Written by Jeff Mackey
The Miami Marlins swing into the regular season in a new ballpark, opening tonight, featuring engraved pavement stones in the East Plaza, one of which reads:
As you may have detected, the first letters of the words in this message spell out "FishingHurts.com," a Web address that brings up a page on PETA's website about the cruelty involved in fishing and the reasons to give fish a break. Yep, it's a hidden message placed by PETA—after all, when animals' lives are on the line (pun intended), why limit attention-getting pranks about fish to April Fools' Day?
Marlins are a species of fish. And they, like all fish, are much more beautiful alive and swimming in the ocean than on a menu.
Fish (including marlins) feel pain, and they suffer when they're caught on a hook or in a net and dragged into an environment in which they can't breathe. It's much better to choose cruelty-free activities instead—like, say, watching a baseball game.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
When officials in a New Jersey city drained most of a park pond to dredge the sides, workers drained too much water, and numerous fish were stranded on the banks and suffocated. The fish who survived were huddled in shallow pools that were nearly frozen and were trying to stay alive in the frigid weather.
PETA's phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree, and we sprang into action. We alerted city officials to the tragic situation, asking for more water to be added to the pond, and sent out an action alert to our supporters, who bombarded officials with pleas to save the fish. Within 24 hours, the pond was being refilled, and the surviving fish could breathe a little easier.
Time and time again, animals' lives have been saved because PETA members like you demanded action. Thank you. And if you haven't joined our e-mail list yet, please do so today.
It sounds like the plot of a Disney movie, but this video of a pig and dog who are best buds would warm even Walt's cryogenically frozen heart.
"Don't mind me." After committing the most adorable case of breaking and entering ever, a baby seal curled up on a New Zealand woman's couch for a nap.
Can you do a good "fish face"? These people are spot-on. … Or are the fish doing a spot-on "human face"?
Would you like an awkward conversation about the facts of life with that? A 7-year-old girl and her mother allegedly discovered a condom in the child's McDonald's Happy Meal.
Talk about a return on your investment: Eight years after she went missing, a dog is going home to her family, thanks to a tiny, inexpensive microchip.
And a chicken named Liberty, dubbed Britain's "last battery hen" is headed home too. She will enjoy retirement on a farm with other hens who were formerly confined to battery cages as the U.K.'s ban on the cruel confinement system goes into effect for the new year.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
The new year is already looking a bit brighter for animals: A PETCO store in Dickson City, Pennsylvania, has announced that it will close permanently on January 1—which is great news for the hamsters, gerbils, mice, fish, and other small animals who suffer and die every day in PETCO's stores and suppliers' facilities.
"Life" for the animals PETCO sells often consists of struggling to survive wild capture or captive breeding in horrific conditions, suffering from untreated injuries and illnesses, and fighting for food in feces-strewn, severely crowded cages. At the massive breeding mills that supply live animals to the pet trade, PETA investigations have revealed sick and dying animals placed in freezers to die, live hamsters placed in a plastic bag and bashed against a table in an attempt to kill them, animals deprived of veterinary care and left to cannibalize their cagemates' corpses, and other horrors.
For the sake of small animals, please say "No" to PETCO and other stores that sell animals.
Are crows into Grand Theft Auto? These brainy birds steal windshield wiper blades for reasons known only to themselves, although having fun with them might be the answer.
Ravens seem more interested in studying sign language. Like primates and humans, the birds use gestures to communicate—in this case, pointing with their beaks.
Octopuses have bird brains (read "big brains") too. Some octopuses in captivity make toys and games out of items in their tanks. Some let the people they like stroke their heads, while a person on an octopus's bad side may get squirted.
Fish enjoy the calming effects of touch, too, but not from people. They will allow small fish who work as full-time cleaners to nibble at their scales even when they don't have parasites because they like the gentle massage.
Dogs, of course, love affection from people, and their devotion to their guardians doesn't usually fade when that guardian passes away. A faithful dog in China refuses to leave his guardian's grave, and the townspeople plan to build a doghouse there for the grieving canine.
After being stolen from his home, held for five years, and then apparently dumped after he developed a medical problem, a precocious pup who loves to travel hopped on a bus. When he was spotted by the driver and taken to a vet, his microchip guaranteed that the next trip he took was back home to his family.
Another clever canine is a hero after she grabbed a bag of kittens someone had tossed onto the highway, pulled it off the road, dragged it home, and cried until her guardian opened it.
Resourceful deer, raccoons, blue herons, and other animals have figured out how to safely cross the road (without instructions from chickens).
Written by PETA
Brrr! A cold spell has gripped us here in Los Angeles, with night temperatures dipping down into the 50s—much too cold for Angelenos … and for goldfish. When the guardians of one rescued goldfish, Sadie, turned on her tank's water heater this week, she immediately swam over to bask in the warmth, just like a kitten seeking a sunny patch or a dog seeking a place by the fire.
A sympathetic PetSmart employee rescued Sadie when she was deemed "valueless" because of a genetic defect. She was born with one eye—likely caused by overbreeding, a practice that is rampant in the hideous "pet" trade. The employee, an aquatic animals expert who cautions that caring for fish requires expensive equipment and frequent tank cleanings, subsequently left PetSmart in protest over the way the retailer treats animals as if they were commodities rather than recognizing that they are feeling individuals.
