Except, perhaps, when the pet is an 18-foot long, 300 pound snake which thinks a 3 year old looks tender and tasty. The kid is alright, although he was bitten and almost crushed, but sadly the snake succumbed to 17 stab wounds inflicted by the mother.
I do have to wonder, though, about parents who keep a carnivore twice the size of an adult human being in the house with a small child. It seems rather irresponsible and cruel to me.
What could possibly go wrong..
We should coax Gary Larson out of retirement to do a special Far Side for this.
Running hot water over a constrictor will usually result it in immediatley releasing. This is why zoos always have a hot water hose in the reptile house!
I was rooting for the snake.
17 stab wounds seems to work as well as a hot water hose.
I did not know that. Well, I’ve learned my one new thing for the day.
That’s inhumane to the child and to the snake, obviously.
Some years back I remember reading a news story about this couple who used to take their boa constrictor to bed with them every night, as if it were a dog. Then one night the snake wrapped itself around the husband’s neck, and firemen had to come and cut off the snake’s head to rescue the man. Seemed to me it would have been more fair to cut off the man’s head to save the snake.
and another animal dies from human stupidity. at least this time no children died, for a change. we really need a vaccination against stupidity, that stuff is deadly, pandemic, and affects other species as well
:-/
Oh, no, PZ, they’re really quite gentle.
Heh. I like this part from the story: “…authorities are still deciding whether or not to file child endangerment charges against the 3-year-old’s mother.”
Duh.
Reminds me of that Gary Larson panel where a kid riding a tricycle almost goes into an in-home snake pit.
Willful ignorance of an animal’s predatorial instincts leading to its death due to self defense from the offending human should be considered a form of animal cruelty.
As a snake owner myself it really makes me angry when people are complete morons and don’t respect the fact that a pet reptile is not a dog or a cat, they are still basically wild animals. While the reticulated python (wrongly identified as “tiger python in the article) is generally fairly docile it can still be unpredictable if it is frightened or hungry. I’m wondering if they had neglected to feed it for a while.
Idiots.
I like how the python gets heavier at each reference in the story.
By the end I’m expecting a “30 metres long, 5 tonne snake”…
BTW the snake wouldn’t have been 300lb from the (admittedly small) photos on the reference you gave. Maybe 150 at most. It has tragedy written all over it.
– It was temporary storage for the snake, and therefore might not have been as secure as it should have been. Also the snake may have been somewhat more jumpy then normal.
– The snake was euthanised (probably needlessly) due to the stab wounds, it didn’t die of the stab wounds. Snakes can be extremely resilient that way.
Poor python :(
my kids loves playing with the pet badger … heyuk.
Keeping a 300lbs snake in the same house as a defenseless 3yo … That’s smart.
Poor snake. Dumb parents should be kicked a few times. Too bad the snake died for being, well, a snake with snake-ish instincts. Animals shouldn’t die for being what they are. (Well, nothing should, really.)
Jesus Haploid Tap-Dancing Christ. What kind of an idiot would keep an animal like that where it could possibly get close to a child?
These people are obviously far too irresponsible to have custody of a goldfish, let alone a child.
-jcr
@Bumdark
Except for bears, godless killing machines as they are.
The mother is a near Darwin Award winner. 3-year old progeny could have been eliminated from the gene pool.
I keep no pets higher on the food chain than me. Well, I don’t knowingly keep them.
I agree!!! Poor snake.
But I would disagree with Jason. On average, retics, especially large ones, are well known for such behavior.
A guy I know in Texas was working at a research center which included taking care of a 16-foot retic and was instructed not to enter the room the snake was kept in while he was alone – which he ignored because he thought he knew snakes, and almost died in doing so.
He was heard yelling and when he was found the snake had two wraps around him, and both ends wrapped around support beams … Lucky fella.
If there was any justice they would have fed the parents to the snake. The kid would be much better off anyhow.
BTW, this Larson cartoon is good too:
http://bigrab.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/farside2.jpg
Cats generally think they’re higher on the food chain than you are. After personal experience I no longer keep pets that my other pets consider food. My poor gerbil ended up eaten by the cat. I don’t have kids but if I did I absolutely would keep any pet that might consider them food, it’s much easier to replace a gerbil.
I think the mom should be charged with child endangerment and animal cruelty.
That really should say that I wouldn’t keep pets that think my kids are food. Maybe that’s further proof that I shouldn’t ever have any.
@Velt #12-
I like how the python gets heavier at each reference in the story.
There might be an obvious reason for that. Neighbors should check for missing kids and pets.
An animal cruelty charge would be punishing her for saving her child. A child endangerment charge would be punishing her for allowing this situation to occur. In a sane world, only one of these charges goes to court. However, the good folks here at pharyngula do such a fine job of dehumanizing idiots that I’ll be surprised if anyone agrees with me on which one it is.
which is why BOTH charges apply. Why should she get away with being DOUBLY stupid?
And the replacement pet will be? $100 says, its a staffy/bull terrier X with a swastika tattooed on its forehead.
Perhaps pharygulists should bury him and mourn it for several weeks.
Darwinism with it’s “struggle for live” is the same naturalistic nonsense as marxism with it’s “class struggle”. Sometimes there is such “struggle”, but it has nothing to do with creative evolution. Natural selection is a conservative force which only removes extremities. Those who believe in “natural selection & random mutation” neodarwinian drivel are pretty mislead. Pathetic
neodarwinian blogs like “Pharyngula” do not change the reality.
…but sadly the snake succumbed to 17 stab wounds inflicted by the mother…???
Perhaps pharygulists should bury him and mourn it for several weeks.
Darwinism with it’s “struggle for live” is the same naturalistic nonsense as marxism with it’s “class struggle”. Sometimes there is such “struggle”, but it has nothing to do with creative evolution. Natural selection is a conservative force which only removes extremities. Those who believe in “natural selection & random mutation” neodarwinian drivel are pretty mislead. Pathetic
neodarwinian blogs like “Pharyngula” do not change the reality.
Congratulations, you’re an idiot. Does it come naturally to you or did you have to work on it?
This story reminds me of people who own Pit Bulls. When the Pit Bull kills one of the children living in the neighborhood, the dog owner always blames the dead child. I won’t say what I think should be done to these people.
You get a pet you are responsible for it’s well being, especially when the animal is one which is wild and likely to act on it’s instincts. Therefore this woman did commit animal cruelty by putting the animal in a situation in which it had to be killed, no different from someone who trains their dog to be vicious and it has to be put down for attacking someone.
doesn’t: I can’t even make out what your point is. Trolls aren’t amusing when they aren’t coherent.
JIM:
Your judgment is seriously damaged by the naturalistic myth called (neo)darwinism. Thre is no help for you. Your opinions regarding “idiocy” are of no value. Because it is you who is cretinous.
@MIKE
So how do you propose we punish the woman for keeping such a dangerous creature anywhere near her toddler?
Apparently the trolls just learned a new slogan. “Struggle for life” must be the only three words they could understand from the writings of Karl Marx.
@doesnot
Pardon me, while I fetch my trusty tinfoil hat. My head can only stand so much brainfucking in the face of such overwhelming stupid.
BobC: I know exactly what you mean. I have dwarf goats and my former neighbors had an aggressive pit bull. I love dogs and would never hurt one if I can help it but I came close to shooting that dog and would have if animal control hadn’t been pretty prompt in responding to my call.
He didn’t hurt my goats but that was luck and the fact that my goats have big horns and fight back, they knocked him out the one time he managed to get into the pasture ( I do admit that was incredibly funny but that was also the day I called animal control).
…@MIKE
So how do you propose we punish the woman for keeping such a dangerous creature anywhere near her toddler?
…
Perhaps you should send her to some neodarwinian-drivel course led by pharyngulists. That is something I call punishment and real torture!
doesnt/doesnot
Do you know what you are? A dog-turd stuck to our shoes, stinking up our house. Fuck off back to the sandbox where your barely coherent, dribbling idiocy is considered impactful, you pathetic, stupid sack of shit.
Posted by: Twin-Skies | January 23, 2009
@doesnot
Pardon me, while I fetch my trusty tinfoil hat. My head can only stand so much brainfucking in the face of such overwhelming stupid.
Congratulations Twin-Skies! Our back influence has rubbed off on you. ‘sniff’ That was nice.
Running hot water on them gets them to release. Good to know.
Any chance if I wet myself while he is squeezing the life out of me it will have the same effect? I’m pretty sure under pressure I could muster up an impressive stream.
