{"id":606,"date":"2011-05-23T08:25:28","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T08:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/?p=606"},"modified":"2011-05-23T08:25:28","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T08:25:28","slug":"unpredictable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/unpredictable\/","title":{"rendered":"Unpredictable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One common argument as to why animals of species that have not been domesticated for thousands of years should not be kept as pets is that they are \u201cunpredictable\u201d and might be sweet one minute and aggressive the next.\u00a0 A few days ago I read an interesting article making this argument and illustrating the premise with an anecdote:\u00a0 a person was playing with her pet raccoon and having a lovely time, and then she spilled her soda and the raccoon started drinking up the liquid and when she tried to pick up the animal and take him away from the spillage, he snarled and attempted to bite her.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This interesting anecdote; however, does not at all demonstrate \u201cunpredictability.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, it illustrates the diametric opposite: that animals (wild or domestic) will in certain circumstances behave EXACTLY as a rational person would expect them to behave\u2014like animals.\u00a0 Animals will sometimes guard resources that they value: they will use their voice, their expression, and their teeth or claws to get what they want. \u00a0Predators will sometime try to kill prey animals.\u00a0 Animals will sometimes fight for dominance or social position.\u00a0 Animals have moods.\u00a0 Animals have hormones.\u00a0 Animals are not dolls, and not angelic Disney creatures. Unless you have worked very hard to remedy such behavior, pretty much every raccoon in the world will\u2014predictably \u2014behave exactly as hers did.<\/p>\n

This does NOT mean they cannot be wonderful pets and companions.\u00a0 If what you want is a companion that will be perfectly benign and never do anything untoward, get a teddy bear.\u00a0 Animals are slightly more complex.\u00a0 They require that those who interact with them possess a modicum of sense, pay attention to their language and behavior, and be aware and respectful of their capabilities.<\/p>\n

Animals have been behaving this way for millennia and will continue to behave this way.\u00a0 Not only wild animals, ALL animals\u2026\u00a0 Even within the most domesticated species, individuals will sometimes act in accordance with their wild natures.\u00a0 This does not make them unpredictable and it does not make them bad pets.\u00a0 It simply makes them living, breathing individuals with teeth and claws and personalities.\u00a0 And isn\u2019t that precisely why we choose to share our lives with them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One common argument as to why animals of species that have not been domesticated for thousands of years should not be kept as pets is that they are \u201cunpredictable\u201d and might be sweet one minute and aggressive the next.\u00a0 A few days ago I read an interesting article making this argument and illustrating the premise […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-exotic-animals","category-general-animal-ownership","category-115-id","category-45-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-line-bottom","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talentedanimals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}