hckrnws

I wear one of these chips on my wristwatch since the 125 kHz RFID lets me open doors and use the elevator in my building without needing to pull out my keys. It’s entirely passive so I’m guessing that the chip in question carries an ID that is read by a reader and points to an ID on some pet identification database. So she was “updating the chip” less and “keeping the database up to date” more.

Ubiquitous microchips are really quite amazing.

Yes, it's just a number referenced in one of a few databases.

> The 15-digit pet microchip is the international standard (see ISO 11784:1996 and ISO 11785:1996)

https://www.aaha.org/for-veterinary-professionals/microchip-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_11784_and_ISO_11785

>the international standard

Except the United States, because of course.

ISO is 134 kHz, US has both 125 and 128 kHz.

I've had one in my hand for 12 years. It has my contact card on it.

I'm not even sure which of many questions to ask first..

- Are you a furry?

- Do you tend to wander off and forget who you are?

- Who would think to scan a human for a chip?

- Is this a common thing to do and I just don't know it?

- Did you put the chip there or did someone else?

- Or was it some kind of freak accident?

You can inject these things pretty easily. They're about the size of a grain of rice, and pretty popular in some circles.

Popular in Sweden, apparently: https://geeksaroundglobe.com/6000-swedes-implant-chips-in-sk...

And when they used it as a digital identifier to check for the Covid-vaccination status, of course all the wormbrained screamed that "Covid certificate mandate leads to Swedish government microchipping its citizens!'.

Is this how the whole "Bill Gates is putting 5G chips in the Covid vaccine" meme got started?

Yeah, this explains a lot!

Crazy times we are living in! First all the conspiracy theories about a huge pedo-ring controlling the world's government come true and then this?!

You’re forgetting adrenochrome

All of this is actually happening, and semi-post-ironically joking about it preemptively just to hedge the "well if its happening I was joking ironically" and " of its not happening look how stupid you look"

Just makes you all look like cowardly cattle, which they also refer to us as.

But yeah, joke about it.

>huge pedo-ring controlling the world's government

Just wait until you realize these pedos are just getting blackmailed into submission and aren't controlling anything but most here probably never will because of the wrong think programming.

* they're definitely disproportionately common in the furry community but not really a "furry thing"

I think most people use them as a backup work badge or controlling other RFID readers (car key, smart lock, etc). Or as a party trick

It's not particularly common but I've met other people.

Some people selfinject but it's probably more common to go to like a tattoo parlor or body mod shop

Hahaha definitely not a furry. I had some magnets implanted and was looking into other subtle body mods and thought an NFC chip would be fun. I bought the magnets and the chip from dangerousthings.com

I went to a piercing shop to get it done by a guy who does silicone implants and other less common body modifications.

It's not common. The only other people I've met with chips are the guy who implanted it and my girlfriend at the time.

I have considered getting a newer model implanted and using that to badge in at work and home, but I'd likely have to travel halfway across the country to get it done.

was this a couple decades ago or so? i remember reading a blog about someone who implanted a magnet in the tip of one of their fingers and then put a chip in the skin between the thumb and forefinger.

You might be thinking of a blog called Feeling Waves. https://feelingwaves.blogspot.com That's where I heard about it too. He had magnets custom coated in some sort of Teflon like material. I ordered some magnets from him in 2009 but then couldn't find anyone who would implant them. I was living in Fargo, ND at the time and had called a bunch of tattoo and piercing shops as far away as Omaha and nobody would do it.

A few years later and I was living in Tacoma. I found a guy in Seattle, John Durante, who does all kinds of body mods. So I got one of the Dangerous Things magnets implanted in my finger. I still had those magnets from the blogger, but John wasn't going to install mystery objects into a client haha and he already had some magnets on hand.

Maybe a year or 2 after that I had moved back to Fargo. Somehow I came across a guy, Ian Bell, out of St. Cloud, MN who also did some more extreme body boss. He implanted the NFC chip in my hand. Later on I had him implant a magnet in each ear, in the tragus. The idea with that was I could wear a coil necklace hooked up to an audio jack and I'd have implanted headphones. That didn't really work. The magnetic field is much to weak. It did work if I held the coil up to my ear, so that was a near trick, because the audio was audible from a few inches away. The magnets in my ears were stronger than the magnet in my finger, so I was able to hang paperclips off of them and that was a fun party trick. The ear magnets had to be removed after several months because the casing had cracked and the magnets were disintegrating, causing my ears to swell and hurt. I forgot what the magnets were coated in, but it was a different coating than the finger magnet; the finger magnet is still in there and fine today.

