A sad story.

[Alondro]

I had just met a lion owned by someone is Ohio a week ago.  He was very friendly and out of the 5 the guy had, he let me pet him the most. 

Well, the meat freezer shorted out from all the rain, grounded to the cage which he was leaning against at the time and electrocuted him.

The guy is heartbroken.  He'd raised the lion from a cub.  He's going to send the remaining four to a sanctuary in Colorado.  He doesn't think he can take another accident like that. 

[Keleth]

*blinks*

Meat freezer in the rain?

*blinks*

That's terrible but even worse is that could of been totally preventable.

[Sunblink]

That is sad. I feel bad for both the lion and his owner, since it sounds like the latter really loved that animal.

[Kipiru]

Sorry if this seems a bit heartless, but what was that guy doing raising lions in the first place?! They are not pets!

[Tapewolf]

Sorry if this seems a bit heartless, but what was that guy doing raising lions in the first place?! They are not pets!

Presumably he had a license to do so.  It's not unheard of.  People who know what they're doing do keep lynxes and such things, and presumably he also had some experience with keeping dangerous animals previous.  As for his motivation in doing so, that I cannot answer.

[Alondro]

The freezer was in a shed, but the area had a tremendous amount of rain and it seeped into the shed.  It was preventable in some respect if the freezer had been lifted on blocks above ground level, but I don't know of anyone who does that who has freezers in sheds or garages.  Heck, our freezer is just sitting on the concrete in our garage and could zap us one day if it rains enough.

If anything, this reinforces my paranoia about electronic devices anywhere near the outdoors.

And as for his motivation, he had taken two cubs to care for them for a while and then decided to keep them when the other person didn't have space to take them back. 

And now for the 'they are not pets' argument.  No, they are not pets.  He never thought of them as 'pets'.  Pets are little more than animal slaves bred to obey humanity despite the abuse people frequently pile upon them, or are animals with too little intelligence to do much more than sit around waiting to be fed (aka, goldfish, turtles, snakes). 

With lions and other big cats, you must respect them and work with them constantly to establish trust and affection.  You have to treat them like people, as equals, to minimize the danger.  The danger never is gone, because they can kill without even meaning too if they play too rough.  But for those willing to bear the risk and do everything they can to take care of them, I see no problem with allowing them.

There is this bizzarre mythology about 'the wild', popularized in books and movies.  But people, that is fiction.  The wild is brutal.  Lions have less than half the lifespans in the wild as they do in captivity.  A male lion in the wild is lucky to last 9-10 years.  Most don't last 7.  The lion in the Philadelphia Zoo, Merlin, is now 17.

Not to mention, there really is very little 'wild' left in Africa.  The reserves are ever-shrinking and ever-encroached upon.  Many of them now are allowing hunting of big game again to get money they need simply to keep operating.  The animals are not free anywhere anymore, if one decides that frequent drought, starvation, disease, and pestilence constitute freedom, and so I see the entire argument as an absurd warping of folklore with little basis in fact.

Some people should never own them, as some people should never own dogs and should never have children.  They will abuse anything they can get their hands on.  Yet it is unfair to punish everyone for the actions of a few.  It is akin to Prohibition in many respects:  well-meaning, but poorly thought out, robbing people of freedom to prevent exaggerated wrongs.

If anything, I would like to see nothing more than consistency in the laws regarding the ownership of exotic animals.  Virtually all the problems stem from the fact that the federal laws are a joke, written long ago with the most minimal of requirements for the benefit of circuses who did indeed severely abuse animals, and the state laws which are a helter-skelter mix of constantly shifting and conflicting legislation.

There should be a clearly laid-out set of conditions one must meet: adequate land area, professional-grade housing requirements, direct personal training, and financial capability.  This should be set at the federal level in the same way food and drug standards had to be to make sure everyone is on the same page no matter where they are.

Some animals aren't suited for captivity.  Elephants, for instance, require enormous areas, huge food supplies, and social contact with other elephants which few people can even think to provide.  Chimpanzees tend to become nearly psychotic in adulthood, with uncontrolled explosions of aggression.  In fact, many sanctuaries that will accept a big cat will never consider taking a chimp.  They are considered more dangerous that lions, tigers, or bears!  But big cats are very like housecats in their behaviors and moods.  If they are well-fed, given a comfortable location with enough room to run a bit when they have a burst of energy, and a caring owner, they are perfectly happy to doze their 16-20 hours a day, play, and nuzzle their owners for their entire lives.  You have to watch out that they don't swat you, as house cats do sometimes when feeling out of sorts, since intead of just a few scratches, a swipe from a lion can disembowel.  And you can't let them knead in your lap like a cat will do, since they'll shred your skin.

I've known of quite a few captive big cats who lived out their lives peacefully, frequently well into their 20's.  A lioness at a little zoo in NJ is now 24, and even with her increasingly severe arthritis still greets her keepers every day.

They can be kept and can be very happy, as long as they are kept by a responsible person. 

What happened with this lion was a freak accident due to flooding conditions no one expected on a hill.  In fact, when I get home, I'm going to raise our garage freezer a foot off the ground.

