were also created for animals since some animals do eat human flesh.
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