Please, never support companies such as PetSmart that put profit first—at the animals' expense. Reputable local rescue groups and shelters often have fish who need new homes. If you or someone you know has aquatic animals, please also constantly check to be sure that the water temperature is in the proper range for the animal during winter months. After all, they can't dust off their spare blankets or snuggle up with a friend for the night.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
Do you know what you're seeing when you look at seafood? It seems that most of us don't. When Consumer Reports tested 190 different samples of fish from restaurants and stores, they found that more than 20 percent were being marketed as something other than what they actually were. A similar investigation by the Boston Globe found that as much as 48 percent of fish flesh is mislabeled.
The findings will no doubt dismay people who try to buy only species of fish that they think are sustainable. But "sustainable" is simply a marketing buzzword that the seafood industry likes to use. Eating any fish at all contributes to the decimation of the ocean's ecosystem.
© Alaska Fisheries Science Center
The massive nets and long-lines used by factory fishing trawlers are indiscriminate in what types of fish they catch, and fishers simply toss overboard the dead or dying dolphins, sea turtles, and other "bycatch" they don't want. Farmed fish such as salmon and sea bass are often carnivorous, so many pounds of wild fish must be caught to feed those on farms.
Whether the label on the package matches the fish under the cellophane, one thing we can be sure of is that the flesh we are eating came from an intelligent animal with a unique personality who did not want to be gutted alive or suffocated. If we can eat faux fish, such as Vegieworld's codfish, salmon, shrimp, and tuna, that tastes the same, is free of harmful toxins like mercury and PCBs, and doesn't claim any animals' lives, why not?
Here's an animal fact that is not at all surprising if you've ever seen a hawk soar through the sky or a flock of pigeons settling in to roost together for the night: Caged birds suffer from a severe form of post-traumatic stress disorder and exhibit symptoms identical to those of prisoners of war and concentration camp survivors, including self-mutilation and persistent sadness. Even when they are rescued and taken to reputable sanctuaries, parrots, cockatoos, and macaws—who in the wild are extremely social—sometimes are never able to adjust to socializing with other birds and opt to remain alone, staring into space. So please don't patronize pet stores that sell birds into a prison sentence from which they may never recover, even if they are lucky enough to be "paroled."
Eliya | cc by 2.0
Perhaps it was crickets who inspired Miguel de Cervantes' famously chivalrous, albeit inept, character Don Quixote. Researchers have found that male crickets graciously allow their mates to enter the burrow first—although this leaves the well-intentioned males more vulnerable to predation, sometimes with tragic results. (Another interesting note from the study is that observing animals in their natural environment, rather than studying them in labs, provides more accurate information.)
I'll admit … while writing this, I had to look up what an anvil is, but a type of wrasse known as the orange dotted tusk fish knows precisely how an anvil works. An evolutionary biologist at the Great Barrier Reef filmed a wrasse who carried a clam some distance, then repeatedly threw the clam at a rock to break open the shell. The scientist points out that this behavior shows that fish are capable of thinking ahead and reasoning. (All the more reason not to eat them.)
After witnessing an ear-splitting dance party at the Georgia Aquarium to kick off Atlanta Pride festivities, PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews sent a letter to the aquarium's president and COO David Kimmel to set the record straight about how this kind of audio torture of animals is not only inappropriate but also likely a violation of Georgia's cruelty-to-animals law:
Despite actual knowledge that music and other noises at this volume are profoundly distressing to, at the very least, the belugas and the animals they attack when this stress and frustration manifests itself as aggression … the aquarium continues to willfully subject the animals in its care to excessive noise during planned events.
Dan described his experience at the prison aquarium in detail in a Huffington Post blog post, noting that belugas have a sophisticated sonar system that helps them navigate the arctic waters in which they swim thousands of miles every year in large, social groups. In captivity, the sonar bounces off tank walls, frustrating the animals. Dan spoke (or rather, shouted) with a tour guide who acknowledged that during high-volume events, the male belugas start to attack the harbor seals with whom they share a tank.
© Dave Riganelli/ iStockphoto.com
When PETA friend and gay rights supporter Martina Navratilova heard that Atlanta Pride held an event at the aquarium, she told Dan, "I cringe at any zoo or a theme park/aquarium with captive animals. But the big ones, whales, dolphins, giraffes, elephants, etc., the big cats—they make me cry."
You can help the animals affected by this event by contacting the Georgia Aquarium to ask that it implement a policy immediately that would allow only soft ambient or classical music at events. After all, it's not as though the animals don't have enough stress already by being held captive in a tank that—to them—is the size of a bathtub.
Forty-thousand young salmon are swimming free in San Francisco Bay this week after someone cut the netting of their cramped holding pens.
© Robert Koopmans | iStockphoto.com
The salmon were being held in 25-foot-by-16-foot-by-8-foot pens, and with 20,000 to a pen, this means that there were more than six 10-inch fish per cubic foot. Fish kept in such crowded conditions often suffer from severe injuries, and in such filthy conditions they are also susceptible to parasites that can eat their faces down to the bone. On fish farms, as many as 40 percent of the fish die before they are even scheduled for slaughter.
Farming salmon—for commercial use or for enhanced angling opportunities—also depletes the ocean of other fish. It can take more than 5 pounds of ocean fish to produce just 1 pound of salmon.
Do fish a favor, and leave them in the water where they belong. Enjoy a day on a boat or hiking near a creek without hurting animals, and leave fish off your plate with delicious faux-seafood recipes.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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