Is this why all the snake guys I know are heavily into beer? Getting their beer on as a safety measure. Drinking on duty … why, no … Just following OSHA rules that say I have to have a twelve pack on board before playing with large our scaly friends. Safety foist.
Drinking heavily; it isn’t just recreation, its a job requirement.
Either the parents were so mentally incompetent as to require institutionalization, or they were aware that keeping a large predatory snake in the house was likely to produce such a situation. They are as guilty of animal cruelty as a person who cuts the brake lines of a neighbor’s car and precipitates a fatal accident is of murder.
Which in turn reminds me of the vanishingly small number of people who have any meaningful concept of what a “pit bull” actually is, having conceptualized them as furry, square-headed velociraptors as intepreted by Randall Munroe.
Wildlifer:
The normal rule is a simple one. You can handle any sized snake with 2 people, but only if you are willing to kill it, one handles the other stands back with a weapon. Otherwise one for the first 2m and an extra one for each metre past that means you should have enough strength to convince the snake to not kill someone.
18 foot would be about 5 people to handle safely.
What is it with some people? Is parental supervision such a hard concept? I have two very sweet dogs, but I don’t rely on that around my young child, it’s just not worth it.
Also, “doesn’t?” The fact that you’re masturbating in public in a thread about an injured child and a cruelly slaughtered animal ought to give you pause.
I suppose his voluntary presence here means doesn’t is into S&M…
That is Neo-Darwinism? A revised edition of ToE perhaps, or some new theory that stipulates we’re all evolved from Keanu Reeves?
I’ve known some very nice pit bulls, my 85 year old grandmother has a pit bull/lab mix. Raise them right and they are wonderful dogs. However a good number of the people who think they are “square headed velociraptors” own them for that very reason and raise them to be aggressive which isn’t difficult in dogs which were originally bred for fighting. I still wouldn’t have one in a home with kids anymore than I would a number of other dogs like dalmations and chows because certain breeds don’t mix well with kids.
@24 MIKE
The animal cruelty charge comes not from killing the poor beast, but for allowing it, a wild animal, to get into a situation that would necessitate its death. Considering the ‘hot water hose’ solution, the death might not have been necessary so she is also possibly guilty of not informing herself of the ways to subdue a wild animal she had in her home. All these were in effect before the snake even gone near her child.
I often wonder what idiots think about. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.
Spellchecked: “What is Neo-Darwinism”?
I agree the woman is an idiot. Absolutely. I even agree she should face child endangerment charges. But this thread is reeking of blood-lust at the moment. This is a sad occurrence, it’s terrible. Joking about feeding the woman to the snake, or cutting off an ignorant pet owner’s head is just, well… …reactionary rubbish. The woman should get some community service, keep her kid, and we should ensure that people know enough about the world that they don’t keep bloody pythons around three-year-olds.
Reminds me of that Cow & Chicken episode with the pet anaconda named “Fluffy”:
http://vbox7.com/play:184319df
This kind of ignorance is a premeditated crime. It simply is not possible for a mentally competent adult to honestly be this wrong.
I repeat: either she requires institutionalization, or she knew what she was doing.
Doesn’t / Does not;
I have a PhD in biology, 4 years post-doctoral experience, several papers and even a book chapter. I know evolution to be true – the evidence for it is absolutely overwhelming. Am I a “fool” too?
Question; if people who understand and believe evolution to be the best currently available theory explaining the diversity of life on earth are such fools, why do they routinely hand creationists their asses when it comes to debates?
Hmmm… Out of nearly 50 posts only two people said anything about violence to the mom, and one only said she should be kicked. The other was about whether it woudl be fairer to cut off the snakes head or the head of the human who was dumb enough to sleep with it in his bed, not the mom in this story. Not saying they’re responses are right just that it’s only a very small number of posters.
The rest of the responses involving punishment were all related to what criminal charges she should face, a very reasonable topic considering she nearly got her child killed. I honestly don’t think she should keep her child, maybe if she takes and passes some parenting classes but not until then.
Do you know what a concern troll is?
I really need to deal with this insomnia and get some sleep instead of writing comments.
Eeep! Considering the number of typos in my last comment I’m off to take something to help me sleep. Goodnight.
This one hits all the stereotypes: the situation, the snake, the “advice”, etc. Snakes in the news typically gain 1/3 in length and 2-3x in weight, but it’s plenty big enough to be beyond manageable even for an adult. The strike-and-constrict response is hardwired, as is wrapping onto anything still free that is struggling. Hot water anywhere short of scalding the snake (and prey) is not going to do much of anything. Pythons have to be unwound from the tail forward, and you need one determined person for each 3-4′ of length.
It is much better to think first and avoid getting into such a pickle, but that’s an uncommon feat for most of the hoseheads who end up with large pythons.
…and there’s your problem.
How do you plan to accomplish this? If the parents didn’t manage to figure out the whole giant fucking snake thing without supervision, how long, exactly, would the list of explicit “don’ts” have to be?
…
4,325,297) Don’t allow small children to play on the freeway
4,325,298) Methamphetamine is not suitable for young children
4,325,299) Don’t feed your children bleach
…
and so on.
“Yes, the police said he fell down an elevator shaft. Onto some bullets.”
@Planeten
I think I vaguely remember that episode. The Snake kept eating chicken and getting progressively larger. I suppose that is why in every reference to the story it gets bigger…
Someone better alert the ghostbusters, there is a ghost snake on the loose.
The parents I’ve known who kept big constrictors NEVER allowed their kids (or anyone else’s) around the snakes unsupervised or even when they were hungry (the snakes, not the kids, though hungry kids can be pretty dangerous). That mother should definitely be charged twice for endangering her child and failing to take proper care of the snake.
As someone who’s spent a fair amount of time teaching with and about snakes, I’d like to point out that, contrary to PZ’s statement and the overwrought imaginations of ophidiophobes, constrictors don’t crush their prey. They squeeze only to the point of suffocation, not pulverization. A snake that big might be able to crack a rib or two on a 3-year-old child but could literally crush him only if it fell on him.
Yet more evidence that humans weren’t intelligently designed. If they had been, fertility would require physical as well as intellectual maturity. Makes more sense than passing laws or having to wear a little rubber sleeve to bypass the system.
Similar story: in the early ’90’s our neighbors had a 6 to 8 foot python (I have a picture of it draped across the shoulders of all three of my kids.) They also had twin infant girls only a few months old.
One day the woman came over asking if anyone had seen their snake. They couldn’t find it in their house. A few hours later they did find it…between the mattress and box spring of the crib where the twin girls slept.
Reptiles don’t have the brain capacity to “cuddle” with people. It’s akin to leaving loaded guns around kids…or nutjobs.
American pit bulls score an 84.3% on the universal dog temperament test (ATTS). Golden retrievers score an 84.2%.
Did you ever wonder what you have to do to such sweet dogs to make them violent? No? Pits just ‘bred to be killers’?
Search my blog. Educate yourself. Cause right now you sound like a Creationist bitching about the evils of evolution.
I have kept various snakes for the last 12 years, from garter snakes to a rescued reticulated python that was about 18 feet and definitely 200 lbs (weighed at the vet’s office on the way home), and she hadn’t eaten in at least 3 weeks, and was not overfed like many large snakes are.
The best way I know to get any snake to let go of what it is trying to kill/eat, is rubbing alcohol in the face. I keep a small spray bottle of it handy when feeding all my snakes, which are all small to medium size now, in case of stupid feeding errors. When I had a stupid feeding error with another reticulated python (I unthinkingly didn’t follow the structure of the feeding sessions that we had established) and had a 15-foot about 60 pound retic with her teeth firmly clenched in my knee, a spray of alcohol made her let go within seconds.
Pythons in particular seem to go into a “feeding mode” almost comparable to a shark’s feeding frenzy, but rubbing alcohol seems to be one of the best ways to pull them out of it.
Poor snake.
I hope that the mother will get both a Darwin Award honourable mention *and* charged with animal cruelty…
This post has been great, if for no other reason than if someone finds themselves in the grasp of a python I’ll be able to provide them with several options as to how to encourage it to let go.
I can’t wait for a party where this comes in handy!
