Comment on 20 Big Cats Die From Bird Flu at a Washington Sanctuary

LordWiggle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• SoylentBlake@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Dude I live 10 min away from this place. Those cats have room, they arent walled in to their shoulders. Sure everything would prefer to be running free in it’s own preferential Valhalla, but I’ve never heard a whine, moan or complaint from any of them cats. And ALL of them are vocal enough to let you know EXACTLY how they feel. The domesticated cat is actually rather quiet in comparison to most of its larger cousins.

  And regardless, it’s a sanctuary. Every cat there is the result of someone getting an exotic pet they couldn’t handle, so the choice becomes

  Cat goes to sanctuary or cat gets put down.

  I understand your animosity towards the reality of it, but place it on the people who started the shit cycle, not those trying to lessen the suck.

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• remotelove@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Your compassion for animals is awesome but your information about how and why viruses mutate and spread seems very flawed.

  Yes, viruses may spread faster through animals in captivity which could lead to higher rates of virus mutations. But no, it’s not the cause of every pandemic you have ever heard about. Pinning the cause on one specific behavior is beyond false.

  The black death specifically was likely transmitted to humans via fleas from rats, as an example. What’s key, is that nobody has even been able to prove that completely.

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  • LordWiggle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Are you aware rats and fleas are animals too? Humans and animals living close together is the reason viruses mutate. It’s why Europe had many plagues while the americas had none. As soon as Europeans landed there, we brought mayhem with all the viruses we brought with us. It’s because we domesticated animals, while in the americas they did not. We had many rats because of the poor hygiene and living so close together, with others and animals. We should make sure we distance ourselves from many different kinds of animals to reduce the chance or mutations.

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    • remotelove@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Viruses mutate with almost every division. Hell, almost every strand of DNA that divides has mutations. It’s a natural phenomenon and not exclusively caused by one particular thing or situation.

      en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation

      You seem to be mixing up a few key aspects of how and why new strains are formed, and somehow, you are overestimating the transmissibility of a virus between different animals.

      It’s like you understand some of the key concepts of this stuff, but animal domestication somehow got mixed in as a root cause for natural processes.

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      • LordWiggle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        So you do not increase the chance of mutation onto other creatures by having animals and humans living close together? What is your point? You’re not saying anything different to what I’m saying. Viruses mutate, can jump from creature to creature. But when there are a lot of creatures living close together, it increases the chances. When there are a lot of different kind of creatures, there is a bigger chance of the virus mutating onto other type of creatures. Whether it’s lifestock, rats, insects, domesticated animals, whatever. When we talk about animal to human transmission, it’s called zoonosis.

        Scientists (microbiologists for example) warn for this all the time, especially since covid. Here in the Netherlands there are a lot of animals living very close to humans, with all the giant farms so close cities, increasing the mutation chance a lot. During covid nerts farms were closed because of this in several countries including Denmark and the Netherlands. They banned animal markets in China because of this. Because densely packed animals and many different kinds of animals increase the chance of mutation, and when close to humans, the chance of zoonosis increases drastically.

        So what am I mixing up here?

        Here are some scientific articles:

        royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/…/rspb.2019.2736

        pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6787790/

        www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/240325114138.htm

        www.nature.com/articles/srep14830

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    • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Mmm yes that’s why explorers and colonists famously never got sick with diseases from the “New World”.

      Hides Malaria and Ebola under a rug.

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      • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And the big America-pox itself, Syphilis

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      • LordWiggle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Just because Europe was so packed with people and animals together so much more viruses mutated into plagues doesn’t mean other continents were immune to developing plagues. What is your point? You don’t agree living close with animals increases the chance of mutations? Or are you in favor of exotic animals in cages? Or do you deny Europeans brought loads of diseases to the Americas? What are you trying to accomplish here? All these things I wrote are scientific and historical facts.

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    • Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The Americas had less domestic animal species yes, but they had their own plagues, they just weren’t recorded.

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    • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      On the flip side, every discord that allowed itself to be domesticated is now at its highest population levels in all of history. There are more cattle, drugs, cats, chickens, sheep, etc alive today than ever before.

      Yes, there is disease that will jump species and that sucks but that’s just life, yo. Even with those that died from that, across all specific species in relation to man, every single species had and is still better off for the arrangement. The stories can be told in the sheer numbers alone.

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• Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Rats weren’t exactly in cages…

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