The FBI recently included animal cruelty in its nationwide crime reporting system, the Uniform Crime Report. It will help law enforcement agencies track animal cruelty like they already track domestic violence and homicide. Every day, countless animals face abuse and neglect. It is often caused by the people who are supposed to care for them.
What is Cruelty?
Every day, countless dogs, cats and other animals suffer abuse, neglect and even death at the hands of people they trust. Abuse includes active cruelty, such as beating, whipping or shooting an animal and passive cruelty, such as withholding food, water, shelter, and veterinary care. Animal cruelty is rampant in the industries that use animals for meat, fur, entertainment, and experimentation.
Studies in psychology, sociology and criminology have shown that people who abuse animals repeat their crimes against other humans and are a significant predictor of violent crime. Research has also linked neighborhood conditions such as poverty, social disorganization and lack of community resources with animal cruelty rates. In addition, specific traits of perpetrators have been correlated with different aspects of animal cruelty. These include the proneness to violence towards others and the impulsivity to act without considering the consequences. Fortunately, there are ways to report animal abuse in your area.
Animal Neglect
Animal cruelty, whether beating, drowning, kicking, shooting, poisoning, or suffocating animals to death, is unacceptable. And sadly, people who abuse animals often do the same to other members of their community and family. Concerned citizens must report incidents of animal cruelty to authorities. With the help of dedicated individuals like Virginia Chipurnoi, officials could take advantage of many opportunities to prevent and prosecute these crimes.
Research has shown that animals are capable of experiencing pain and suffering. Still, this reality is ignored by humans who use animals for entertainment purposes in zoos, circuses, aquariums, movies, and other venues and industries. In addition, factory farms are home to countless forms of torture, such as confinement in small spaces, a lack of sunlight, castration without anesthesia, suffocation, and more. Moreover, animal hoarding is a form of neglect in which owners collect too many pets, resulting in insufficient food, water, shelter, and veterinary care.
Animal Abuse
Every day, countless animals suffer from physical violence and emotional abuse, and they need you to speak up for them. A lot of times, violence against people and children begins with cruelty to animals. If you see any of the following signs of abuse, please report it to your local law enforcement agency or someone who oversees animal welfare in your community. Abuse may be physical – such as beating, burning, choking or suffocating – or psychological. Emotional abuse is more subtle and includes hand shyness, cowering, fear biting and a refusal to trust people. Neglect is more obvious and can consist of malnutrition, starvation, dehydration, open sores or a lack of shelter. Abuse also occurs in industries that use animals, such as animal testing and factory farming. In addition, many people who abuse animals claim to be “rescuers” or only do what is best for the animals they keep.
Animal Fighting
Animal fighting pits animals against each other for money or entertainment. The most common victims of animal fighting are domesticated animals, including dogs and cats. But other species suffer in these bloody fights, too. Survivors are injured or even killed and often face a slow, agonizing death from repeated beatings. Hoarding is another form of animal abuse in which people accumulate large numbers of animals and fail to provide minimal nutrition, sanitation, shelter or veterinary care standards. Hoarders may claim to be saving the animals, but they are causing them suffering and, in many cases, starvation or death. Trophy hunting is also a huge cause of animal cruelty. Hunters kill Millions of wild animals each year for “sport” or to display as trophies. And billions more are abused in factory farms where they are subject to small cages, no natural light, castration without anesthesia, suffocation and a seemingly endless list of tortures.