EMPTY ALL CAGES

VICTORY! (sort of) Circuses in England Banned From Using Wild Animals

Posted by emptyallcages on April 16, 2013

Posted in: ELEPHANTS, HORSES, LIONS, Uncategorized, VICTORY. Tagged: animal cruelty, animal rights, circus animals, Coles, cruelty, David Heath, elephant abuse, England, horse, Ringling, tigers, Tory Mark Pritchard, UK. 4 comments

Source: Guardian

Editor’s Note: This is a victory in that circuses that breed their animals in captivity, like Ringling Bros. in the US, will not be able to claim they don’t use wild animals. But horses and dogs can still be held as slaves to entertain people.

Government publishes plans to ban use of wild animals in travelling circuses in England from 1 December 2015 Circuses will be banned from using wild animals in their shows under new government proposals that have been published after a long campaign.

Politicians and animal welfare groups have repeatedly called for the measure and in June 2011 MPs overwhelmingly supported a blanket ban, but ministers were initially reluctant to meet their demands due to fears over possible legal action from circus operators.

The government’s plan will make it an offence for any operator to use a wild animal in performance or exhibition in a travelling circus in England from 1 December 2015.

The agriculture minister David Heath told MPs: “This ‘grace period’ is to allow operators of travelling circuses a reasonable period of time to adapt their businesses and organize suitable care arrangements for their wild animals.”

The government has already introduced strict regulations to improve conditions for performing animals until the law is changed.

Tory Mark Pritchard, whose backbench motion in 2011 calling for a ban was passed without a vote in the Commons, welcomed the announcement. He said: “I am delighted the government have finally decided to introduce a ban. “This is a victory for animal welfare and common sense – and proves that politicians who have belief, stick to their principles, and persevere despite hostile opposition, can still shape events.”

This is a re-post (nov 2013) because the Hobbit movie is out on DVD.

Sources: Associated Press, L.A Times, KTLA, PeTA, Miami Herald, Huffington Post

Editor’s Note: Empty All Cages is highly disgusted with how these deaths were played down by all involved. First and foremost, computer generated animals are commonly used in successful movies. With 21^st century technology, live animals in movies are nothing more than slaves. And no one in their right mind would house hooved animals among bluffs and sinkholes. Unbelievably, just prior to “The Hobbit” opening for next month, Peter Jackson denied that animals were killed in the making of the film- shamefully ignoring the issue that the slaves were killed being housed for the film. (Pictures added to to show how these crimes might look- they aren’t from the scene)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Animal wranglers involved in the making of “The Hobbit” movie trilogy say the production company is responsible for the deaths of up to 27 animals, largely because they were kept at a farm filled with bluffs, sinkholes and other “death traps.”

The American Humane Association, which is overseeing animal welfare on the films, says no animals were harmed during the actual filming. But it also says the wranglers’ complaints highlight shortcomings in its oversight system, which monitors film sets but not the facilities where the animals are housed and trained.

One wrangler said that over time he buried three horses, as well as about six goats, six sheep and a dozen chickens. The wranglers say two more horses suffered severe injuries but survived.

The Associated Press spoke to four wranglers who said the farm near Wellington was unsuitable for horses because it was peppered with bluffs, sinkholes and broken-down fencing. They said they repeatedly raised concerns about the farm with their superiors and the production company, owned by Warner Bros, but it continued to be used. They say they want their story aired publicly now to prevent similar deaths in the future.

Wrangler Chris Langridge said he was hired as a horse trainer in November 2010, overseeing 50 or so horses, but immediately became concerned that the farm was full of “death traps.” He said he tried to fill in some of the sinkholes, made by underground streams, and even brought in his own fences to keep the horses away from the most dangerous areas. Ultimately, he said, it was an impossible task.

He said horses run at speeds of up to 30 mph and need to be housed on flat land: “It’s just a no-brainer.”

The first horse to die, he said, was a miniature named Rainbow. “When I arrived at work in the morning, the pony was still alive but his back was broken. He’d come off a bank at speed and crash-landed,” Langridge said. “He was in a bad state.”

Rainbow, who had been slated for use as a hobbit horse, was euthanized. A week later, a horse named Doofus got caught in some fencing and sliced open its leg. That horse survived, but Langridge said he’d had enough.

He and his wife, Lynn, who was also working as a wrangler, said they quit in February 2011. The following month, they wrote an email to Brigitte Yorke, the Hobbit trilogy’s unit production manager, outlining their concerns. Chris Langridge said he responded to Yorke’s request for more information but never received a reply after that.

Wrangler Johnny Smythe said that soon after Langridge left, a horse named Claire was found dead, its head submerged in a stream after it fell over a bluff. After that, he said, the horses were put in stables, where a third horse died.