The magnet removal sucked and I was dumb about it. Only one bothered me at first so I left the other one in there. Well, the 2nd one started to bother me a bit later and by the time I was like ok I should get this taken out, the only person within 1400 miles who would do it was out of state. So I went to a walk in clinic and explained the situation and I'm pretty sure they thought I was crazy. They scheduled me for a surgery that was a couple of months out and I had a vacation to Australia coming up. I ordered some scalpels off Amazon and tried to DIY. I couldn't do it. I asked a friend, and she couldn't get it either. At this point my ear was swollen, discolored, and had some scalpel cuts. So I flew to Australia with a messed up ear. I tried to meet up with the owner of a piercing shop in Sydney who Ian had hooked me up with but he was in Perth while I was in Sydney. Suffered for the next month. Got back home. Ian cut it out.

I typed all this on a phone and I'm not going to proofread it. Sorry

Thank you for sharing your story, that was an interesting perspective of the practical side of light body implants.

Bright side! you'll never be John Doe - unidentified serial killer victim #3

if they bother scanning the bodies

[dead]

21 years in my right hand. Sadly, they weren't writable back then, so it is just a static number.

You must have been one of the first to do it!

I've had mine for a similar length of time. Friend ran a few piercing/body mod shops in the UK and had just gotten them in. A few friends got them at the same time though most eventually had them cut out. Mines still there it's a fun party truck these days I never actually used it for anything.

Had to convince a company we had an Alpaca farm and needed a few tags to test with our livestock. They sent me a few EM4104s.

Haha, mine is meant to fit in the webbing between thumb and index finger, but I just have a little 3d-printed attachment that holds it to my watch. Didn't have the balls to go the whole way.

I remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Oxer getting one in 2008. Quite the pioneer.

What would happen if you needed an MRI?

Nothing unless it’s scanning that area and it will just create artifacts in the scan and heat up tissue locally.

Thanks it was super confusing until this.

Thanks for the heartwarming story, loved it! Quite a nice change from all the depressing news otherwise.

> her beloved pit bull, Forty-Cal, had been missing for 11 years.

> He's super docile and friendly. Always has been.

Are pit bulls known for being docile?

They are actually super sweet dogs in most cases. But once they get going, they are super strong and don’t give up. With most dogs you can separate them when they bite but a pit bull won’t let go.

Years ago we fostered a lot of different dogs and the pit bulls were some of the nicest. But you have to pay attention to their strength. For example playing tug-o-war may end up in a shoulder injury because the pit bull will pull really hard.

Another problem is that a lot of idiots like pit bulls and make them aggressive.

100% this.

The breed is great. They're just dogs; far less bitey statistically than many other breeds. The owners it attracts are the worst.

And the breed is super strong. When encouraged to be hyper-territorial and aggressive, the results are super-bad. A chihuahua bite should be followed with a doctor's visit; a pitty bite generally requires stitches.

That's just what the owners tend to say after the dog has ripped some child apart. It's the "I didn't know it was loaded" defense.

The dumbest thing I’ve done in the last ten years was stick my hands in the mouth of a “docile and friendly” pitty to extract a screaming puppy.

Only afterward did I realized I almost destroyed my livelihood.

My partner Google stalked the owner and discovered that he’d been force to surrender another pit bull two years earlier.

The lucky ones learn about the finger in the butt and hind leg wheel barrow maneuvers before they have to use them.

Robert Cabral has a video on the proper technique

https://www.youtube.com/live/rHVyMHTb6l4?si=ZPkPtNP8_zcb_MIf

It doesn't work when a dog really doesn't want to let go. I think it would even make it bite stronger.

By the way, good luck sticking your finger in a dog but when he is fighting... I think you didn't try it much before giving advices.

You might need something like rebar to stick in the back of the mouth and pull back when that doesn't work

> finger in the butt

What

Username checks out.

I've seen the video where all these methods were tried to no avail, so I don't have much faith in them. The safest solution is to put the animal down, but of course you have to have something on hand to do that. A 4x2 to the temple should do it. That'll end the aggressor and save the victim.

"Should", maybe, but I've seen a pretty disturbing video where a pit bull took a lot more than one hit... it was multiple minutes of hits. And it only let go after it died, I've never seen anything like it.

Damn, I was hoping the shock of a hard knock to the head might cause it to release. There goes that theory.

Do you know where I can find that video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFDLY_Tl6wQ

It's really really hard to watch.

Harder to pull off after naming it 'Forty-Cal' though, no?

I took a few pit mixes out of the local humane society last summer for "Doggy Day Out", basically an opportunity for dogs who need new homes to get exposure to the community and get away from the kennel for a few hours, and they were universally friendly, sweet dogs.

There's some selection bias, obviously, but their reputation is definitely overblown.

They are very sweet dogs, until they're not.

I was at a friend's place with some others from school, we were about 14-15 years old, his family had this seemingly sweet pitbull, always wanting to be pet, super playful but kind. That day it attacked one of our classmates, out of the blue, we were sitting on the backyard, the dog playing with some rope toys, brought it to us sitting, this guy picked up the toy to throw it and before he could even started the motion this pitbull jumped on his face and started attacking.