For some reason, I found this part of the article, er, somewhat double-entendric:
(“These are the things I think about when I’m at home alone and the lights go out…”)
I’m sorry to disillusion so many people, but it is in fact perfectly possible for people not to have a clue – about snakes or anything else. I witnessed parents sending their child to pet a sleeping sea lion so they could get a good picture; I was not in time to prevent the sea lion from laying the kid’s arm open before hitting the water. And don’t get me started on the ones that thing Yogi Bear is a documentary. Even Gary Larson had to be attacked by his snake before realizing that it was not a “pet”, just an animal he was keeping inside his apartment. Education is the answer – you shouldn’t be able to buy a constrictor without being made aware of the danger. As it is, all you need is the money.
4,325,300) Don’t let your 3 year old smoke:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/23/child-smoker-merthyr
Now, my question is: how the flying fig does a regular person gets a dangerous animal? Is it even legal to keep constrictors as pets? And if so, why?
Lol, parenting at its finest!!
to #19 wildlifer
I remember reading in one of Gerald Durrell’s books about an African python (not sure what kind) they had in the early days of Jersey Zoo. Nobody was allowed in with this snake unless in a group of 3 or more. One evening GD heard cries for help and went to find the new, overconfident keeper – who knew all about snakes – wrapped up in several coils of python with a grip on the head. GD took the tail and tried to unwind him but ended up getting wrapped in the coils he was unwrapping and the two of them had to stand there for an hour or two, trying to stop the python inching its coils up to their chests, calling for help until a third pair of hands finally came along. Interesting that he didn’t blame anything but their own overconfidence for this near miss.
..@MIKE
Maybe they could send her down to Florida and we could release her into the Everglades and let her serve as food for the breeding population of Burmese pythons. I’m sure our native alligators would be most appreciative…
Where’s Samuel Jackson when you need him?
No one has mentioned how traumatized the child must be. To be wrapped up by the snake with your mother screaming and stabbing to try and free you? Nightmares for a loooong time……
ERV (#64) wrote (about pit bulls): Search my blog. Educate yourself.
Hello ERV, I frequently enjoy lurking on your excellent blog, so I’m sorry you didn’t like my comments about pit bulls.
I did search for pit bulls on your blog, and I found this: “So… You are at least twice as likely (more like 4 times as likely) to be struck by lighting, as you are to be killed by a pit bull.”
That makes sense because I never go anywhere near pit bulls, and I would never live in a neighborhood that had a pit bull.
Are most pit bulls “sweet dogs” and are most owners of pit bulls very responsible? I suppose so, but why should a parent with a small child risk losing that child to the small minority of pit bulls who like to eat little children? When I last read a story about a child who survived a pit bull attack but whose life was permanently ruined by it, the owner said his pit bull was a sweet dog who never harmed anyone before, therefore it was the child’s fault.
I respect your love for pit bulls, and I will continue to read your wonderful blog, but I think I will continue avoiding going near those sweet dogs just in case I accidently do something wrong and get attacked because it was my fault.
There is no such thing as extremely dangerous ‘pets’
Although there are such things as extremely dangerous owners!
In Blighty there has been a whole spate of kiddie fatalities by being mauled to death the family ‘pet’…usually a pit bull terrier or crosses there of!
Unfortunately for a long while owners could only be fined for failure to control and their defence was invariably…
‘ it was the child to blame…the kid should not have started to run…’
‘ or the kid should not have attempted to stroke the animal while it was feeding’
Or ‘the kid got in between the bitch and the bitches puppies’
And similar pieces of arcane inanity.
Last few years folks have been jailed but not for long and never for life!
Most of the owners of these animals think it displays a certain amount of street cred!
It used to be parenting a child that showed that…now it has moved on to owning an animal that can kill a child as being awesome and shows just what a grown up well rounded individual such an owner is!
All it really shows is that the law…certainly in Blighty…needs slightly more clout then the current dangerous animals act…!
A licensing law might be better implemented but is has difficulties in deciding what dog breed is more dangerous then what other dog breed…or which snake is potentially more lethal then another
Thing is you can train an animal that is the bottom line…more or less get a response from it…but it does not matter what the breed or type or genus the animal is…you cannot train the owner…and out of the relationship it is the invariably the owner that requires the guiding boot!
It’s so unfortunate when this happens, because invariably all people will hear is “giant snake almost kills kid.” They won’t hear about any of the other details, i.e. the fact that the kid could have been harassing the snake until it bit out of fear.
I’ve met some amazing herp keepers, but unfortunately I’ve met far too many people who don’t give the animals the respect they deserve. When you’re working with an animal that could severely harm you if the conditions were right, you need to take precautions and be prepared. Lots of schmoes around here just want them a big-ass snake, and ultimately it’s the animals that pay for the humans’ ignorance.
We’d love to have a Burm, but it’s just not a possibility for us. Despite having a locked snake room and 10 years experience, accidents happen. With 3 cats and the prospect of children in the next few years, we’ll be sticking to colubrids.
@ #26 PaulB, #30 BobC, #36 Noadi, et al
My neighborhood came under attack from her herd of real velociraptors last year, and many babies were at risk. Luckily, my square-headed pit bull-looking dog bounded throughout the area taking up babies with her prehensile tail (making sure to cover little ears and eyes to try to decrease visual/auditory trauma) and taking out the velociraptor attackers. She even left a few unconscious on the street so that more research can be done in velociraptor repellent.
the mother should say the snake is her God so she can get off the hook in court like that wisconsin couple.
Does this mean I should consider getting rid of my pet bull shark?
WTF? What’s sad is you’re absolutely serious.
To put it more bluntly, people can be fucking stupid.
I lived in Jackson Hole, WY for the entire 90’s and every summer there was always a story about some idiot in Yellowstone or Grand teton who tried to set their kid on the back of a bison for a photo or wanted to get close to that moose for the perfect picture or ignored the signs about not leaving the paths through the geysers and mudpots or thought that you could get close to a bear with her cubs just because they were soooooooooooooooo cute.
People can be fucking stupid.
What’s so difficult to understand about that? Not all snakes are dangerous and few attack without provocation.
What is that reality?
#84:
Misread as “pit bull shark”. That would be taking testosterone-substitute pets to an absurd level, with or without frickin laser beams.
Moggie it has got to have laser beams, after all us evilutionists have a reputation to uphold :)
*thinks about breeding his bull shark with the neighbor’s pit bull and where to pick up a frickin high powered laser
I love dogs, but even a dog with very small kids can be a problem if it isn’t well trained. But an 18′ SNAKE loose in the house with a bite size morsel of a baby? Jeez.
Nice.
Everyone I know that owns a pit bull is a young white professional or student, as if that even makes your racist, classist statement ‘better’.
Being wary of strange dogs is rational. Your fear of pit bulls is irrational. You realize that, right? You realize that, like, 5 people every year are killed by pits in the US (if even that)? You realize that dog bite/maul statistics are not correlated at all to a specific breed? You realize that the media screams ‘PIT BULL’ no matter the breed of dog that bit, and never screams ‘PIT BULL’ when a dog saves a childs life?
People have irrational fears of spiders, bioterrorism attacks, yellow food, whatever. You arent alone. But you need to recognize the fact your fear is irrational and work on it, rather than trying to defend it (BUT DIZ ONE TUME A BAYBEH CHOKED ON CURN SO YELLOW FUD IS EVIL!). A good start would be volunteering at an animal shelter and actually, you know, meeting one of these dogs you are villainizing.
*87
‘Not all snakes are dangerous and few attack without provocation.’
That is very true…but how in Beelzebub’s knickerbockers does a 3 yr old child know that?
Some folks have ‘pets’ that they really should not have simple like so!
‘What’s so difficult to understand about that?’
As for the right Rev BDC and his pet bull shark I would suggest feeding it Creationist offal…administered often 4 or 5 times a day minimum…cos the meat is of rather anaemic…it has a tendency to fill the gut and lay it low for a day or so thus rendering it rather immobile!
It is a form of inducing a coma in Carcharhinus leucas!
But any religious zealot would do in case of paucity of quality Creationist meal…Rick Warren would bloat it alas…
Hmm…Rick Warren would bloat a pack of Tyrannosaurus rex…hey ho…that dude is just indigestible ;-)
Tracie at 81 said;
Personally, I would have said it was a 3 year old boy who was paying for it here, but that’s just me….
While the animal may have been provoked, I don’t see any evidence for that being the case. I dunno, maybe it’s just me, call me quaint and old fashioned if you like, but I rather like that evidence stuff when I’m apportioning blame….
Been there, done that, didnt work.
