Animal Welfare - Blog Posts

Massive gripe ive been having with primarily the therian community lately, I really dont feel like we focus enough on animal rights causes considering how "connected" we're supposed to be to nonhumans.

Like I see it around for sure, but when I do it usually isn't more than just "hunting for sport is bad👍" or "dont beat your dog 👍" and that's it. The main focus of the community is still very much on biologically human individuals rather than on bio nonhumans, who are very literally treated like garbage in society and it's frustrating because i feel like we should be right there on the front lines when it comes to animal liberation.

Im not saying all of us need to be members of ALF or anything, im not even vegan and have no plans to be, but as of rn the community's overall acknowledgment and support of animal rights causes is pretty pathetic. Hell, I still hear therians confidently and proudly infantilize adult/highly intelligent nonhuman species ("animals have the intelligence of human toddlers") and spread blatant misinformation about them. Shit just annoys me

Not to be a killjoy (though it is what I do best) but the unsafe and rough handling of a baby Pygmy hippo in a pretty substandard Thai zoo being meme-ed into something funny and cute really shows just how much groupthink plays into public perception of animal welfare.

Moo Deng shows avoidance, threat displays and stress around her keepers that are constantly man-handling her, blasting her with a hose and harassing her. The enclosure is mostly concrete, which is horrible for her soft feet. There looks to be some substrate but there doesn’t seem to be any areas for wallowing or deep water wading.

There’s also very easy access of this hippo to the public with no places to hide. I’d love if someone could shed more light on the enclosures but from what I’ve seen it’s not great.

Also the free contact and forcing into tubs that the keepers do is only going to create an avoidant and potentially aggressive and dangerous Pygmy hippo.

But the public happily overlook that because she’s cute. It’s a similar attitude with seals too.

Stop rewarding bad husbandry with clout. Baby animals deserve agency and respect and to grow up without getting harassed and feeling the need to defend themselves constantly.

Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut, also known as “Tokitae” or “Lolita”, was a Southern Resident killer whale likely from L-pod. She was born around the mid-1960s. Many suspect her mother is L25 “Ocean Sun”, but there has never been confirmation.

In August 1970, Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut was one of around 80 killer whales rounded up for capture in Penn Cove, Washington. Based on her size, she was between 2-7 years old at the time. In the capture, led by Ted Griffin and Don Golsberry, 5 whales drowned and 7 whales, including Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut, were taken away.

Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut was purchased by a veterinarian at Miami Seaquarium named Jesse White for $20,000. She was transported to Miami Seaquarium in September 1970. White named her “Tokitae”, a Coast Salish word that roughly translates to “nice day” or “pretty colours” in English.

She was originally kept separately from the other orca, a male Southern Resident called Hugo. Hugo had been captured 2 years prior from Vaughn Bay, Washington.

Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut and Hugo would often talk to each other between tanks, Southern Residents have a unique language which includes specific dialects within their pods, meaning that the two of them were able to communicate in ways that they could not with any other population. Miami Seaquarium eventually placed them together in a single 80-by-35 ft tank. The they mated often, but never had any living calves. Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut was given the stage name “Lolita”.

Hugo experienced severe stress due to his situation. In March 1980, he died after ramming his head into the wall of the tank.

Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut was housed with other cetaceans, but remained the only orca at the aquarium for the rest of her life. Despite her isolation, she held on to her home. She was heard multiple times throughout her decades in captivity singing a song that is only heard within L-pod.

In 2015, NOAA removed the exclusion of captive whales from the Endangered Species Act and included Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut in the listing of Southern Residents. NOAA stated there was a “strong case” that she was a Southern Resident after analysing her mitochondrial and microsatellite DNA. However, because she was captured 2 years before the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut was considered “pre-Act”, meaning she did not qualify under it.