It was so jarring, unexpected, and brutal that I got traumatised for life from pitbulls, I don't like to be close to them, don't like when I'm biking and there's one without a muzzle being walked around, and I don't want to pet one as much as it can look super friendly and calm. Seeing how fast it could turn into a murder machine even when growing up in a loving family that never trained it to be a guard/attack dog, and probably never treated the dog badly, made me very anti-pitbulls.

Most dog attacks in the country I grew up in are from pitbulls, including a few kids killed every year, the statistics don't lie. The breed requires people who aren't assholes so it doesn't become dangerous, I don't trust owners to do that, even more when it's a breed for "macho" guys to show off at the same time.

I got bit by a dog a while ago and the thing that really woke me up was how unexpected it was. I generally think that I'm fairly observant and empathetic with animals. All B.S. aside I genuinely think I can tell when a dog is scared. The dog that bit me though, totally out of the blue. I saw it. No body language, no nothing - and I walked by it and next thing I knew it jumped out and bit my hand.

Since then if I see a strange dog and the option is there I keep plenty of distance between it and me no matter what I take to be it's state.

> Most dog attacks in the country I grew up in are from pitbulls, including a few kids killed every year, the statistics don't lie.

Most dog attacks aren't reported. Toy dog bites are often not reported.

If we are to be pedantic I should have defined it as "most dog attacks causing serious enough harm to be reported" but I don't think it was needed to communicate the same thing.

> dog playing with some rope toys, brought it to us sitting, this guy picked up

Probably a case of ressource guarding.

Many dogs are dangerous not because they are trained to but because people don't train them at all beside to sit and to lay down.

Dogs are certainly not psychopathe that attack out of the blue, they have motivations and reasonings. Most often a lack of education and socializing.

When I see people puting their dog in a cage at night and then puting them on a leash to walk it a few times per week, yeah, that's ticking bombs.

They are banned in Ontario, Canada for a good reason and banned in UK for the same reasons.

The only time my dog was ever randomly attacked was a pitbull and you quickly learn talking to other dog owners how common this is. Nothing clears out a dog park like a pit bull showing up.

The ban isn't meaningfully enforced in much of the province [1], I see them a lot. I used to live in Ottawa, and their official site directly states "The City of Ottawa does not enforce the provincial ban on pit bulls" [2]. For those (legitimately) interested in a Canadian perspective on breed-specific legislation, there's a documentary by CBC's Fifth Estate on the subject [3].

1. https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/five-things-to-know-abou...

2. https://ottawa.ca/en/living-ottawa/animals-and-pets/dogs/dog...

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFa8HOdegZA

I suspect the reasons are (generously) keeping them out of the hands of people who would treat them poorly and perpetuate the stereotypes, or (less generously) ignorance and fear.

How they're raised makes a big difference, but natural instinct is natural instinct. It's just like how chihuahuas were bred to be small, but pit bulls were bred to fight other dogs.

In France, during many years the biggest bitter by far was the fucking golden retriever.

Speak about natural instincts... I answer that some people have zero clue what to do with a dog.

I say we put down all these golden retriever too !

There are plenty of statistical studies out there that pit bulls specifically cause both a significant plurality of dog bites and significantly worse injuries than other dog breeds.

For example:

https://blog.dogsbite.org/2016/10/table-retrospective-level-...

https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-studies-level-1...

Correlation/causation

The word "pit" in "pit bull" refers specifically to a dog fighting arena where dogs are supposed to aggressively fight each other in a duel, possibly until one of them dies.

"pit bull" refers to a dog breed that was optimized for its performance (=more aggressive and dangerous) in the "pit".

Maybe Pitbulls are bi-polar more often than other dogs.

Some dogs races are known to attract people who have social and or mental issues.

Not all pit bulls are dangerous, in the right hands they are some of the nicest dogs I have seen, but yeah.

Personally I don't judge dogs anymore by their races but by their owner, I found it to be much more accurate.

And on a sidenote, this owner really doesn't inspire me much. When she say it was disheartening to loose this dog because she paid for it with her own money... That's the kind of things I hear from the low life with pits.

So we can breed dogs for size, for behaviours like retrieving or guarding, but magically we can't breed for aggression like pit bulls have?

Lmao.

Well-raised pits aren't aggressive. They used to be recommended to watch babies.

"Lmao."

Honestly, all the ones I've known have been super sweet dogs. I can never quite bring myself to fully trust them, but frankly I never fully trust any dog.

This is the way.

Not typically - but when it's called Forty Cal, maybe? That's what, one bell pepper?

Or maybe it's short for Forty Caliber. Pretty big difference.

Hm, that's a good point. I totally did not think of that as a possibility. But what are the chances? I mean, it's just a cute little pit bull we're talking about here! It's not as if it's even a big dog, like a golden retriever, or a nice friendly alsatian.

> Animal Care and Control Team (ACCT) Philly sent her some pics of the pooch in question.

