Posted by:
WingedWolfPsion
at Thu Apr 14 05:11:38 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by WingedWolfPsion ]
I think people get more emotional over dog bites...dogs are social animals, and we take them into our family, and we trust them--but dogs, like people, are prone to psychological difficulties...sometimes, things happen. Not often, but every now and then...and then we feel horribly betrayed, because an animal we trusted became violent.
With herps, we know where we stand--we know that they aren't social animals, and we expect that even a tame herp may try to bite us one day. We know that we have to be, at least a bit, on guard with them. Folks who don't keep herps don't know that...they think a tame herp is trustworthy, or they believe that all herps are automatically vicious.
So, if a snake bites someone, people freak out and try to ban all snakes, because they're all lumped into the same category--"vicious".
If a dog bites someone, they go after the BREED...they can't believe that it might have been ANY dog that did it, because then they wouldn't be able to completely trust their own faithful pooch.
Pit bulls were traditionally the BEST family dog you could get...Our Gang had one, Buster Brown (the shoe company) had one on their logo, RCA had a pit bull on their logo...the ideal loyal family pet.
Various breeds that have been subject to a "bad reputation" over the years include pit bulls, German shepards, doberman pinschers, Akitas, and rottweilers. See a theme?
Ironically, the German shepard's current reputation isn't bad at all. It used to be considered unpredictable, and prone to being vicious without warning...and sure, there are plenty of stories to back that up. Every now and then, a dog will attack...and we won't understand why. But hey, German shepards are used by law enforcement, and as guide dogs....you can't ban a breed that's used as a seeing eye dog, can you?
Pit bulls make decent seeing eye dogs, by the way, if they go through the proper training...it's been done, though not often.
Point blank--the more of a breed are owned by people who are irresponsible or violent, the more the statistics of that breed will show them to be "unpredictable and vicious". The high rate of pit bull attacks has nothing to do with pit bulls, and everything to do with the massive numbers of nasty people who own them. If you take away the pit bulls, rottweilers will be next--they already are in some places. Take away rotts, and they'll move on to something else--German shepards, dobermans, mastiffs, any large dog that has at least some instinct to guard or fight would make a good candidate for abuse by those type of people. And any dogs subjected to that treatment will be unpredictable and potentially violent. The more dogs subjected to that treatment, the more the statistics will show those dogs to be dangerous.
If a pit bull owned by a responsible person makes you nervous, but a German shepard owned by a responsible person does not, then you are a victim of the media...you're being gullible, frankly.
Is a boa more dangerous than a pit bull? Absolutely not! Is a boa more likely to bite you than a pit bull? Yes, it absolutely is. You can own a pit bull for its entire life, and never have that dog try to bite a single person.
If you own a boa for its entire life, and it never bites you, and never strikes, you own a miracle, lol.
The problem is that people don't realize that the majority of the time, a snake bite is no big deal....they assign a level of capability to a boa that is way out of proportion to what it can accomplish. They think a boa's like a vicious pit bull, when it's really more of a snappy miniature poodle.
Education's the only way to solve that--not by downplaying the fact that snakes bite, because all snakes can bite, and most do at some point--but by demonstrating that a boa simply doesn't have what it takes do to serious damage to someone, even if it went completely berserk and behaved like a rabid badger...which they simply don't do. 
The only way you're going to be seriously injured by a boa is if you actually help the snake injure you--placing it around your neck, for example, or kissing it on the nose.
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RE: I was not bashing... more - WingedWolfPsion, Thu Apr 14 05:11:38 2005