The Lummi Nation never stopped fighting for Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut to be brought home. They consider her a relative. In July 2019, two Lummi women, Squil-le-he-le and Tah-mahs, invoked the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in an attempt to bring Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut home. NAGPRA gave them legal grounds to sue Miami Seaquarium if they refused to return Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut to the Salish Sea.

In August 2019, the Lummi gave her the name “Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut”, which roughly translates to “member of Sk’aliCh’elh” in English. Sk’aliCh’elh being a family of orcas in the Salish sea.

Squil-le-he-le visited Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut in Miami and performed healing songs for her. Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut was very receptive to this. Squil-le-he-le was quoted saying “She was singing with me. She was vocalizing with me,” in an interview with The Planet.

In March 2023, the Miami Seaquarium (now owned by The Dolphin Company) partnered with Friends of Toki and began the process of transferring Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut to a sea pen in her home waters.

This decision was controversial given Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut’s age (around her late 50s) and her chronic health conditions. She hadn’t been transported anywhere in over 50 years, causing concern for the stress that transport to Washington could cause her. There were also concerns that she might not be able to survive the re-exposure to the bacteria in the ocean after living in a tank of clorinated water for so long, or that she could possibly expose the wild Southern Residents to the infections she developed in captivity.

Others, especially the Lummi, argued that she deserved to live the remainder of her life in her home waters, which she clearly remembered.

In August 2023, the Miami Seaquarium announced that Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut had passed away. Her cause of death was attributed to multiple chronic health conditions. On the day of her death, over 3000 miles away, members of all 3 Southern Resident pods (J,K, and L) were gathered together in what is known as a “superpod”. Gatherings of multiple Southern Resident pods have become more rare in recent years.

The Lummi were not consulted before the autopsy was performed.

Finally, in September 2023 her ashes were returned home and there were multiple ceremonies laying her to rest.

No Southern Resident had been seen in Penn Cove since the captures in the 1970s, but in November 2024, L-pod returned. Among them was Ocean Sun.

Footage: Kat Martin, ScubaFilmFactory, Miami Herald, KING 5 Seattle, AnaCarlaNJ, H2Omammals, DaddysJournie, KING 5 Seattle

Audio: Susannah Joffe, sacredsea.org

[Yikes... Who'd trust that guy?]

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Donald Trump says he has a plan for Gaza: “We’ll find them a plot of land… build them some nice beautiful places where they can be happy.”

Recognising silent acute pain in animals - assorted species grimace scales:

Development of the Horse Grimace Scale (HGS) as a Pain Assessment Tool in Horses Undergoing Routine Castration 

The composition and initial evaluation of a grimace scale in ferrets after surgical implantation of a telemetry probe 

The Assessment of Facial Expressions in Piglets Undergoing Tail Docking and Castration: Toward the Development of the Piglet Grimace Scale 

The Sheep Grimace Scale as an indicator of post-operative distress and pain in laboratory sheep and the  Coding and quantification of a facial expression for pain in lambs 

Mouse -  How to be a pain management advocate for exotic and zoo animals (full text available - includes additional species)

The Rat Grimace Scale: A partially automated method for quantifying pain in the laboratory rat via facial expressions 

Evaluation of EMLA Cream for Preventing Pain during Tattooing of Rabbits: Changes in Physiological, Behavioural and Facial Expression Responses 

Pain evaluation in dairy cattle 

Pain is subtle - we cannot depend on vocalisations or extreme abnormal behaviour to determine if an animal is on pain - animals can cover up pain while going about their daily life. Grimace scales have been found to be reliable indicators of pain (full text available)

Unfortunately, I could not find a clear visual grimace scale for dogs, cats or birds :(  

Which is a shame, because perhaps I could have recognised my own dog’s discomfort for the acute pain it was sooner:

(left: dog in pain. See eyes, tension, cheeks, whiskers, ears compared to the multiple species grimace charts above. right: tired but not in pain dog)

Perhaps my new books that arrived today might have some on dogs at least. There’s this visual blog post of a stressed dog at the vet - stress in the absence of a trigger looks very much like pain.