100 percent this dog is named after a bullet.

Because thats how Philly rolls.

In case you dont know:

HitchBOT got murdered in Philly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitchBOT

Bill Burr's Philly set: https://www.reddit.com/r/cowboys/comments/1il5msw/in_honor_o...

Don't get me wrong Philly is great, but Philly is... something.

What if it's called Mr. Worldwide?

“It’s not the dog, it’s the owner.”

There is a self-selecting bias with pit bulls. People who buy and raise pit bulls often want a “mean” “tough” dog, so that’s what they get. You get a loving sweet pit bull if you raise them in a loving sweet way. Dogs are like children; they are very observant and pick up on even the tiniest of cues.

Although, like people, some dogs (of all different breeds) are born more aggressive. That can usually be corrected with training. It’s mostly nurture, and part nature.

> Are pit bulls known for being docile?

Not really. Even "old school" working catch dogs in this breed may require a break stick to get the dog to release game. In addition, the dogs are strong.

And that's really the crux of the problem.

Dogs will be dogs. They can be the nicest animal on the planet, but at some point a dog will bite you--maybe you did something stupid, maybe the dog accidentally got underfoot and got kicked, maybe the dog is just sick, maybe something agitated the dog, whatever. A bite will happen. The problem with pit bulls is that when they bite the damage is much more problematic than with other breeds.

And this is the real issue. Because of their strength, pit bulls (and a small number of other breeds) account for a disproportionate amount of deaths and hospitalizations relative to other breeds.

It also doesn't help that these types of dogs are disproportionately owned by jackasses.

Wanna try a rotweiler ?

All dogs can be dangerous, even small ones can bite a finger out of your hand.

Either kill all the dogs or get people who own them to be responsible.

My dog bit me accidentally while playing, a few times. Every time, he apologized. (That is: he stopped playing, made a characteristic sound, and licked me to make sure I was OK.)

I remember when I was a kid one of the cats we had - who at that point was very much not a kitten and blind to boot - had gotten into a tussle with some strange cat. I just reached in to the melee and grabbed our cat. He promptly bit my and - or rather he started to. Didn't even break the skin. Just immediately stopped and I swear to God if a cat could say, "Oh, I'm sorry I thought you were someone else" that's what he would have said.

I miss that dumb cat.

Was it a pit bull?

English Bull Terrier - closely related to a pit bull

Pit bulls are more likely to bite and when they do, they hold the bite much longer than basically any other dog breed and they often require outside intervention to stop the second bite.

Once the dog has demonstrated itself to be dangerous, there is not much you can do other than euthanasia. The worst thing you can do is bring it to a shelter and let an unsuspecting family take the dangerous dog in. A lot of trouble would be saved by choosing a similar looking dog breed that isn't as aggressive or dangerous.

You talking like a bite must happen. No it's not. Source: myself, we ve had a dozen of dogs. Among them : rotweiler, new foundlands, montagne de pyrénées, terrier, and dozens of chihuahua and spitzs

Ingenuous question. You know they have a bad reputation.

The main problem with pit bulls, AIUI, is that they can be aggressive towards other dogs. Also, assholes buy them (due to their reputation) and then encourage aggressive behavior.

I've met some pit bulls owned by nice people and the dogs were super friendly and especially very tolerant of children.

I used to have a pitbull/boxer mix and she was the sweetest dog. She had the longest tongue and would do big yawns and I'd just stick my hand in her mouth and grab her tongue and she'd shake her head and look confused. It was pretty funny. Most dogs are nice if they live in good homes.

Nothing stopping them from being great with kids. All dogs can be great with kids.

Pit bulls have a long history as family dogs -- they're loyal, affectionate, and incredibly gentle with kids. The whole 'nanny dog' reputation exists for a reason.

An example... https://www.luccishouse.org/post/misunderstood-angels-the-hi...

My pit mix was actually a therapy dog for autistic children through a program at a local hospital in Austin. The kids would read to her while she cuddled up next to them, putting her paw on them gently when they were nervous or frustrated. The program was designed to help the kids build confidence by providing a social interaction where they wouldn't feel judged. And she was great at it. It was the highlight of her week getting to go to the therapy center.

I've had a lot of dogs in my life, and I've never had one more sweet or gentle than she was.

But look, any dog can be awful or wonderful. That comes down to the owner, the environment, and the individual animal way more than the breed -- and honestly, the whole concept of 'breeds' is a bit silly to begin with. But I get that people need to classify things. It's just dumb.

So, stop being a dog racist. (=

I wonder how the dog survived for 11 years... Surely he wasn't a stray that entire time?

The article mentions that the woman suspected the dog was stolen. So perhaps he did live with someone for many years, and was either found after running away, or... something.

Aliens abducted the dog. And now they gave it back.

These microchips are amazing technology.

I highly highly encourage all you pet lovers to obtain one for your little homie.

