FACT CHECK: Are People Adopting Pit Bull Terriers for the Sole Purpose of Euthanizing Them?
The #PitbullDropOff hashtag and related claims of mass dog killing stem from a sophomoric troll attempt with origins in 4chan.
CLAIM:
People are adopting pit bulls with the express goal of euthanizing them,
and then bragging about it on the Internet with the hashtag
#PitbullDropOff.
RATING:
ORIGIN:
In mid-May 2018, the hashtag #PitbullDropOff began to gain traction on
social media. A typical post involves a picture of cute pit bull
terrier-type puppies, and a message that the person who took the picture
adopted them for the express purpose of euthanizing them to get them
off the streets. This post from “muffs-o-matic” is representative of most:
These posts are fabricated; they are part of a juvenile attempt to
provoke anger and outrage on the internet, and are specifically directed
at “naive pitmommies and various other low IQ individuals.” They have
their origins not in reality, but in the callow minds of the festering
racist, misogynistic, and nihilistic world that is 4chan — an anonymous
message board that unites trolls, “incels,” and neo-Nazis together in
their shared contempt for human decency.
A 13 May 2018 anonymous post
found in that website’s most infamous board (/pol/) presents an update
on their campaign, and also how you — assuming, of course, that you are a
troll — can get involved in the game:
Indeed, as many have pointed out on Reddit,
most of the photos shared on Twitter and Facebook with the
#PitBullDropOff hashtag include images that can easily be found on
reverse image search as having nothing to do with #PitbullDropOff, and
which predate the hashtag by years. The image that appears in the post
by “muffs-o-matic,” for example, can be found in a February 2017 list of
cute puppies on The Chive.
This tweet, from a burner account clearly created solely for the #PitbullDropOff troll, contains a picture of a sad dog that is at least as old as December 2011:
Outside the smug satisfaction of feeling smarter than the people they
have trolled, the underlying motivations for the hashtag fall clearly
into the political ideology
of the /pol/ message board, which has coagulated over time into a
simple philosophy: Women, liberals, and minorities are destroying
America. Here’s a sampling of some of the comments in the thread:
The anonymous trolls also suggest that pit bull-type dogs are almost
always owned by ethnic minorities, and are thus aggressive and
unfriendly — a racial stereotype that has long motivated anti-pit bull movements:
While we cannot speak to the broader claim that some terrible human
beings have adopted dogs for the purpose of putting them down, we can
say with confidence that the current viral #PitbullDropOff trend on
social media is a hoax orchestrated by anonymous hoaxsters using
unrelated photographs, fake context, and a characteristic reliance on
racism and misogyny. Don’t feed the trolls.
It’s no more controversial than keeping feeder rodents, really. Everything needs to eat. Welfare wise, it’s important that they have the best quality of life they can all the way up until they’re death (which needs to be made as humane as possible, whether being used as meat for people or for other animals). They need adequate space to preform regular rabbit activities and exorcise, they need quality food to keep them healthy, which is important for them but also the health of whatever they’ll be feeding, they need enrichment and stimulation. Efficiency, wise, I really don’t know. I’ve never raised an animal for food… To keep costs lower, you could buy their hey and other feed in bulk (as long as you can keep it from going bad before the rabbits have a chance to need it, of course), and caging/housing could be hand built. Enrichment and the like is easy enough; rabbits love cardboard boxes and oversized toys. Honestly, to keep a rabbit, let alone many, ethically and efficiently, you’re going to have to be willing to put in time and work.
It might be worth finding someone who breeds feeder rodents and see what their suggestions and tips are. I say rodents, rather than rabbits, purely because I think you’ll have an easier time finding rodent feeder breeders. There’s a few around tumblr that take very good care of their feeders.
As usual, suggestions and positive comments that might help anon out are welcome!
If you’re raising them as feeders, kill them humanely before you feed them to something. It’s more humane for the animal, and it removes all risk of the feeder potentially injuring the predator, plus you can freeze the feeder to kill most potential pathogens. Death via predator (especially constrictor snake) is slow, painful, and terrifying. If at all possible, if the predator can by any reasonable means be coaxed to eat a dead thing, feed pre-killed prey and learn how to humanely kill it.
Terrifying and people who keep them as pets are not okay. They’re wild animals and they will literally, rip your face off.
In the wild, they hunt monkeys in packs and rip their prey to shreds as soon as they catch it, often beginning to eat before it’s fully dead. They’re vicious.