Smythe said no autopsy was performed on the horse, which was named Zeppelin. Veterinary records say the horse died of natural causes, from a burst blood vessel, but Smythe said the horse was bloated and its intestines were full of a yellow liquid; he believes it died of digestive problems caused by new feed.

Smythe said the six goats and six sheep he buried died after falling into sinkholes, contracting worms or getting new feed after the grass was eaten. He said the chickens were often left out of their enclosure and that a dozen were mauled to death by dogs on two separate occasions.

Smythe said he was fired in October 2011 after arguing with his boss about the treatment of the animals.

A fourth wrangler, who didn’t want to be named because she feared it could jeopardize her future employment in the industry, said another horse, Molly, got caught in a fence and ripped her leg open, suffering permanent injuries.

Dravitzki, the spokesman for Peter Jackson, said the production company reacted swiftly after the first two horses died, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading housing and stable facilities in early 2011. “We do know those deaths were avoidable and we took steps to make sure it didn’t happen again,” he said.

Dravitzki said Zeppelin died of a burst blood vessel and that he knew only of three goats, one sheep and about eight chickens that had died aside from that. He said two of the goats died in a cold snap but the third, like the sheep, was old and had likely died of natural causes. He said the chicken maulings were the result of careless staff oversight.

Mark Stubis, an association spokesman, said it investigated the farm in August 2011, months after the first deaths. “We made safety recommendations to the animals’ living areas. The production company followed our recommendations and upgraded fence and farm housing, among other things,” the group said.

Dravitzki said the company had already made many of the recommended changes by the time the AHA made them. Stubis said the association acknowledges that what happens off-set remains a blind spot in its oversight.

Unbelievably, just prior to “The Hobbit” opening for next month, Peter Jackson denied that animals were killed in the making of the film- shamefully ignoring the issue that the slaves were killed being housed for the film!

“We would love to be able to monitor the training of animals and the housing of animals,” Stubis said. “It’s something we are looking into. We want to make sure the animals are treated well all the time.” “Hollywood has made animal welfare a stated priority for years.” (obvious lie)

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) says it’s planning protests at the premieres in New Zealand, the U.S. and the U.K. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first movie in the planned $500 million trilogy, will open at theaters in the U.S. and around the world in December 14th.

Top Ten Most Outrageous Animal “Research” Experiments for 2012

Posted by emptyallcages on April 2, 2013

Posted in: ANIMAL CRUELTY FACT LISTS, PRIMATES, Uncategorized, VIVISECTION. Tagged: and the National Institute of Mental Health, animal research, cat deafened experiments, College of Optometry, cruelty, In Defense of Animals, nicotine, pcp animal, University of Houston, Vanderbilt University, vivisection. 7 comments

Sources: In Defense of Animals (IDA)

Editor’s Note: This is Defense of Animals yealy report. I added pictures to show how these horrific crimes look.

The American public should be outraged by the torturous, inhumane and fraudulent use of animal life for research. For this reason, In Defense of Animals (IDA) has created the “Outragies Awards”, to highlight the worst use of animals in cruel, repetitive and wasteful research- like tormenting baby rats to study “child abuse”, giving hallucinogenic drugs to monkeys to create an animal model of schizophrenia, and hanging mice upside down by their tails to study depression. Tragically, there are hundreds of animal experiments that are outrageous and these Top Ten simply exemplify some of the worst. These experiments—the cream of the crop —show that your tax dollars and animals’ lives are unjustifiably wasted on research that adds nothing to medical progress and does not promote human health.

Each year, billions of dollars go to fund animal experiments, much of it through United States-taxpayer supported funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The unsuspecting public is led to believe that these experiments are necessary to promote human health and well-being. Indeed, the mission of NIH is to “to extend healthy life and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.”

But under close scrutiny, this claim does not hold up. Federally-funded animal experiments continue year after year, examining the same questions, at huge cost, creating “animal models” for diseases and conditions that are uniquely human, like smoking and alcoholism.

1.Most Outrageously Cruel: Born to be killed-newborn monkeys cut up for vision experiments.

Scientists at four institutions, including the University of Houston, College of Optometry, Vanderbilt University, and the National Institute of Mental Health, used newborn monkeys in grisly, invasive research, allegedly to study how vision develops in primates, even though many non-animal alternatives are available.

Tiny monkeys, some as young as two weeks old, were subjected to brain surgery during which electrodes were implanted. Next, each monkey was tracheostomized and placed in a head frame to undergo extensive electrode recording trials lasting 2 to 4 days. Amazingly, the researchers report that they used Propofol, a short-acting anesthetic, for these marathon procedures. Finally after days of electrode testing, the babies were killed so their brains cut be cut out and studied.