:(
Bush response: Hey, no one could have ever forseen that this could have ever, possibly have happened (smirk).
Fundy response: It was god’s will that the child was saved (ignoring for the momement that it was god’s will that caused it to look at the kid as snake chow).
Samuel L. Jackson’s response: goddamn motherf***in’ snakes!
Indiana Jones’ response: I HATE snakes!
authorities are still deciding whether or not to file child endangerment charges against the 3-year-old’s mother
This means that some reporter asked whether they were going to file child-endangerment charges, and the cop they asked, knowing this is a DA’s decision, said something like “maybe” or “the DA’s office is looking into this”. It doesn’t mean that the prosecutors have no idea or not whether it’s smart to keep a python and a toddler in the same home.
It’s unfortunate that stupidity isn’t painful to the stupid. It’s even more unfortunate how painful it is to the rest of us.
Snakes are not domesticated animals and to an 18 foot 300 pound python, a 3 year old human is nothing more than a meal. Regardless of what the child is doing.
Tracie: “the prospect of children in the next few years, we’ll be sticking to colubrids.”
My first thought was amazement. I’m from Oz, the thought of keeping a non-python == keeping a snake that can kill your children on the first strike. Then I remembered, the rest of the world has semi-poisonous snakes. :)
Andres Diplotti: “Now, my question is: how the flying fig does a regular person gets a dangerous animal? Is it even legal to keep constrictors as pets? And if so, why?”
Dangerous? I guess no person should own a cat, a dog, a rat, a guinea pig, a car, a kitchen knife, any power tools……
Legality depends on region obviously. Most places require some kind of registration for herps, especially the ones likely to be potentially dangerous or ones that might be at risk/endangered. For really dangerous ones (Australian poisonous snakes for example) also require training before a license can be obtained.
On the other hand a 80 kg monkey is a really dangerous animal to keep around. In some cities they have millions of them just wandering around. :)
It is probably legal to keep snakes in Argentina, the only pages I could find just recommended buying from a reputable dealer without mention of legal requirements.
This kind of stupid takes some effort–BUT, it pains me to say this, that kind of effort does frequently occur.
Could someone please explain what is going on with comments #79 and #93? It appears that one comment or the other has been edited so that they no longer match, or else that #93 has deliberately misquoted #79.
doesnot: If you think Marx and Darwin have anything to do with one another, then you’ve never read anything either of them wrote. Marx was a Hegelian trying but failing to escape that deterministic philosophy by moving the determining factor out of the realms of metaphysics and into the real world, Darwin essentially argued that those animals which live, breed wildly, and those which die, bizarrely enough, stay dead and don’t have as many kids. Given enough time, through simple inheritance, the descendants of those which live will come to predominate.
Darwin’s theory has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with “class struggle”, nothing to do with “materialism” beyond the fact that it is concerned with what can be observed and studied, not with the “soul” or “spirits”; it is a simple observation based on a lifetime of paying attention to animals and their descent. Darwin was dealing with the world as it actually was, Marx was trying to cram the world into an unrealistic, albeit interesting, complex, and humane, theory of existence-as-economics.
Instead of just taking people’s word on issues like this, you would be better served by actually reading the works in question and considering what they say for yourself. At the very least, you could read biographies of Darwin and Marx; that alone would disabuse you of your incorrect notions.
ERV wrote:
I agree that would be a good idea, but it’s much easier for me to just avoid going anywhere near pit bulls. That’s not difficult for me to do because the condominium community where I live does not permit any dogs at all. I like that rule very much. I never hear dogs barking. I never step in their shit. I never get bitten by a dog because I made some mistake near it.
I know many or most people love dogs, and that’s fine with me because they’re not allowed to bring their dogs to my neighborhood.
xebecs (#103), that was just ERV criticizing my irrational fear of pit bulls.
damn it.
Back to the drawing board.
I know many or most people love dogs, and that’s fine with me because they’re not allowed to bring their dogs to my neighborhood.
I like dogs, though not so much that I’d want to keep one, but it helps that nearly all the dog owners I encounter where I live are very responsible and considerate. They clean up their critters’ droppings and they keep the dogs on leashes when they go outside. I can’t say everyone gets their pets fixed, but I don’t see any strays walking around. They’re also very polite about giving other pedestrians a wide berth while walking the dogs. This is what makes other people’s dogs a pleasure to meet; their owners love them enough to accept their nature as animals and pay attention to them accordingly. This kind of realism is sorely lacking in the families that think they can treat huge snakes like dogs or cats.
BobC #106:
In ERVs post, #93, in his quote of your post, every instance where you said “pit bull” is replaced by the words “black person” and “pit bulls” with “black people”.
THAT is what I am asking about. Someone or something is very wrong.
It’s time for the opinion of a zoo keeper:
BOAS AND PYTHONS HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING IN HOMES. I’ll make exceptions for rosy, rainbow, and rubber boas, which only grow to like three feet max. And they are cute enough to be pets.
Big snakes? No fucking way. That is absurd. A snake like this one can overpower a six-foot man quite easily. And as the article notes, when these snakes do what they naturally do and throw a few coils around a small, warm prey item LIKE A TODDLER, it’s the human’s fault who put the snake into such a crappy situation.
There are people out there who are fully capable of being good, careful, well-prepared owners of huge snakes. But those people are few and far between, just as safe, responsible, always-ready and always-alert pit bull owners are few and far between. (Don’t jump all over me, pit bull fans…I was a dog trainer and handler for many years, and I’m very familiar with all the wonderful aspects of the breed. But if you’re a good pit bull owner, you are rare among humans because you have just the right personality and brain to make such a partnership work.)
For the safety of the animals involved, I’d be fully in favor of banning ownership of animals such as snakes that grow longer than six feet and pit bulls (and other bully breeds) unless safety knowledge is proven and licenses are in place. It’s just not right to put these animals into situations where they’ll behave naturally, and then be stabbed seventeen times for it.
Just to point out what I mean about safety knowledge, the owner of this snake and those who lived in the house with it obviously did not know that the quickest and surest way to get a snake to release its jaws and get the hell away from you is to dump alcohol on its face. Not a pleasant thing for the snake, but surely better than being stabbed repeatedly for trying to eat.
xebecs (#109), not to worry. It was just a joke to make a point.
Indeed — and when the environment changes, one former extreme becomes the average, and the former average becomes an extreme that is removed.
Yes, it really is that simple.
What do you mean by “attack”? The python wasn’t angry or scared, for crying out loud. It was hungry!
You are right that, for example, hippos are much more dangerous than crocodiles, because crocs will only kill you when they’re hungry, while hippos will kill you for trespassing. That doesn’t mean, however, that crocs aren’t dangerous at all.
“An animal cruelty charge would be punishing her for saving her child. A child endangerment charge would be punishing her for allowing this situation to occur.”
I disagree completely. Whoever decided to house the snake in a bedroom instead of in a secure enclosure *that includes the proper lighting and heating* should face animal cruelty charges. If the mother isn’t the owner of the snake–and it sounds like she’s not–then she could get off there, but whoever stuck the snake into a bedroom instead of donating it to a zoo or having it euthanized when it got too huge needs to face some kind of charges. Also, as Jason noted, snakes usually don’t strike like this unless they’re hungry. This snake was probably under-fed. People get jail time for underfeeding dogs, cats, and horses. Why are snakes any different?
@ Veltyen:
Pythons are colubrids. :) “Colubrid” is the technical term for “constrictor,” and therefore non-poisonous.
xebecs – ERV thinks he’s being profound and not at all racist by comparing black people to dogs.
BobC #111:
At the risk of seeming to have no sense of humor, I must say that I still don’t like it. Quotes are about truth. If you mess with a quote, you are messing with the truth.
I’m fine with “shorter” quotes, etc. Just so there is a convention, and a way to tell that it’s a distorted quote without having to go back and compare.
We have enough trouble with fools like doesnothaveaclue (above) making shit up. Let’s not compound it.
So do you keep away from all dogs, then? Because any UNTRAINED DOG is as likely to attack you as any untrained pitbull. It has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the breed, but rather how the dog was raised.
Even Chihuahuas can be dangerous! But something tells me you don’t consider them dangerous, since they aren’t the “scurrrry pit bullls!”
Do you believe EVERYTHING the media tells you?
Wrong and wrong, respectively.
(And the Wikipedia article is outdated — it fails to cite all the recent work that shows how all seriously poisonous snake groups are nested inside “Colubridae”.)