[Kipiru]

     I see. Nice explanation there Alondro- I get why one may consider taking care of an exotic creature that is endangered in the wild. Still I don't personally approve of it- there is a reason for the term "wild animal". A lion bred and raised as domestic has very little in common with a wild lion- it's like comparing a dog with a wolf. I can understand the reason of efforts to preserve the species, but in this context it is not preserving, but domesticating and eventually creating a new breed of animal. The wild lion has nothing to gain from that- it will still go extinct if nature makes it so.
    I still feel pain for the poor lion- a very sad end for such a proud creature!

[Alondro]

Actually, so-called 'domestic cats' are in fact hardly domesticated at all, save for the few breeds that have been inbred for certain features.

A typical tabby cat with no particular breeding has every last one of its instincts intact.  Its behavior towards humans depends ENTIRELY on how it's treated.

You should see how much damage an angry and fearful housecat can cause to someone!

Big cats, especially lions and tigers, are exactly like housecats... just about 25-35 times the mass and strength. 

Imagine your housecat at the same size as a lion as it toys with a mouse and you'll see what I mean. 

Cats, if anything, choose to be with us from experience teaching them that they can gain free food, security, and a comfortable place to live.  When mistreated, if they get the chance they'll bolt and never come back, unlike a dog which slinks back with its tail between its legs over and over to its abuser until it finally snaps one day or dies.

The cat flees because it knows it cannot win and that the human is too strong for it to overpower.  Lions, for instance, as fierce as they are, never would dare attack a bull elephant.  They have a very good sense of sizing up enemies.  Now, if that same cat were lion-sized, it would not flee.  It would kill whomever was hurting it at the first chance it got.

Non-purebred house cats are at best semi-domesticated.  And interestingly, one can make the case that the genes for 'domestication' are to be found in many species of mammals, as the ability to bring out the traits through breeding means the genes that code for the temperament are already there.  Now, whether one can really consider this 'domestication' is debatable.  Silver foxes provide an interesting case in that they have shown 'domesticated' traits far sooner than was thought possible.  In only 50 years of breeding in Russia, lines of foxes selected for milder behavioral traits began to act and look like small dogs, even gaining spots, slender tails, and shorter muzzles.

Such a phenotype is multi-genic, so the only conclusion must be that these many gene traits are floating about in the population, and as with any trait, when enviroment favors that trait it ends up the dominant phenotype via selection bias, whether natural or man-made.

Any 'domesticated' lions would not be a new species, they'd simply have a higher representation of the sociability-inducing genotype.  It would take significant shifts in the chromosomal arrangement to truly have a different species. 

Just look at the vast differences between dog breeds.  And yet they are all the exact same species.  Speciation is a concept that isn't fully nailed down yet.  Some 'species' are only geographical in nature, and can interbreed successfully with cousins from far away when they are brought together, sometimes resulting in hybrids with greater fertility and hardiness than the parents (as long as no chromosomal complications arise).

Africanized honeybees are a perfect example.  Were the two 'species' truly distinct species if they are able to breed so successfully?  Or merely two geographically distant populations of the same species which had not fully diverged?  Indeed, when genetics are analyzed, one can frequently find that the genetic differences between closely-related species are in fact less than between some populations of humans!

My thinking is that the concept of speciation is still trapped too much in the pre-genomic era, and that true speciation must include some mechanism by which two species are unable to breed successfully past an F2 generation (hybrids can often make it to F1, like mules, but become sterile or severely abnormal in successive generations due to chromosomal dys/mis-segregation events during meiosis and other problems such as anomalous deletions and translocation events).

There is also the case for mechanical speciation, such as in certain finches, whereby the species may have close enough genes to cross-breed indefinitely, but their mating calls and behaviors have changed to a degree such that they will not cross-mate unless forcefully fertilized by artificial means.

In any case, ownership of exotics is always going to be contentious, especially as long as the laws from state to state are so random and the federal regulations are weak and don't require any special training. 

I do believe, though, that poisonous snakes do have stronger federal requirements and special training is mandatory.  Snakes are always 'wild'.  Their brains are too simple to possess anything close to 'affection'.  Behavioral analysis backs this conclusion up 100%.

It is actually necessary to have family-specific laws, as each family of organisms have a unique set of traits common to their member species.  A silly example would be that a lion cage would not be adequate to house a dolphin.  But you see the point. 

Having a solid framework of rules, regulations, and guidelines across the country would go a long way to solving any and all problems.  Such is already the case with lab animals, and I feel this same type of uniform code of conduct should be applied to exotics as well.

[Brownie]

That's terrible  but even worse is that could of been totally preventable.

Preventable accidents seem to be the most common cause of death now.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Almost anything can be prevented if you're willing to take an absurd amount of precautions. The question is, how much is an acceptable risk. I'm sure you don't want any small children in your house getting sick. Would you lock them in a sterilized, airtight, plastic doodad that would keep all germs out and only allow in filtered air? Probably not. The risk of catching a cold and the problem contained therein probably isn't worth the expense, both in money and social awkwardness, "prevention" would entail.

