Hamm On Wry

Yes, Viriginia, the Poodle was once Wild, but still a Poodle!

Oh for the love of pete! In aNYTimes (free registration required) article on Savannah, a mixed breed cat, we find that politicians are losing their minds already. Here’s the quote:

That’s not the way State Senator Carl L. Marcellino of Syosset, N.Y., sees it. Mr. Marcellino, the Senate sponsor of the state’s exotic pet law, objects to the Savannah cat as something alien to the animal universe.

“Breeders are creating animals for commercial purposes that would never exist in the natural world,” he said. “These hybrid species are threats to the environment and potentially to the families who think they are buying a family pet and could be purchasing a wild animal.”

And let me tell you, that’s just absolute folly. Where do you think dogs came from? Did heaven send the pink poodle to my mom on her 16th birthday? No, my grandparents did. And where did they get the poodle? From a pet store. And how did the poodle get to the pet store? By breeding it. And breeders created the breed over the course of centuries. Don’t think they didn’t, it’s not a natural thing, it’s man mucking with genetics in a crude way, but still, it’s genetic engineering.
This senator is a twat! Someone needs to vote him out of office, now, before he becomes a national menace.

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Kev Hamm

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3 responses to “Yes, Viriginia, the Poodle was once Wild, but still a Poodle!”

  1. DarDar Avatar
    DarDar

    Geez Kev… They bred a wild African Serval with a housecat and got a mixed breed that is TWICE the size of the average housecat and the temperment of a dog. I don’t think I see a problem with setting some limitations on animals with unpredictable dispositions in an urban setting. But what do I know… I’m just a over-protective mother of two.

  2. KevinMichael Hamm Avatar
    KevinMichael Hamm

    Yes, but that’s still not the point. The senator is saying that breeding is unnatural, but I would bet that the senator had a dog or cat at some point, and those animals were bred to be what they are. It’s ludicrous to think that the world is now as it’s always been, but that’s what most people under 40 think. I don’t know why, but since we’ve not had any explosion in new aviation or teleportation or alien visitors, people think that the world is static, not changing, and not evolving on a daily basis. This is what the senator said, and that’s just wrong.

    I do think that breeding should be reviewed, but there have been no incidents of these cats endangering anyone, and while twice the size of a normal housecat, that still means these cats are less than half a Doberman – and no one is bitching about the fact that breeders still breed Dobermans and other dogs for their ferocity, which is explicitly not the case with these cats.

  3. ~DarDar Avatar
    ~DarDar

    I think he does understand that the world isn’t static. The point is that humans seem to think they have the right to play “god”. The senator is voicing his concern for the environment and for naive citizens who assume the best and never afford for the worst.

    I agree that he sounds a little over the top but that was to make a point. (Who knows what the interviewer left out.) When you change something dramatically in the environment, you can’t just expect everything will be okay. If these hybrids are set loose and start breeding there could be a dramatic effect.

    See article at:
    http://www.issues.org/13.4/schmit.htm

    A direct quote from above article:
    Exotic species have contributed to the decline of 42 percent of U.S. endangered and threatened species. At least 3 of the 24 known extinctions of species listed under the Endangered Species Act were wholly or partially caused by hybridization between closely related exotic and native species. After habitat destruction, introduced species are the second greatest cause of species endangerment and decline worldwide-far exceeding all forms of harvest. As Harvard University biologist E. O. Wilson put it, “Extinction by habitat destruction is like death in an automobile accident: easy to see and assess. Extinction by the invasion of exotic species is like death by disease: gradual, insidious, requiring scientific methods to diagnose.”

    Love to argue..

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