I do, in fact…
:-)
blockquote>xebecs – ERV thinks he’s being profound and not at all racist by comparing black people to dogs.SHE didn’t do that. She showed that form of the argument was the same as a racist might use.
#109 xebecs
um I mean
SHE didn’t do that. She showed that form of the argument was the same as a racist might use.
Really should remember to preview
I heard on NPR the other day that there’s a correlation between the downturn in the economy and people that let their car insurance lapse. I suspect there might also be a correlation with the feeding of 18-ft long pythons.
Uhm
#120, 121, 122:
Come on, people! I’m complaining about the manipulation of a quote, in a QUOTE BLOCK.
If you want to highlight a similarity or suggest an analog, you show the original and then below it a modified version of the same. The modified version does NOT go in a QUOTE BLOCK.
I’m heading off for a business meeting now. Feel free to explain why I’m missing the point — I won’t be here to rebut.
Do you realize that Chihuahuas can be dangerous as well? And beagles? And any other dog? If so, why are you only condemning one breed of many? That’s not logical.
“Your fear of pit bulls is irrational.”
Agreed. They’re pretty frequent in my neighbood and town (a mostly white suburb *gasp!*), and there’s never been any problems with those dogs. I rather like them. The next door neighbor’s pit is adorable.
That said, approbation is never a good idea. While it is not fair to characterize all pits as vicious killers, it also not fair to compare that to the struggle for racial equality, imo.
Okay, yeah, I love pit bulls, but comparing their condemnation to racism is idiotic and, quite frankly, offensive to those who actually have had to deal with racism. Please. What a lacking argument. There are many other ways to argue for pit bulls. Racism is not one of them.
The type of animal or breed of dog isn’t really the issue. General parenting rule – do not leave your children alone with an animal, period. Even if it’s the sweetest goggie EVAR. Doesn’t matter. Small children + animal – adult supervision = dangerous situation. Little kids don’t know how to properly handle animals, they don’t perceive danger well, and they are small and comparatively weak and thus less likely to be able to get away.
And Bob, there is nothing about pits (or dobermans, or GSDs, or chows, or rottweilers, or whatever the next OMG dangerous dog is) that makes them inherently dangerous. The most dangerous dog is a poorly trained one with a stupid owner, no matter what the breed is. Idiots think a certain dog has a badass rep, so they buy poorly bred animals and fail to train them. That doesn’t make the breed defective.
“rottweilers” <---- my favorite!! My brother has one that is the sweetest dog in the world. However, he's also 140 lbs and as strong as that implies. He's a lovable, playful dog, but it would be freakin insane to leave him alone with a small child. I can't see how anyone with three brain cells to rub together would think a child would be perfectly safe around a gigantic snake.
@BobC – I’m with you. I don’t care for dogs either, especially don’t want to be around large dogs, and I’m not going to work on my irrational fear either.
MP2K said:
Golden Retrievers are about the same size as Pit Bulls.
Which is exactly what BobC said. What exactly do you think ‘… I would never live in a neighborhood that had pit bulls’ means? It means ‘I would never live in the black part of town anyway’.
But Im just a ‘confused’ pit bull owner.
Like I said, search my blog, educate yourself. Maybe even read what Ive typed here in response to BobCs off-topic bitching about dogs.
‘PIT BULLZ ARE EVILZ!’ is no more intellectually impressive than ‘EVILUTIONISTS R NAZIS!’
okay, that was weird.
Let’s try that again
“rottweilers” are my favorite dogs. My brother has one that is the sweetest dog in the world. He’s also 140lbs and as strong as that implies. He’s a lovable, playful dog, but it would be freaking insanity to leave him alone with a small child. He would just be trying to play with the kid and would hurt it. I can’t even being to think how anyone with three brain cells to rub together would think a child is perfectly safe around a gigantic snake.
Lots of people own snakes, yet we hear of stuff like this happening very seldom. I have to wonder if they were giving it enough to eat–I doubt a full and satisfied snake would attempt to eat a three year old human.
And of course it took my too long to type, so I’ve ended up repeated what other people have already said… yargh,
MP2K:
That’s actually gangsta culture, not necessarily “black culture”…
Whatever you’re seeing and identifying as pit bulls aren’t pit bulls if you think they’re larger than golden retrievers. Do you perhaps mean “more muscular”?
I would suggest that the size is less of a problem than the temperment of the dog, the dog’s training, and whether or not you are able to always supervise the dog if it’s around a child. A small dog can maul a small child just as well as a large dog can. For that matter, I have noticed that some people don’t ever bother to train smaller dogs because they assume that they can’t be dangerous in any way, since their small.
Hahahaha. Golden Retrievers can be just as dangerous as Pit Bulls, if not trained right. Aaaand, Pit Bulls aren’t any bigger than Golden Retrievers. Your ignorance is showing!
My first boss, in high school, had a Rottweiler AND a Pit Bull. Both were sweet and gentle and awesome. In fact, the Rottweiler became a police dog of sorts.
But if you’re a good pit bull owner, you are rare among humans because you have just the right personality and brain to make such a partnership work.
Replace “pitbull” with “dog” and I’m with you. The problem isn’t breed specific, it’s species specific. The majority of dog-human incidents are preventable with a good fence.
A licensing law might be better implemented but is has difficulties in deciding what dog breed is more dangerous then what other dog breed
How do you define “dangerous”? “Likely to attack” then you have to get rid of retrievers and spaniels and dalmations, etc. “Capable of doing damage?”, that gets rid of any dog over 10 lbs. Frankly, any dog my cat regards as lunch is not really a dog, anyhow. :P
I’m a Rottweiler owner. When some obnoxious Pomeranian attacks my dog, and my dog defends himself, you know the headline is going to be “Evil Rottweiler eats Muffy-wuffy”, not “Muffy wins Darwin Award.”
“When some obnoxious Pomeranian attacks my dog, and my dog defends himself, you know the headline is going to be “Evil Rottweiler eats Muffy-wuffy”, not “Muffy wins Darwin Award.””
100% correct. This is why my brother keeps his in the house unless there’s someone to be outside with him. There is a family of morons behind my brother’s property that never chain their dog (some sort of fuzzy ankle-biter, I don’t know what), they just let it run around the neighborhood. If his rott killed that dog, even by accident (i.e. attempting to play), it would be EXACTLY as you described. And, my brother would be forced to put his dog to sleep.
Bob, Joel, and others (I assume): it doesn’t seem irrational to me to be cautious around strange dogs. Basically, lots of people are really stupid, and some of those people own dogs. They buy poorly bred animals from the pet store. They fail to train them or train them incorrectly. They fail to enforce the training. They think it’s cute when their dog strains at the leash toward another dog or jumps up on a child or otherwise behaves badly. Personally, I assume a dog is badly trained or not trained at all until I see otherwise.
I own a Husky and until last october a 120 lbs. Black lab.
Neither have ever once bitten or even growled at another human yet there are people on the beach that would steer clear of us by 30 feet. We leashed both when we were out at all times (unless were out in the forest etc..).
On the other hand, every day i see people who have their dogs off leash and not under voice command. They come up to a bother our dogs and other people constantly.
It’s really about the owner and what sort of sense of responsibility they have.
BobC #106:
In ERVs post, #93, in his quote of your post, every instance where you said “pit bull” is replaced by the words “black person” and “pit bulls” with “black people”.
THAT is what I am asking about. Someone or something is very wrong.
Abby was making a point by implying that unqualified fear of pits is like racism, so she replaced “pit bull” with “black person”. Perhaps her sarcasm wasn’t clear enough.
The overwhelming majority of pit bulls will never make the news, because they are sweet, safe dogs that will never bite anyone. They are out there right now, in parks and in homes, playing with children and other dogs, not making headlines.
Bias alert: I owned one myself. She lived to be fourteen and was a total joy. Best dog I ever had, and I’ve had a lot. She never bit anyone. Was it because I raised her right, or was she born nonviolent? I don’t know the answer.
Rev BDC tell me about it, two of the times I have been bitten, a very long time ago thankfully, were when I had my old dog by the collar to clip on his lead when unleashed dogs came out of nowhere, going for his neck and got my hand instead. One was an Afghan and one was a Lassie collie. I still have the scars on the back of my hand.Every ‘bad’ dog I have come across, irrespective of breed, has had an even worse owner. Pit bulls on the other hand, at least every one I have known and that is quite a few, the only danger has been from being licked to death.