You never know when you’ll need it.

24 EU countries have mandatory dog micro-chipping.

In Belgium there is a centralized database in which the data is maintained.

When I moved to the USA I thought it was very weird that it wasn't done automatically, and that there are many databases out there.

In fact, one went bust a while ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/microchip-company-cl...

Now what? Gotta pay to have 18 digits and an address inserted in a database?

I thought it was very weird in the USA

Like many things in the US, there's no centralized authority that mandates this sort of thing. Some states have laws around this some don't. For those that don't, some counties or cities might have laws around this. Belgium of course has a stronger central government, small land area, and a small population, so I'm not surprised that something like that would be done country-wide.

The shelter in my city chips every animal before anyone can adopt them. It's honestly bonkers to me why anyone who has a pet wouldn't chip them. It's cheap (especially when considering the cost of a regular vet visit), and can save you from lots of heartbreak later on.

Coloradan with all chipped pets for decades. Not sure where you're coming from. Our friend was reunited with a cat with a chip that was lost for a 6 months. Shitting on the US is great for karma these days

Did your state chip your pet or was it a private company? I think they are saying that there are no centralized authorities and you depend on private companies

https://www.petlink.net/microchip-search/

It seems the various chip companies share registry data, doesn't have to be state run.

That is upsetting for what could almost certainly be run from a SQLite database on a garbage-tier host. Presumably 99.9% of all animals are registered one time and never again queried. Could be near zero operational burden, but of course, capitalism.

Yeah, I moved to the US and I also thought it was weird. Same with vaccination stuff for dogs. You need to carry paperwork if you want to cross the Canada border. It's a throwback to the last century I guess.

I had moved into a new place, and it had a little garden, which attracted stray city cats. A kitten found my garden and adopted it, just moving in and living there. I invited her inside, fed her, took her to the vet, made sure she was okay. She had no chip, was definitely a stray.

So I adopted her, got her chipped per the law, and she grew into a fine cat who loved her place with me - she was great.

One time she got out, and I got the call. But it wasn't to get her back, it was to come get her corpse from under the car that had flattened her some distance from our home.

In many ways, I wish I'd not gotten the chip, that was a really traumatic event which I'd probably have avoided, at least not knowing what had happened.

Reminds me of this superb part of the Odyssey where Odysseus is reunited with his dog, Argos, after 20 years of absence. Odysseus was in disguise, but it's only him that could pass the test and recognize the returning king, after which he died.

https://scaife.perseus.org/reader/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.t...

Can someone here explain what she was updating? If her dog wasn't nearby, what does it mean to "update his chip"?

It's an RFID, it just emits a unique token, which an online system links to records... she's updating the linked record.

Stupid people who don't understand how things work and then convey them imprecisely... Even with a job as a "journalist"...

Updating her contact information with the database the chip was registered with

Her contact information.

I don't think it's legally required for vets to check chips whenever new "owners" take them in for a visit. I've been holding out hope for reuniting with my missing cat Salt, but wherever he is, he's happily in someone else's living room. And I doubt the microchip will bring him back anytime soon.

Sadly cat snatching is a real thing that's happened to me possibly twice. The first time was confirmed beyond a doubt; I had to bust out my cat from her back porch at 2am or so when I was roaming the neighborhood looking for him. The only reason I was even in the vicinity was that it was the last spot the GPS tracker reported before he went missing.

"Keep your pets indoors, then!" Yeah, yeah. The risks come with the territory. But my boy Pepper is still with me after a couple years, and I'm hoping a tag with "I have a happy home" followed by my number will keep would-be "do-gooders" away. (A lot of these crazy folks that snatch pets think they're doing the pet a favor by taking them.)

Miss you Salt.

Anyway, the point is, if vets were legally required to actually check the chips when they're brought in for appiontments, they'd quickly notice the discrepancy. They're the only entity in the world in a position to do something about it. But what vet is gonna try to take "your" pet away from you when you take them in just because of mismatched chips? Nobody, because pets are property, and that would be theft according to the law.

> The risks come with the territory

To be clear here, the “territory” here is letting your pet free roam off of your property and expecting everybody else to be cool with that?

Exactly. Please keep cats indoors - they kill all the local wildlife.

I have a cat and it stays indoors exclusively.

This is a widely-cited myth, and almost impossible to measure in practice. What does "all the local wildlife" even mean? Is the threat here that birds are going to go extinct because of cats? Not likely, and the burden of proof is on the people repeating this mistaken belief.

Using "think of the birds" as a justification for imprisoning your cat for their entire lives is also pretty crummy. It's called wildlife because they exist in the wilderness. Even if cats kill a large number of birds, so what? Those birds don't have a happy, loving home with emotional bonds to an actual human.

If you think this logic is flawed, explain why you're fine with flies dying but not birds. I bet you've swatted a few in your time.