One of the worst possible things you can try to keep as a pet.
stalks and kills a caiman. Jaguars are the third largest big cat species, and possess a unique method of dispatching prey. Rather than seizing a hold of the animal’s throat and crushing the windpipe, leading to a death by suffocation, the jaguar instead aims for the head. The killing bite occurs as the jaguar’s powerful jaws close on the animal’s skull, crushing it between its teeth.
“hm, I’m hungry. I think I’ll eat AN ENTIRE CAIMAN”
It’s not humane, no. Probably legal, but not humane, freezing causes ice crystals to form in the veins. It’s not a humane way to kill anything, except, possibly, insects, and that only because they may or may not have pain receptors.
If you must kill a reptile, destroy the brain as quickly as possible. A hammer does the trick. It looks nasty, but it’s the most humane method- an animal can’t feel pain if it doesn’t have a brain to feel things with.
Probably won’t get as many notes on this one, but I still like to share!
Vultures!
A rac.coon got run over in the road early this morning, and I went and got it out of the road so the vultures wouldn’t get run over trying to eat it. Here they are as photographed from the window facing the street.
Image descriptions and general narration below, bird IDs in the captions.
[image: two large, glossy black birds with naked grey heads+necks standing next to a heap of guts and striped fur]
These are the first arrivals, they turned up right after each other. Two adult black vultures, I think potentially a mated pair.
[image: the same birds, both with their heads raised, one standing up tall, looking in the same direction]
I opened the window and made a generic bird “wheep! wheep!” alarm call to get their attention, and their heads went up. I left them alone after that, just took pics from the window.
[image: a similar bird, but slightly smaller and with less glossy feathers, standing on a sidewalk. It shows that the birds have long legs and white feet. ]
This is the next arrival. Another black vulture, I think younger than them. The older two wouldn’t let him eat until they were finished.
[image: the same three birds as before, plus a new arrival. The new bird is slightly larger and dark brown, its feathers marked with small pale flecks along its wings. Its head is pink and the feathers come up along its neck to the back of its head. The two glossy birds are eating from the carcass, the younger black bird is watching, and the brown bird is inspecting the dry grass nearby.]
That’s a turkey vulture. Ended up with two more turning up later, but didn’t get good pics of them. The black vultures wouldn’t let him eat either, he had to wait.
[image: the four birds, but spread out, showing that a road is about 6-8 feet behind the carcass. The brown bird is far away, to the left, and on the other side of the road. The younger black bird is in the center of the image, standing in the road, and the two older black birds are still eating.]
There were still some gut bits in the road, so the turkey and the younger black vulture went out there when there weren’t any cars coming and picked up some guts. They got honked at a lot.
[image: the brown bird in flight, near the road. The underside of one wing is visible and is pale grey. The front steps of a church are visible in the background, as is the church sign, though the letters have been covered over in a program like Paint to prevent identification.]
Covered the sign and didn’t show the entire church to prevent my location being identified, it’s a pretty distinctive building. This is the turkey vulture mid-flight after a car got too close. Not pictured: the turkey vulture perching on the church sign itself to watch the others.
All six birds got to eat some amount or another, but they had to wait for the first two to eat. I turned the carcass over after these pics to let the vultures get easier access to the guts, and they’re perched in nearby trees waiting for it to stop raining. Once they’re done eating, I’m going to go and see if I can get any salvageable bones from the rac.coon. The lower jaws might be in good enough shape to use for crafts, and the paws, I think, are intact. May be able to get the bones from the paws.
Fisherman: Friend, what do you want? [weasel sniffs at a closed bucket with fish] Hungry for some fish, aren’t you? Maybe I should give you a fishing pole? Eager beaver. Let me open it. [weasel is busy digging under the bucket. fisherman gently pokes it] Hey, there is a lid up here. Come on, pick any you want. [weasel grabs a fish and runs away] Hey, no “thank you”? Well, you’re welcome.
This translation is great, but I think you all need to know that the idiom that this person translated to “eager beaver”, if translated literally word-for-word, becomes “businesslike sausage”
For those commenting about it, no, the polar bear did not die just because of being kept in California.
The San Diego Zoo keeps two polar bears, and the way they keep the bears healthy is they put the bears on a low-fat diet. The bears have considerably less body fat than wild bears, which means they don’t have as much insulation, since they don’t need the fat to insulate them against the frigid cold. The bears look thinner than wild polar bears, since they are, but they’re perfectly healthy and their weight is stable. Because of their lower body fat, they’re comfortable in the heat, and have their pool to retreat into when it gets too hot. In fact, the zoo has to heat their pool in the winter or they won’t go into it. Having the bears on a low-fat diet is much easier and more reliable than chilling the entire enclosure. That’s how a good zoo handles polar bear care.
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 