If I had a choice between spending time in a room with a huge 300lb muscular man with the emotional understanding and morality of a dog or a 75lb skinny girl with likewise I’d pick the girl. The man might be well trained – but he is still a heck of a lot more dangerous than the girl. All things being equal I’d rather get into a death-fight or just a heap of aggression with the girl since the man is much more likely to cause me serious injury.
Same goes for dogs.
I agree that Pit Bulls are generally much cuter and nicer than people give them credit for. It isn’t about the times they are nice that people are concerned about. It is the if they do happen to get pissed off for some reason, and they lose control of their discipline for just a few minutes (and even well trained humans with a refined sense of right/wrong and a ‘strong’ moral character etc etc can succumb to this) that people are concerned about the amount of damage they can do.
A poodle can do nasty things to a person, but not compared with what a pit bull (or any large/muscled dog) can.
Note, I am being merely descriptive here, not prescriptive. There are any number of ways of dealing with this problem. I don’t think arguing the clearly erroneous position that all dog breeds are equally dangerous is one of them. Whatever the most dangerous are, and how much more dangerous they are than their cospecies brethren are beyond the scope of what I am proposing. At least some dogs are by some definition dangerous. All things being equal (temperament etc), powerful muscular dogs are more dangerous than weak dogs and even if we assume that temperament varies it may still be the case that the amount of damage certain breeds do when they do snap is so much higher that they would still be regarded as ‘more dangerous’.
Maybe the solution is dog insurance. Maybe it is dog licensing. It might be the cessation of legal breeding/compulsory castration/neutering whatever. Or maybe it is exterminating the whole lot of them.
I think everyone can see the problems with all of the above, some more apparently than others.
The only empirical report I can find is Merritt Clifton’s report “Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada
September 1982 to November 13, 2006” which shows that serious injury or fatalities are often associated with pit bull like dogs (obviously there is the issue of misidentification so I’m not going to lay too much credit on the reported breeds).
We can argue all day that it is all about the owner, the training and so on. That’s a fine argument path to take, but I think it worth also pointing out that ‘Dogs don’t kill people, people train dogs that kill people’ sounds awfully like an argument that I suspect at least some people here find problematic in another arena of discourse.
Indeed – a minigun is clearly more dangerous than a knife – and we are happy that certain animals are simply too dangerous to have – even if they can be trained (Tigers can be trained – but people might have a problem with it being OK for a pet tiger to be let loose to play on the beach).
The question isn’t “Are some dogs more dangerous than others?”, to me the answer is almost certainly “Yes.”. The questions are “How much more dangerous?” and “So what do we do about that?”
Bizarrely enough, for once I agree with BobC. Personally I hate dogs; I’ve had a phobia of them since I was a child. My home town is, sadly, full of them, but Oxford, where I live now, has very few. Which is fine with me.
I like cats, however.
ERV wrote:
There’s several black families living in my large condominium building and most of them are my favorite neighbors, so I don’t think it’s fair to say my irrational fear of pit bulls has anything to do with racism.
What bugs most about dogs is not their natural tendency to bite people if you accidently step on their feet. What I don’t like is the barking. In my own home I think I have the right to peace and quiet, but when I used to live in another neighborhood I had to endure several hundred dog barks every single day. I thank goodness there are no dogs allowed anywhere near where I live now.
In #147 I meant “What bugs me most”, not “what bugs most”.
When I was around 2 I got bit in the face by a dog. Now, risking total Internet humiliation I’ll admit it was a bichon frise. I have a lightning bolt shaped scar on my left cheek to this day (no I’m not a wizard).
I was terrified of dogs other than my own until I was about 10. I got over it mainly because of dogs owned by friends and relatives that were treated kindly and well trained (I can’t comment on the training of the Bichon that mauled me).
I can understand people’s fears of dogs on an emotional level but it is mostly irrational. That does not mean there aren’t dangerous dogs out there but over all in my VAST and expert experience (/sarcasm) most dogs outside strays and not being cruelly provoked are relatively harmless.
/ends totally anecdotal exercise in proving a point by not really proving it.
@ Libbie: Colubridae is a specific family of snakes, which does not include pythons and boas. More like corn, rat, and other relatively small, nonvenomous species. Yes they constrict, but not what you’re thinking.
@145
You make some good points. Having owned such a sweet pit bull myself, it breaks my heart that this problem exists. Wish I knew the answer.
Walton, Cats huh?
you should consider this for the next home improvement project.
I see Supersport is back.
Mod, fair enough. Certainly a pit or a rottweiler could potentially do more damage than, say, a toy poodle.
However, I’ve noticed that people are not necessarily concerned about dogs because of their size or power. They are concerned about dogs that they perceive as dangerous (pits, rottweilers, GSDs, dobermans, etc) and yet have no problems with dogs that are equally strong and large, yet don’t have the label “dangerous”. Consider boxers, Great Danes, huskies, bulldogs, and hounds of various kinds. All of these dogs are quite large and strong, but they don’t have the same negative reputation. I’m not sure why that is, but I don’t think size is the only reason some dogs are considered more dangerous than they deserve to be.
What Natalie said.
Also:
“At least some dogs are by some definition dangerous. ”
No. “At least ALL DOGS are by some definition dangerous.” All. All.
Even all humans are dangerous at some level, even kids.
Also, a badly trained poodle is still going to be more dangerous than a well trained pit bull.
A suggestion for people in the Las Vegas area interested in seeing and helping to care for large, dangerous pythons and boas:
http://www.lasvegaszoo.com/adopt.htm
Presumably they are equipped to take care of such animals without endangering toddlers.
I get the fascination of keeping snakes–I have a ball (or “royal”) python myself. They are shy and retiring and stay quite small. I also keep it in a properly locked enclosure. But I am also an idiot. Once when transferring a venomous centipede into its new home, it tried to bite me and I dropped it and it got into my sofa. I literall ripped the (relatively new) sofa apart looking for it and never did find it. I’ve been on alert ever since. This did teach me an important lesson, however: It’s OK to indulge my desire to keep living things, but use some fricking sense about what kind, and be very, very careful. For the rest, we have zoos.
Thank you Greg. I am sufficiently creeped out now and will think twice about sitting on my sofa when I get home.
Re 125:
Agree 100%. If you want to change the contents of a quote for emphasis or whatever, at least use “[]” to note editorial changes/additions. For example, for the quote in question if ERV wanted to make the equivlence between canine prejudice and racial prejudice, every place ERV replaced “pitbull” with “black person” should have been (at the least) “[black person]”.
The point a lot of you seem to be dancing around (Natalie @#129 came closest) is that, never mind the animal details, this is a gross failure of the parents to provide proper supervision for their child!
A toddler cannot be trusted to follow any rules of safety, with or without animals involved. They can’t be trusted to know how to avoid or escape danger in general. They have essentially no ability to defend themselves against much of anything. They can get killed in any number of ways — water (not just pools, but baths), electricity, fire, animals, et pluribus alia.
It is the responsibility of the parents to provide a safe home environment for them, and to supervise them any time they’re outside a protected environment. That’s just part of the nurturing standards for raising a human infant. And yes, “large predator in vicinity” is definitely an unsafe environment!
The one case where I’d accept a large dog as safe alone with a child, is when that dog has demonstrated that they recognize that child as “their” charge — that is, not just a co-resident or “fellow pet”, but someone for them to take care of. And that doesn’t stretch to the same dog with somebody else’s kid, no matter how caring the dog is with “their own” kid(s).
That doesn’t make the breed defective.
Different breeds of dogs have, as a group, different tendencies. That doesn’t make a breed “defective”, it’s just part of their personality. Bad owners can aggravate negative personality traits in dogs. It’s not anti-pit bull to acknowledge that they don’t, as a group, have the same personality type as a Labrador or a beagle.
I vote for both charges — child endangerment and animal cruelty.
Keeping a 300-lb. PREDATOR in an enclosure of dubious integrity when you have a small child in the house is about as dangerous to the child as you can get. It would probably be tough to make the animal cruelty charge stick, since the mother was trying to save her child, but keeping a wild animal of that size in confined quarters, where the chances are high that you’d have to kill it in self-defense, is utterly irresponsible. People who really love animals don’t put them in situations like this.
Maybe the child was provoking the snake, but you can’t really blame it on either. The kid’s only 3 years old, and the snake was — well, a snake. A responsible adult would never have put the two in the same place.