> Free-ranging cats on islands have caused or contributed to 33 (14%) of the modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List [1]

Cats are probably a leading cause of mortality in birds. [2] Domestic cats are not native to North America. The birds here would not have evolved to avoid them (and beyond that, domestic cat numbers are not limited by prey availability because they're pets bred and fed by humans).

You'll find plenty of studies with evidence that domestic cats are probably bad for bird populations. [3][4]

But to be fair, buildings/glass windows kill a lot of birds too. [5]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

[2] https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds#:~:tex...

[3] https://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/13/7/322

[4] https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wsb.737

[5] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Thank you for the well-sourced reply.

Suppose it's true that cats are bad for bird populations. The implication is that just because birds are dying, it's okay to snatch a cat. More than that, that cats should be imprisoned for their entire lives, when they naturally want to roam.

Someone can take one side of this ethical debate or the other, and both sides probably won't agree. I personally find it sad that people would place the well-being of birds above that of a wonderful, furry companion that clearly belongs to someone.

The logic also doesn't quite line up: I was hoping someone would try to justify why it's okay to kill flies but not birds, since that's the real counterargument to this one. Especially when they kill flies with their own hands.

So much of life boils down to "we're the apex species and we do what we want." But such is life. I find it difficult not to call out the absurdities when they appear, though.

To the topic at hand, how exactly is this quantified? I suspect that word "contributed" is doing a lot of work here. [2] seems to admit as much:

> True estimates of mortality are difficult to determine. However, recent studies have synthesized the best available data to estimated ranges of mortality to bird populations in North America from some of the most common, human-caused sources of bird mortality.

The numbers in [2] are admittedly pretty startling. But it looks like they come from one report labeled "2013a". Any info on where to find it, or what it even is? Otherwise it's easy to call [2] a citation when in fact no evidence whatsoever is being presente.

[4] is much better. https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wsb.737 But cats are still only a contributory factor, not the main cause; the report says they're the second leading cause of admissions, not the first. So, high, and worth thinking about.

But again, the cost here is "removing, by force, someone's beloved pet." I'm not above saying that we should probably care about cats more than birds, because of the emotional bonds they form with humans. After all, that's why we're fine with flies being killed, right? No emotional bonds.

I believe the Loss et al. 2013a numbers from [2] come from [1] Scott R. Loss (2013).

And, sure, you can look up some other studies [6] that will make you question the accuracy of the numbers but, even if you decrease the estimate by 70%, cats are still killing a lot of birds. Instead of #1 on the [2] list maybe they're #2 (behind buildings).

It's very easy to give a cursory search and see overall North American bird populations are decreasing. Heck, even flying insect biomass is significantly down.

We don't care about people killing flies in their house. We do care about flies dying on a mass scale. Flies are important pollinators! Ecosystems need them.

A few cats killing a few birds is no big deal. Millions of cats killing hundreds of millions of birds, in an ecosystem that shouldn't have cats, is a big deal.

If we armed every American human with flyswatters and sent them outside every day with orders to kill every flying insect they saw then it would probably be very bad (though I think this imagery is also hilarious).

I don't really want to get into my full opinion on the ethics and morality of pet ownership. Stealing other people's pets is wrong. I think if one lives in North America and feels their cat needs outdoor time then it should be supervised on their own property or train it and walk it with a harness and leash. Catios are neat too.

[6] https://ace-eco.org/vol20/iss2/art12/

> The implication is that just because birds are dying, it's okay to snatch a cat.

I don't think anyone's implying that? It just seems foolish to let your cat roam about. Not only are they at risk of getting stolen, but the risks of getting injured/killed or sick (or poisoned) are so much higher than if you keep them at home.

Whenever I hear about someone who's distraught about an outdoor cat of theirs that died while outside, I feel super bad for the cat, and not quite so much for the owner. That death could have been prevented, trivially.

>The implication is that just because birds are dying, it's okay to snatch a cat.

the implication is that if you want a cat, you should be responsible and keep it indoors.

>But again, the cost here is "removing, by force, someone's beloved pet."

no, the cost is keeping your cat indoors.

[flagged]

>If you're not going to bother putting in any effort into the debate, please don't participate at all.

you are "debating" against a fictional argument. no one is saying that it is okay to steal or "remove by force" someones pet.

they presented you with several citations about how damaging house cats are (and there are several more, you can start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife) and you said... "nu uh".

>I'm looking after for my cat's wellbeing, not some bird's

wildly selfish statement.

Once again: You kill flies. Sometimes dozens of them. Your conscience is clear. That's wildly selfish of you, yet you don't seem to care about the flies. Why not? They're just as much a part of the ecosystem as the birds.

Also, this entire discussion is off-topic. The point was for vets to verify microchips, something directly related to the article.

you literally just quoted something about "respond to the central argument" to me. instead of following your own advice, you are closing your eyes, saying "off-topic" and yelling "what about!". all the while, ignoring the entire argument being put forth (alongside the dozens of citations that back the argument up).

i feel bad for your neighbors.

