Tag: S. Bird

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Welgestelden en kakkers in GB en de VS laten zich fêteren met chimpansee vlees

Posted on by Willem Wachtmeester

Het
is om werkelijk schijtziek van te worden, welgestelden die van
gekkigheid niet meer weten wat ze moeten doen om boven het alledaagse
plebs uit te steken en daar is alweer wat nieuws op gevonden: chimpansee vlees
eten……. 

Vooral in de VS en grote Europese steden schijnt apenvlees ‘hip’ te zijn…. De Britse douane onderschepte een paar weken terug zo’n 900 kilo bushmeat dat bestemd was voor de VS…..

Hierbij
wil ik de ook de hoop uitspreken dat dit westerse geteisem t.z.t. wordt afgeknald
en zelf wordt opgegeten. Gaat misschien wat ver, maar ze ebola wensen (veelal opgelopen door het eten van ‘bushmeat’, waartoe uiteraard ook
chimpansee vlees behoort) is niet zo slim daar deze ziekte zo
uitermate besmettelijk en dodelijk is.

Het
volgende artikel van het Care2 team werd geschreven door Susan
Bird:

Chimpanzee
Meat Being Served as a Delicacy in the UK and US

If
you’re attending a ritzy event in the U.K., pay attention to the
meat being served. Some high-end private events in Britain are
offering chimpanzee meat
as a “delicacy.” That’s bizarre, illegal and dangerous, primate
experts say.

This
isn’t just a U.K. problem, by the way. Customs officials revealed a
few weeks ago they found and confiscated 2,000 pounds of “bush
meat” on a flight bound for the U.S.

“It’s
rife. It’s there — it’s in all the major cities across Europe
and the U.S.,” primate scientist Ben Garrod told The
Telegraph.
“We have seen bush meat confiscated in the U.K. in check points at
borders and in markets.”

Bush
meat is
meat taken illegally by poachers of wildlife, including chimpanzees,
gorillas, elephants, antelopes, pangolins and many others. Somehow it
has become a prized
delicacy in
Western countries, selling in Britain for five times the price of
beef or pork, according to The Telegraph.

Bush
meat poses more serious problems than people may realize. In addition
to the fact that bush meat comes from illegally killed endangered
animals, it’s also a tremendous threat to human health.

The
greatest danger is a doozy: Bush meat can carry the Ebola virus.

In
most cases, people get Ebola through contact with an infected animal,
such as a fruit bat or nonhuman primate. When an animal infects a
human, it’s known as a “spillover event.” Once a human begins
showing symptoms, the virus will spread from human to human via
direct contact with bodily fluids.

While
Ebola is not normally transmitted by food, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention advises
that “in certain parts of the world, Ebola virus may spread through
the handling and consumption of bushmeat (wild animals hunted for
food).”

Therein
lies the problem. If you eat or handle Ebola-infected bush meat,
you’ve begun a potential chain of events that could ultimately
infect and kill many innocent people.

“The
biggest worry for health authorities at the moment is that a disease
that can be passed between humans and animals will be the next big
pandemic,” Garrod told The Telegraph. “For example, HIV
originally came from primates. We are so similar, so the potential is
there for various pathogens and viruses to be transmitted or mutate.”

Renowned
primate expert Dr.
Jane Goodall agrees
with Garrod that bush meat poses a real threat. “Interpol is
becoming increasingly involved in animal trafficking and could,
perhaps, be persuaded to take a more active role in the bush meat
smuggling,” she told The Telegraph.

It’s
reportedly quite easy to get bush meat past customs officials because
it’s often smoked and blackened first. Bush meat looks like any
similar meat that’s been cooked in that way. How are customs
officials to know the difference? One way, Garrod suggests, is to
begin DNA testing imported meats.

“With
advances in DNA analysis and the price of them coming down it’s not
unreasonable that we could be checking for these things,” he told
The Telegraph.

To
avoid the potential for a pandemic, DNA testing seems to be a
reasonable recommendation.

An
even more effective way to eliminate the problem is to eliminate the
demand. Educate those who desire bush meat that they’re putting
their lives at risk — along with the lives of many others — for
the sake of a “delicacy.”

Respect
the chimpanzee. Don’t eat it. The same goes for any endangered or
vulnerable-status animal. Those who are importing bush meat to the
U.S. or U.K. are not people who must eat that kind of meat to
survive. They’re self-centered and uninformed — and they’re
creating unnecessary risk for the rest of us.

Photo
credit: Kylie Nicholson/Getty Images

Wetenschappers gebruiken inktvissen als proefdier

Posted on by Willem Wachtmeester

Inktvissen
zijn uiterst intelligente dieren, met een aantal zeer opmerkelijke
eigenschappen, zo  heeft de inktvis 3 harten en blauw bloed (maar inktvissen zijn heel
wat beschaafder dan wat men ‘de adel’ noemt, de erfgenamen van psychopaten die de bevolking middels ongebreideld geweld onder de duim hielden…..)