I, too am cautious, around pit bulls, or any large muscular dog. My understanding is that pit bulls have been bred for strength in their jaws and neck. I remember seeing some research (and I don’t remember where, or I’d cite it) that pit bulls do not attack more frequently, but that the amount and severity of injury inflicted by a typical pit bull attack is much higher than that typically inflicted by a dog of similar size but not a fighting breed.
The amount of responsibility a pet owner needs to have must be proportional to the strength (not just the size) of the pet. I’m pretty sure my parakeets aren’t going to send anyone to the hospital. The most agressive dog I know is a neighbor’s chihuahua, but I don’t worry about my ten-year old being around it. If that dog ever decided to attack her, she could throw it across the street with no problem. A large strong dog needs strong fences and a competent and well-trianed owner. And a 300 pound constrictor should never be allowed to roam a house freely, unless it is being followed by five strong men ready to pry it off its next meal.
Of course not all pit bulls are dangerous and not all golden retrievers are trustworthy, but let’s keep in mind that the physical characteristics selected for in these breeds are, of course, inherited (to a degree) with certain behavioral and personality tendencies. That’s done intentionally (or sometimes unintentionally via pleiotropy) in establishing the breed. I see no reason for anyone to be offended by this fact.
This is the most astounding part of the story. I disagree with the commenter above who claims this is a reference to the time lag between an event happening and a DA acting. Usually one hears “Charges are expected to be filed in the AM or next week (or whatever)” not “we don’t know if we are making charges”
WTF??? This seems to be written in the dialect of “psychotic”. Translations into English are useless. Psychotic never makes sense in any other language.
Uh, David, I didn’t just “come closest”, I said exactly what you have just said:
And others have made similar comments. Read the whole thread before you decide that people are dancing around an issue.
I do not know if the woman had the snake from a baby or not or even if it was there snake at all, the art. said it was in the bedroom temporarily. A bed they were wrestling around all they would have needed in a room for a snake was a box big enough and a big tub of water. There are details left out of this story for the headlines sensationalism effects. My guess was that the snake belonged to someone else like the dad or maybe a friend of the dad. A snake that big would be pricey at least so someone is out a valuable animal and is probably pissed off and aint that just too bad.
I feel sorry for people who are as naive as that mother. She left her 3 yr old child unattended for far too long if she kept that up something was going to go wrong sooner or later. the home is full of many dangers as are doors to the outside!
on dangerous dogs I have been told by the postman that they are warned about “fluffy” the little pet mixed dog as being the ones to watch out for. all dogs have teeth and can bight!
It’s so nice that people like this always seem to be able to have children.
From what I’ve read, ERV, one of the major reasons pit bulls are so popular as fighting dogs (other than their physical strength) is that they’re one of the few breeds that are even-tempered enough not to go insane from the stress. Is that true?
@Ubi Dubium #162
I really like the way you put that. My little brother had a pit bull, that was a great dog. But he was big strong and energetic. My brother had to be extra vigilant when other people were around, because not everyone knows how to handle a large strong loving puppy.
While some explicit indication of what she was doing might have been advisable, ERV was using a common technique of translating the “logic” of BobC and others’ claims to an objectively analogous situation which elicits a different emotional response than the one that they perceive as lending credence to their claims.
In other words, their fear of being attacked by “pit bulls” is comparable to the fear some whites have of being attacked if they live around black people, but it’s more obvious what’s wrong with the phrase “I’m scared of black people” than “I’m scared of pit bulls.”
When I was stationed at the NSA (Naval Support Activity) hospital in Da Nang during my tour as a naval cook in Vietnam, we had a pet python that was feed once a week. I remember watching with fascination as it opened its jaws to swallow a rabbit whole. To see Bonnie, click on the below link and scroll down. She’s in the middle of the page being held by several naval corpsman.
http://www.navycorpsmen.com/001.html#section2
Youre right, pitbulls dont have the same personality as beagles. Pitbulls (84.3%) have a better temperament than beagles (80.3%).
Such scientific, highly reasoned fears you all have.
Azkyroth (#169)– I have no idea, on that one. Michael Vicks dogs were tortured, and theyre doing great (OMG LIVING WITH BAYBAYS!). Arnie has scars that will never heal, and hes a ray of sunshine in a blizzard… I dont want to know what he lived through.
You’re right – beagles are often nasty.
Has anyone ever had a run in with a cocker spaniel?
Nasty little fuckers they are.
SHE didn’t do that. She showed that form of the argument was the same as a racist might use.
And SHE shouldn’t be doing that. It’s a terrible, racist analogy. Having an aversion to a particular breed of dog, regardless of whether or not it is rational, is not akin to supporting the genocide and torture of a group of human beings. The comparison should never be made.
Regarding the pitbull issue, even if they are the exact same temperament as a smaller dog, that seems to be beside the point. Once they do perform a violent act they are much harder to subdue than other breeds. To me this isn’t a small thing and makes them for me a more dangerous breed of animal.
Rev. BDC – A friend of mine put down a cocker because it tried to bite her in the face. I think breds can become violent due to overbreeding. Cockers and dalmatians both became popular after Disney movies Perhaps we should outlaw movies that make children think animals are cute and harmless?
One needs a license to drive a car.
In many places, one needs a license to own a gun.
It seems that one should need a license to raise a child considering the ignorance of some parents
…what?
Perceiving a breed of dog as inherently dangerous and taking pains to avoid living near them or interacting with them is akin to perceiving an ethnic group of humans as inherently dangerous and taking pains to avoid living near them or interacting with them. No idea how torture and genocide came into this.
to windy@175
I know! The nastiest dogs I know are a beagle and a yorkie. Anecdotal evidence is worthless, just because you think a certain breed is more even tempered than another doesn’t mean it is true. I believe that any actual studies about the “bad” breeds have come up with no significant difference to the “good” breeds in temperament; however, I do welcome anyone to post a source refuting that claim because I don’t remember where I read it. I do know that certain large breeds that were bred specifically for docile traits (great danes come to mind) but I don’t believe that there is really any real measurable difference even then.
WANT!
@#99
Ah, so *that* is why it isn’t naturally selected against…d’oh!
You know…
You can not like dogs, or snakes, or guinea pigs, or whatever. Until someone’s forcing you to keep one, someone else having one is none of your concern. Hysteria on both sides of this issue is totally counter-productive and is what led to the stupid system we have in place.
In America, land of the free, home of the criminally negligent, you should be allowed to keep any sort of animal as a pet as long as it remains on your property. The animal should not be allowed on public property unless it is properly restrained.
You are legally responsible for its actions, both in the home and out of it.
Cats and wee ankle-biters ought not run free.
Electric fences are not good enough. Sometimes normal fences aren’t good enough. If you animal gets loose, you should be fined. All pets with the ability to escape should be micro-chipped to ensure owner responsibility. This includes all dogs, cats and large snakes.
Forbidding certain breeds or species is as unconstitutional and un-American as it gets. Animals aren’t that dangerous, especially when compared to cars. They aren’t useless, they provide companionship and occasionally service. Giving up freedoms for a false sense of security is so GWB.
1)where does the idea come from that beagles are nicer than bit pulls or rottweilers? I’d think all hunting dogs, when not trained properly, would have bad characters!
2)I can’t stand dogs, they’re just way too needy in character (though I’ve been informed that this, too, has to do with bad keeping, i.e. herd animals don’t deal well with the rest of the herd going off to work every day) and I’m extremely sensitive to sudden, loud noises. Still, one of the few dogs I’ve been able to befriend was a large, stupid rottweiler named Wicca, who had a crush on my boyfriend.
I believe that any actual studies about the “bad” breeds have come up with no significant difference to the “good” breeds in temperament; however, I do welcome anyone to post a source refuting that claim because I don’t remember where I read it.
One study I know of was done with data from vets and trainers that dealt with “inappropriate agression” issues, and did breed breakdowns. Most of the “guilty” were dogs originally bred for hunting, mostly for retreiving (retrievers and spaniels), and, also interesting, they were most likely to turn on their owners and family.
The only breed with a reputation on the list was the GSD, and it exclusively showed agression to strangers.. in other words, GSDs are likelier to be overprotective, the other breeds were likelier to “snap”. The molosser and bull terrier breeds didn’t even show up on the list until about rank 20.
I’d say that it is perfectly in line with what these dogs were bred to do that the hunting dogs are more likely to be human aggressive.. it’s a neutral trait in a hunting dog. Also prey aggression, which can be triggered by running children, would be much higher in a hunting dog. A herding dog has to be around humans a lot more, and so human aggression would be bred down, and prey aggression would be a neutral trait.