> I'm looking after for my cat's wellbeing, not some bird's

What a selfish way to look at things. So you think it's fine to bring invasive species into a new environment and let them damage the local ecosystem? Cool cool cool.

If you were truly looking after your cat's well-being, you'd keep them inside in the first place. Their attachment to roaming about is not as strong or essential as you seem to think it is.

Suppose someone were arguing that you should imprison your own child for their entire life, because every time they go outside, they kill ants. Would you still consider it selfish to disagree?

If your child routinely wandered into my yard and messed with the animals there, I would also have a problem with that, yes.

Except "the birds" aren't your animals. I don't know why there are so many low-quality comments tonight. It's as if people will address everything except my central point, which is: you routinely kill a bunch of stuff without batting an eye. Yet in this case, we're supposed to feel sorry for the birds, even though you don't feel sorry for flies or ants.

It's my legal right to let my animal roam. You can have a problem with it as much as you'd like. Just don't put your hands on my cat, and we're fine.

As far as I can tell, we seem to be living in an age where the entire world is a bit crazy on a certain topic. Slavery used to be legal, and normal. This to me is no different. You justify keeping them indoors for their entire lives on the basis that birds might die. That's asinine, especially from hypocrites that are happy to kill flies when it suits them. Cats don't harm you, and they don't harm your animals.

I didn’t say anything about birds or flies or ants.

I have pets. They are allowed into my yard. They don’t leave my yard. If your cat enters my yard because you don’t want to crimp their free spirited wanderlust, it’s going to end up in an altercation with my pets.

>Slavery used to be legal, and normal. This to me is no different.

people pointing out how damaging your cat is and saying you should keep it inside is the same as fucking slavery?

fuck me, that is one the most out-to-lunch things i have heard someone say in a long time. slavery! jesus christ.

go up to someone who has a family that suffered as slaves. tell them that keeping a cat indoors is the same as what their family suffered. please. i will watch it when it shows up in a worldstar video.

>Cats don't harm you, and they don't harm your animals.

there are probably ~50 citations in this thread about how they do, about how they have caused the extinction of multiple species, etc. but yeah, whatever.

In Australia, where I live, pet cats are responsible for a huge amount of damage to wildlife, as per https://invasives.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Pet-cat-...

From the linked paper:

Pet cats, despite their valued role as companion animals, are a major threat to wildlife. Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 546 million animals per year in Australia. As such the management of cats has major implications for Australia’s wildlife and ecosystems. [...]

Many owners believe their cats don’t hunt because they never come across evidence of killed animals. However, studies of pet cats using video-tracking collars or scat analysis have established that the vast majority (85%) of the animals killed by pet cats are not brought home.

On average, each roaming, hunting pet cat kills more than three animals every week. The numbers add up. On average, over a year each roaming and hunting pet cat in Australia kills 186 animals. This number includes 110 native animals (40 reptiles, 38 birds and 32 mammals). [...]

[For example] In Mandurah, Western Australia, the disturbance and hunting of just one pet cat and one stray cat caused the total breeding failure of a colony of more than 100 pairs of fairy terns. [...]

The findings presented here are summarised from an analysis of the results of many dozens of studies that was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub. The research team included scientists from The University of Queensland, The Australian National University, Charles Darwin University, The University of Sydney and Murdoch University. The research received funding from the Australian Government through the National Environmental Science Program and was published in Wildlife Research.

In my neighborhood some people let their cats run around loose. Then the local wildlife (coyotes) eats the cats, and the idiot cat owners whine that the city needs to "do something" about the coyotes.

Yes. Believe it or not, that's fine for cats. "Everybody else" is by far the biggest risk. Not cars, not animals.

It's always so frustrating when you've been doing something for 15 years, speak from experience, and then someone comes along and says "Well, that's bad!" Sure. Meanwhile, my cat comes home happy and healthy each night, unless "everybody else" decides to steal him in the guise of doing him a favor.

Verified microchips during vet appointments would cancel out this exploit.

It’s not fine for the cat. Or for the outdoors. There’s the whole parallel thread about that. But also keep your cat inside so they’re not roaming into my yard. It’s wild that outdoor cat “owners” are so willing to co-opt everybody else’s property as part of the cat’s habitat.

Cats have the right to roam in the UK. Keeping them locked indoors would be seen as cruel.

Excuse the language, but fucking thank you. I'm so tired of these people claiming that it's not cruel to keep a cat indoors, and that you're somehow irresponsible by letting them out. Not to mention that this wasn't even the topic of the thread! The topic was "vets should be required to verify microchips," and then along comes a crowd that goes "oooh you really shouldn't be doing that, shame shame shame on you" without even engaging with the question of ethics, or entertaining the possibility that it might be cruel.

It is absolutely fine for a cat to be outside. They come back. Their biggest threat is, again, people who think they're doing the cat a favor when they steal them.