Lees het
volgende artikel, geschreven door Susan Bird en gepubliceerd op
Anti-Media en verbaas je over de vele eigenschappen van deze
wonderlijke zeedieren, dieren die in een aantal landen levend worden
geserveerd en waar wetenschappers hun oog op hebben laten vallen om ze te martelen in onderzoeken die prima met computermodellen kunnen
worden uitgevoerd….. Lullig dat Bird het deels nog opneemt voor
dierproeven……

Jammer
genoeg is er geen petitie aan dit artikel van het Care2 team verbonden, daar een verbod
op dierproeven met deze dieren (en alle andere dieren) van het
grootste belang is, deze dierenmishandeling op grote schaal moet eindelijk eens afgelopen zijn (zoals ook aan het eten van inktvis een eind moet worden gemaakt):

Scientists
Think Octopuses Would Make Terrific Lab Rats

The octopus is
a smart, curious and mysterious being. So does it surprise you to
learn that these very qualities mean scientists are turning octopuses
into 21st century lab rats?

Yes,
it’s true. There are now thousands of octopuses and other
cephalopods living in laboratories. The Marine Biological Laboratory
in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is at the forefront of the effort to
study all aspects of cephalopod physiology. Whether that’s a good
thing depends on your perspective.

“It’s
the only place on the planet that you can go where we are culturing a
number of these species through every life stage, through successive
generations, with the goal of creating a genetically tractable
system,” Marine Biological Laboratory’s Bret Grasse told NPR.

Scientists study
many types of animals for
different reasons. They call certain creatures “model organisms”
because their biology is often similar to ours and we already know
quite a lot about their genetic makeup. Such organisms include yeast,
fruit flies, worms, zebrafish and mice.

To
understand tissue regeneration, scientists study zebrafish and worms,
who can regrow appendages they injure or lose completely. To study
the interaction of genes with environment, they look at honeybees and
fruit flies. To study aging, the sea urchin has been a useful study
animal because it can regrow body parts through its lifetime.

Octopuses
have the largest,
most complex brain of
all invertebrate animals. That makes them of great interest to
scientists, especially those who do research on genes. Scientists can
now alter octopus genes, meaning they are breeding these creatures
and fiddling with their genetic makeup to see what effect those
changes have.

“With
these organisms, you could understand what genes did by manipulating
them,” Marine Biological Laboratory biologist Josh Rosenthal
told NPR. “And that really became an indispensable part of
biology.”

ALL
ABOUT THE OCTOPUS

Octopuses
— yes, that’s the correct plural term, not “octopi” — are
eight-legged ocean dwellers who have three hearts and blue blood.
They are a type of highly advanced mollusk. Completely boneless, they
can squeeze into impossibly small spaces, making them rather
infamous escape
artists from
aquariums.

“They
are curious, inquisitive animals,” Roger Hanlon, Marine
Biological Laboratory senior scientist, told Live
Science in
2016. “They forage hundreds of meters per day looking for food and
mates and different shelters. This is an ambulatory animal, so the
idea that they would want to move outside their tank in an aquarium
is not at all surprising.”

The
octopus is a solitary wanderer. Except when mating, it explores the
world by itself. When placed together in lab aquariums, octopuses
fight one another. They therefore each need their own living space.
And speaking of containers, an octopus has no trouble unscrewing
itself from inside a jar.

Each
leg of an octopus — technically, it’s not a “tentacle” —
contains 200 or more highly sensitive suckers they use for both taste
and touch.

An
octopus has amazing defensive mechanisms. It can quickly change its
color to camouflage itself, hide among ocean waves by matching their
speed exactly, flatten itself to mimic being a fish and, when
cornered, squirt ink to create a distraction or screen from
predators.

ANIMAL
WELFARE RULES ARE LACKING

Of
course, any impressive and intelligent animal eventually becomes the
focus of scientific experimentation. Now, it’s unfortunately the
octopus’s turn. That could be a problem for them, as animal welfare
rules for scientific research don’t apply to invertebrate animals —
those without a spine — except
in the European Union.

Marine
Biological Laboratory has some 3,000 cephalopods and is breeding
more all the time. For animal lovers, that’s not good news. But
it’s heartening to know that despite the lack of regulations to
protect these creatures, Marine Biological Laboratory says it’s
taking their welfare seriously.

Researchers
are working on keeping living conditions as stress-free as
possible. Marine Biological Laboratory is also putting effort
into determining what anesthesia will work best for cephalopods and
developing what they call a “one-of-a-kind policy for cephalopod
research.”

I
wish we could find other ways to research than to poke at animals.
How sad that these wonderful, intelligent creatures live their entire
lives in labs instead of free in the oceans where they belong.

That
said, I’m grateful these researchers are actively thinking about
how to make captive octopus lives better, even when legally they
aren’t required to do so. But it’s time we regulate cephalopod
research to make sure we don’t have to depend on the conscience of
those doing the experimenting.

Photo
credit: fotokon/Getty Images

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