Dog aggression is very complex, they are intelligent animals with complex social structures themselves.
actually I’d imagine that would have to be bred out of them too, since a herding dog with a propensity to hunt and hurt the herd would not be a good idea
I think it should be perfectly legal to possess animals such as these for pets, and perfectly legal for a parent to face the consequences of their negligence.
Snakes like this may be large carnivores, but they’re also very easily appeased. When they’re kept well-fed, they pose almost no threat to anyone. They don’t indisciminantly kill for sport, they eat to survive and nothing more.
Banning them outright because of incidents like this just sidesteps the problem. It’s negligent parents that are at fault here, not pet owners as a broad category.
Graculus@187
That is pretty much agrees what I thought the results that I read said. It’s not so much specific breeds as groups of breeds for a common purpose. Dog breeds bred to be high strung and go after things that move (ie. hunting dogs) are much more likely to “go after” a child than a big dog bred for pulling carts (ie. rotties and that type).
Your social structure comment is also an important point. I’ve read that when dogs aren’t trained properly they are more likely to be unsure of their place in the “pack” hierarchy and more likely to behave aggressively toward individuals that they perceive as lower in rank than themselves in order to maintain or advance their position. I’m not sure if I believe statements like that completely, but it sure would explain a lot of the bad behavior of little dogs that are constantly babied and seem to think that they are in charge of everything.
My parents golden lab is twice the size of my pit. So their dog is twice as dangerous? What?
You all are realizing how strained and illogical the arguments are against pits are, now, right?
If my best friend wasnt a pawn in this fight, I would think this discussion is hysterical. Ive gotten bitten by a Dane and two Rotties, and yet I still love Danes and Rotties. But there are idiots on this blag that havent even met a pit bull, screaming for their blood.
God bless freethinkers.
You know, if I had read this story yesterday, I would have been completely astounded and flabbergasted at such negligence and animal/child cruelty. Except that just today, a work colleague told me about how her mother is fostering twins whose younger brother was killed by the family’s ‘pet’ constrictor. I cannot believe this is not uncommon!
Greg Peterson in #156: I have a ball python too. I didn’t hire him for his brains, y’know? As you said, they stay small and they’re shy. My Shep is pretty habituated to humans, and I’ve never yet seen him scared enough to roll up into the eponymous ball. I’ve had my finger in his mouth at feeding time and he hasn’t bitten me yet, and his teeth are so small it wouldn’t hurt much if he did.
Only drawback is that I got him as an adult, and he required live food: small rats. Now those are nasty. One got loose a few years back and ultimately cost us the price of a new stove. Fortunately we really like the new stove.
Hey folks: Constrictors are cuddly, and they come in reasonable sizes. I do miss my late corn snake.
having had a pit bull once upon a time I have some understanding of the dog. They are very trainable and can be very friendly and affectionate. They do have a very competitive nature when it comes to other dogs particularly males. From my own observation the thing that makes them “dangerous” is that they are very fearless and stubborn and maybe not the smartest dog I have ever seen. a lot of dogs are dangerous like dobbies or Alsatians but none are as strong, fearless, quick and stubborn which is what gets them in trouble. But your cocker spaniel poodle mix can be really mean and a chihuahua can be vicious both are not as fearless or strong.
they all have to be trained to be good around people. If you can’t train them you should not have them. but anyone can buy one!
Uh. Wanna know torture and genocide came into this? BECAUSE that is the history of racism in our country and in our world. Because racism includes torture, slavery, and genocide, among other things.
Wanna know why it is OUT RIGHT OFFENSIVE to call the illogical fear of pit bulls and other animals akin to racism? BECAUSE DOGS ARE NOT HUMANS.
It’s just as bad as when PETA wants to make that same claim. It’s illogical, ridiculous, uneducated, stupid, and FUCKING RIDICULOUS.
Good God.
IT IS NOT RACISM KTHX.
Man, there’s some ignorance in this thread.
Yes, a large python is potentially dangerous. In fact, many large animals are dangerous, and this includes common domestic species as well as exotics. It is just as unreasonable to leave a child of that age unsupervised with a horse, or a strange dog, as it is to leave a child unsupervised with a large snake. In any of these cases, the blame is on the guardian for placing the child AND the animal in a position where they can interact in an unsafe manner.
If the question is one of which species and/or breeds are reasonable for any private individual to keep. This really depends on the private individual (and the public collection, for that matter). Accidents happen in even the best circumstances (keepers in zoos do get injured and sometimes killed by their charges, and these are people who are experts), but accidents happen with common domestic animals, too. No one calls for the ban of all domestic horses, even though there are frequently horse-related accidents.
And yes, irresponsible people get snakes. They also get dogs, horses, and children. This person probably had their snake long before they decided to have that child (that snake is probably at least 10+ years old), so really having the child was the irresponsible thing, so perhaps we should prohibit childbearing.
The solution as far as I can see it is in setting up a permitting system for potentially dangerous animals (heavy-bodied constrictors >6 feet, health-threatening venomous reptiles, varanid lizards >6ft, crocodilians), preferably with some sort of written test and a inspection of facilities for certain particularly dangerous animals. But I don’t think a flat-out ban is a good idea. As it stands, you can get your hands on a lot of cute baby animals that get astoundingly large for less than $100-$200, and this is a problem, because that cute little anaconda, or that cute little baby alligator grow up into very large animals that follow their own sets of rules.
Nobody needs to keep a hot snake. Nobody. Big pythons? Why? Varanids are cool, but they are damn crappy “pets.”
I loathe the reptile pet trade–the legal almost as much as the (vastly larger) illegal. It’s purest selfishness. Now we have big monitors and Burmese pythons breeding and invasive in Florida…nice.
Same could be said about dogs. A dog is a profoundly more dangerous animal than most reptiles (with the exception of elapids, a few vipers, and crocodilians). A dog is a fast predator with strong territoriality and unpredictable temper. A poorly trained dog is a large, powerful carnivore with damned big teeth, powerful jaws, and that added bonus of commonly being brought into public by their owners.
So no, unless you’re getting a working breed of dog and using that breed for the work it was specifically intended for (i.e. a sled dog, a hunting dog, a herding dog, etc) you don’t “need” that dog, either.
There are certainly people who keep hots and big snakes for stupid testosterone-driven reasons. There are also people who keep them responsibly because they truly enjoy working with the animals and find them fascinating. In fact, it’s quite likely the case that responsible owners of dangerous exotics are less likely to be injured by their animals and VASTLY less likely to allow their animals to injure a third party than your average dog owner. Reptile accidents typically occur when the handler is intoxicated and engaging in significantly stupid behavior. Dog maulings generally do not.
As for invasiveness, there’s one common household pet that is a major concern as far as invasiveness and ecological damage goes, and that is Felis catus. If your concern is [i]actually[/i] ecology, then you should be pushing STRONGLY for cat bans and/or outdoor cat bans, and shoot-to-kill feral cat control programs. While we’re at it, let’s also prohibit the pork trade in the US, because escaped feral hogs are not only a major ecological catastrophe, but also a significant danger to human health and safety. Large boids were part of the N.Am. ecosystem until the ice ages knocked them out, and species of Boa and Epicrates are found extremely close to the US in Mexico and Cuba, respectively. No, Python is not a natural part of the Florida ecosystem, but the Florida ecosystem is barely natural nowadays, anyways. Rattus norvegicus, Sus scrofa, and Felis catus do not “naturally” occur in the everglades, either, but they’re there, too.
As for monitors, they’re actually quite intelligent, and if you put the work in, they’re actually pretty rewarding pets. Of course, this requires that you put the work in, something that is really not unreasonable for any captive animal, regardless of whether it is a dog or a large snake.
Libbie (Zookeeper?) said
and later
David M already fixed the latter couple of bits of wrongness. There are some deadly-venomous colubrids (which are not constrictors), and there are very few deadly-constricting boas (two species, Boa constrictor and Green Anaconda) or pythons (Reticulated, Indian/Burmese, African Rock – for which large primates are natural prey – and potentially several Australopapuan species – amethistines and olives, broadly speaking – that do not ever eat people but get big enough to constrict one to death if pissed-off or over-confident). All the many other pythons and boas are more-or-less harmless to children and adults, though not all species or individuals have suitable temperament for captivity.
SIWOTI! And in other news…