Cheers to you for making my night. I don't care if everybody else in the thread is anti-cat. I'm just happy you spoke up. Thanks, and have a good week.

Cats are native to the UK, and less damaging to biodiversity than they are in the US because local wildlife has co-evolved with cats

Well, no point in discussing with you anyhow according to your performance in this thread. You're akin to a wrong way driver here: "everyone else is wrong" despite sources being laid out.

And finally you found a second wrong way driver.

Vets already have enough to deal with you'd be more likely to end up with undesirable outcomes vs what you want. People would not take the animal to the vet. People would try to destroy the chip by whatever method they happen to read in facebook. People would try to maliciously make changes to the database. Etc etc

I'm not so sure. The people who snatch cats off the street think that they're doing the cat a favor. They assume the original owners won't even notice, let alone care if the cat goes missing. And they justify it with "Well, they shouldn't have let them out anyway."

The brutal reality is that pounds are overflowing with lost animals. Statistics are on your side that if you snatch any given cat that you see, you'll likely be doing it a favor. But cats with collars are a different story. If people see that they're owned, they should keep their hands off. Unfortunately that doesn't stop some fanatics.

> end up with undesirable outcomes

I say it would make some people think before stealing an animal.

Others, dumber, would get caught.

But almost no one is going to get a knife to get this chip our of the animal because you'll get bitten and you have no idea where to look.

I don't mean to sound snarky, but I wonder if people would feel the same joy if they found their lost children after a long time, or if the joy would be muddled quickly due to complicated relationships :'( . We are a very peculiar species.

You don't have kids do you?

Let me put it this way: Your life is forever ruined if you "lose" a child. I would never stop looking.

Arguably it is MUCH worse to not know what happened (no closure).

I'm not entirely sure we're of the same species.

"She brought him into the house with her parents and they made him some hotdogs."

Is it common in US to feed dogs with hotdogs?

If you found a dog on the street then you probably don't have any actual dog food. A hot dog seems like one of the best options in an average fridge.

sausage I can understand, hotdog as sausage in bun is beyond my understanding

Ah, there's the confusion. We typically refer to both the sausage itself, and the complete dish (with bun and toppings), as a "hot dog", especially if the sausage is a generic Frankfurter or Vienna sausage. If someone said they fed a dog a hotdog, I'd assume it's just the sausage.

It's common to give snacks to your pet. In the US and anywhere

As long as they're not panting, I think it's generally not cannibalism.

was the dog a stray for 11 years? or just owned by someone? I'm not following what actually happened

I listened to the podcast linked in the article, and my understanding of the timeline is:

- The owner originally had two dogs. Both disappeared from her backyard one day. One dog returned home. The other vanished without a trace.

- Eleven years later, a random girl found the missing dog outside. She befriended the dog and brought him home. She talked with her parents and contacted ACCT Philly, who in turn found the original owner through a microchip.

Does this make sense? To me, this story managed to be a rare mix of heartwarming, insightful and frustrating.

Eleven years seems like a very long time to be a Philly street dog - kinda makes you wonder if it wasn't adopted by somebody in the interrim before ending up with the girl somehow.

Welcome to Philly.

Microchipping dogs makes a lot of sense. What are the privacy concerns though? If someone wants to hunt a person down, I imagine the microchips in the dogs would make a great tracking device.

> I imagine the microchips in the dogs would make a great tracking device.

They don't. The range of a typical chip reader is a few inches - reading one requires handling the dog (and can be tricky if the chip's migrated from its expected position). It's not something that can be done covertly, or from a distance.

They are very short range RFID tags that contain no personal information, just an ID number. They don’t make good tracking devices.

Some owners do use GPS trackers or AirTag like devices.

My dog wears an AirTag in her collar. The collar was designed for it and has a waterproof case for the AirTag.

It may vary by company but a lot of the time the chip company acts as a neutral intermediary. For example we adopted a homeless cat, and the vet found a chip on her, gave us the chip company info. The chip company wouldn't give us the owner's information but contacted them on our behalf and said we'd found her. They replied to the chip company who told us they moved away and we could have her. We love her so much!

Yes, the data can help uncover Russian spies. There is a fascinating yt document about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjo0iLssbI8 ( How I caught an Illegal Russian Spy )

I received an email about a lost dog 10 years after I adopted her and then gave her to another family. They got her back!

Databases work!

[dead]

>I had other animals in the house, as well, that were family pets, but Forty was my dog," she said. "I paid for him with my own money at 16 years old."

... I don't if it's an American thing but it's not something I'd say. The dog is an animal, it feels like it's compared to a car that she paid with HER OWN MONEY and then was stolen..

Tell me you loved him, it was the one you loved the most, stuffs like that but 'i paid for it with my own money'... She might as well has bought an iphone.

A dog is personal property (possession) under the law. What is your point?