Here is a small comparative cats, with the link going into more detail. Not a scale but better than nothing:

Bonus round - you can get free A3 posters on recognising pain for Rabbits, Mice and Rats from the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. My rabbit specialist vet has the rabbit one!

Even if a species of bug exhibits some kind of social touch among themselves (which I believe some are known to, though for the large majority of species I doubt there's any data on it), it's not going to be welcome from a towering colossus that they literally may not even be able to fit inside their whole field of vision. I feel like a lot of people forget just how big we are compared to most bugs

you know that one popular tumblr post that goes like "humans will pet anything" "well how wonderful that we live on a planet full of things that like to be petted!", or various other posts you see around the internet saying stuff like "humans evolved hands so we could pet all the animals 😌". sometimes I wonder how much those posts might have left actual lasting damage on public perception of animal behavior, like I'm sure they didn't intend to but like... did they

Well I certainly didn’t expect to illicit so many questions when I reblogged this post and added some tags about jumping spider content online.

Firstly, let me say there’s nothing wrong with keeping jumping spiders as pets. I have one myself. She’s a captive bred regal jumping spider. She’s currently a bit over two years old. I’ve had other jumping spiders as well, but they passed of old age and in one instance, a failed molt, which is fairly common.

Before and after getting pet jumpers, I joined some jumper groups, read a lot of care guides, and watched a slew of videos about keeping them.

It became obvious pretty quickly that apparently due to their cute fuzzy appearance, large round eyes, and intelligent behavior, people (owners, admirers, and popular content creators) assign human and mammal emotions and behaviors to them, often to their detriment.

I personally believe bugs are complex creatures that can be intelligent and have emotions, but that those emotions and behaviors are NOT analogous to human or mammal behavior and ignoring their natural needs and behaviors means you’re likely not providing proper care for them.

This is mainly about handling. Bugs don’t want to be handled. They get nothing positive out of it emotionally. They don’t want to be pet or cuddle with you. They don’t want to hang out with you. You’re a big scary predator, and it likely wants to get away from you. Forcing handling can stress, injure, or kill them. That’s why I tagged the post (linked above) “your spider is not a cat.” It doesn’t seek affection from you.

I can’t tell you how many posts or videos I saw where people were super upset because they let their jumper out of its enclosure to handle it and it either escaped and got lost or they somehow crushed it and killed or injured it badly. I’ve also seen people chasing their jumper around its enclosure trying to grab it or get it to jump onto their hand when it’s clearly just trying to hide.

As an example, a very common thing I’ve seen in videos about jumpers is people saying when they lift their front legs at you and jump or climb onto you/your hands it’s because they “want uppies” and want to be pet and be close to you. This is a wild misreading of behavior. Sometimes raising the front legs is a defensive display, trying to make itself look larger to scare away a threat. Other times, they’re waving their legs around to sense and feel their environment, or preparing to jump onto something. They are arboreal, and their natural behavior is to find a high vantage point, so climbing onto the big thing (you) nearby is normal. It’s not because it seeks your affection.

Certainly if you DO handle them frequently they can get used to it, and it becomes less stressful for them. But in my opinion the dangers outweigh any positives, and I don’t handle mine. These are wild animals that have not been domesticated, even when captive bred. If you want to give them enrichment, and you should, offer them prey to chase or interesting things to explore in a larger enclosure. For those that do still handle them, I’d encourage you to watch their behavior closely and read the spidery cues they’re giving you rather than assuming they’re feeling what a cute little mammal might be feeling in the same scenario.

I could go on with specifics about certain videos, but I wasn’t planning on writing a huge post and this is already long. Also I’m sure many people would disagree with me about some things I’ve said, and I’m not going to argue about anything. This is just how I feel based on what I’ve seen of online jumping spider content, and it’s why I no longer interact with most of it.