[Keleth]

My preventable action is. Yes, we have outdoor freezers that are in small sheds.

We take a brick, and put one under each corner, 2 minutes of work. And practical

I'm not talking about putting kids in bubbles, that's just ridiculous.

[RobbieThe1st]

My preventable action is. Yes, we have outdoor freezers that are in small sheds.

We take a brick, and put one under each corner, 2 minutes of work. And practical

I'm not talking about putting kids in bubbles, that's just ridiculous.

All the freezers/fridges I have seen already have the wires a couple inches off the ground. That being the case, one could argue that your preventive measure was built in at the factory.
However, that does bring up an interesting point: If your rain water was able to accumulate to a point where it was already two inches deep, how much more protection would four inches be?
And lets say you want to be really safe, and jack the thing up a foot off the floor. Now you may have very little chance of electrocution, but then you start running more of a risk of it falling over and breaking(and perhaps hurting you in the process).
You also have to worry about water somehow coming in through the wall/roof and running down the cord (or simply getting inside the outlet box) and becoming charged that way.

Also, are we sure that the cause of electrocution was indeed the freezer? Could it have been something lower, like say buried power lines(they are -supposed- to be waterproof... but after a few years, well... materials deteriorate)?


Sorry if you don't get what I am saying; Midnight is not a good time to be posting.

-Robbie

[Cvstos]

A very sad story. My condolences.

I read once about efforts to domesticate foxes, and how the results were more physically extreme than originally thought. Turns out that breeding them to be nice and docile altered the levels of certain hormones and chemicals in their bodies. These chemicals, it turns out, were used by the body to do all kinds of things since they could be modified to do a lot of things. They even got blue eyes, which is NOT a trait seen in foxes in the wild. Seems one of those chemicals was responsible for eye color. It's all connected.

[Alondro]

My preventable action is. Yes, we have outdoor freezers that are in small sheds.

We take a brick, and put one under each corner, 2 minutes of work. And practical

I'm not talking about putting kids in bubbles, that's just ridiculous.

All the freezers/fridges I have seen already have the wires a couple inches off the ground. That being the case, one could argue that your preventive measure was built in at the factory.
However, that does bring up an interesting point: If your rain water was able to accumulate to a point where it was already two inches deep, how much more protection would four inches be?
And lets say you want to be really safe, and jack the thing up a foot off the floor. Now you may have very little chance of electrocution, but then you start running more of a risk of it falling over and breaking(and perhaps hurting you in the process).
You also have to worry about water somehow coming in through the wall/roof and running down the cord (or simply getting inside the outlet box) and becoming charged that way.

Also, are we sure that the cause of electrocution was indeed the freezer? Could it have been something lower, like say buried power lines(they are -supposed- to be waterproof... but after a few years, well... materials deteriorate)?


Sorry if you don't get what I am saying; Midnight is not a good time to be posting.

-Robbie

This is kinda what I mean about the whole thing.  Once you start trying to prevent EVERYTHING that could happen, you end up having to build an indestructible fortress to protect.. even a chicken coop.

This is one case where hindsight is 20/20.  So many people I know have freezers in similar locations, and I've never heard of this happening.  Even if I had seen his freezer close-up, I might not have suspected anything would go wrong unless there was serious corrosion behind it with the wiring... but then, what would cause a compulsion for me to look behind it?

And with the wiring option, it might be the case, I'd have to talk to him again.  But I want to wait to ask for any more details.  He's going through enough as it is, and planning to send away the remaining 4 lions will be painful enough. 

Cvstos:  Hormonal pathway linkages have turned out to be very strange indeed.  Not to mention genes that have turned up responsible for human cortical development were ones no one would have suspected:  genes involved in fat and cholesterol metabolism, muscle growth, and genes involved in very basic cell growth and signaling pathways, such as FGFs (fibroblast growth factors), wnt signalling, BMPs (bone morphogenetic proteins), and beta-catenin.

Essentially, a large percentage of modern mammals have all the basic genes for a human brain, they just don't possess the tweaks in the code that cause the human-type brain to form.

As for lions, it's been confirmed for some time now that one can guage the level of testosterone in a male lion, and thus assume its basic level of aggression, from only its mane coloration.  Black maned lions are generally far more aggressive and less 'tamable' than blond-maned lions, due to the fact that  mane color and fullness is directly tied to testosterone production, which is due in part to genetics and in part to enviromental conditions and a male lion's health.  A castrated or very ill male lion will often lose its mane entirely.  And a male castrated before it gets its mane will never develop one unless given testerone supplements.

Interestingly, the pathway exists in female lions.  A female with hormone imbalances favoring testosterone production will grow a mane, as a lioness in the Philadelphia Zoo is currently exhibiting.

And now I must go back into mourning.  You cannot fathon how it feels to have made such a friend in one instant after 30 years of waiting, just to have that absolute joy crushed one instant later by an accident that even my overly-cautious mind didn't predict.  I wasn't pessimistic or paranoid enough.