Their findings, which they described as “not surprising” were that many of the neural pathways they observed functioning were the same as those that have already been traced in adult monkeys. They weren’t surprised by this because they noted that baby monkeys already have “functional vision at birth.” So all that suffering and waste of life yielded no new knowledge or advancements in this field. Read more. Cost $734,000

2. Most Outrageously Senseless: Cats deafened and turned into experimental equipment.

The winner in the category went to researchers at the esteemed institutions of Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston.
Highly invasive hearing experiments were conducted on 15 young cats, purporting to improve hearing aids and cochlear implants for human use. Cochlear implants are used to help hearing- impaired individuals perceive sound. Cats were made deaf using high doses of drugs known to damage the nerves involved with hearing. Some cats used in the experiments were naturally deaf. The researchers report that some of the cats had already been used in a prior experiment. After the deafening procedures, cats had surgery to install cochlear implants and then were put through lengthy electrophysiological testing trials. They did not describe how long the testing trials lasted, other than to state that they administered steroids every four hours to minimize brain swelling.

Experimenting on cats to purportedly enhance the performance of cochlear implants for humans is cruel and unjustified. The response in an auditory neuron in an anesthetized cat is a limited view of the full picture of human hearing physiology. Hearing is a conscious phenomenon. Tracking the way neuron fires in an anesthetized cat is outdated and inhumane.
Ironically, the principal investigator also uses psychophysics in his work, but he’s also been cutting up cats for this line of research since at least 1996. Cost: $443,000.

3. Most Outrageously Depraved: Mice with their sense of smell wiped out, are anxious.

Inspired by their ability to damage the sense of smell through genetic tampering, a team of eight researchers at Columbia University and their collaborators conducted a study on male mice with an impaired sense of smell, suggesting that this might help treat anxiety in people. Their efforts earn them our Most Outrageously Depraved award for subjecting these poor mice to a range of tests that imposed “inescapable stress,” including hanging them upside down by their tails with adhesive tape for six minutes to see how long they would struggle before giving up.

Other tests included painful foot shocks, 24 hours of food-deprivation, and the infamous simulated drowning test where mice are put into a basin of water with no way out and no means of rest to see how long they try to swim before giving up. (Note – only the researchers know this is simulated – the mice really do think they might drown.) When all these trials were finished the mice were killed to study their brains.
The National Institute of Mental Health supported this absurd study, which opens by stating that “anxiety disorders are characterized by persistent fear in the absence of immediate threat,” and then proceeded to bombard these poor mice with all kinds of immediate threats. The American public paid for this study which refers to scores of prior studies that demonstrated how damaging the sense of smell in animals increased their anxiety. Cost: $400,000.

4. Most Outrageously Heartless: Baby rats tormented to study “child abuse.”

The award for Most Outrageously Heartless goes to four scientists at New York University Emotional Brain Institute who teamed up to abuse baby rats. Literally. They set out to mimic “child abuse,” but ended up subjecting infant rats to something more like the torture chambers at Abu Ghraib.

Baby rats received painful electric shocks while being exposed to the scent of peppermint for five days in a row. Because they were so young, the scientists hypothesized that the baby rats somehow substituted the peppermint odor for the smell of their mother, and thus perceived the shocks as coming from her.

Another group of baby rats was abused by removing most of the nesting material from their mothers. This frustrated them so much that they were not able to properly care for their babies; they handled them roughly, stepped on them, and nursed them less so they went hungry. The experimenters report that this group of babies cried more frequently than the control group who stayed with mothers in proper nests.
Weeks later, these groups of abused baby rats were subjected to the “forced swim test,” where they are put into basins of water with no platform for resting to see how long they struggle to swim before they give up and float helplessly. Psychologists use this simulated drowning scenario as a standard test, allegedly to study “depression” in animals. Cost: $2.6 million.

5. Most Outrageously Absurd: Broken homes don’t lead to drinking in prairie voles.

The Most Outrageously Absurd Award goes to a group of researchers at Emory University, Oregon Health & Science University and Quinnipiac University, who wanted to examine whether prairie voles who are raised by one parent would be more apt to drink alcohol than those raised by both parents. In this study, the fathers were removed before birth and the pups were raised only by the mothers. The researchers found no differences in the offspring’s tendency todrink alcohol, whether they were raised by a single parent or both parents
.

They also compared whether the voles would be more likely to drink “socially” by placing the drinking apparatus nearer or farther from an adjacent mesh cage with another vole. Researchers claim their results showed a preference for “social” drinking.

At the end of the experiment all voles were injected with ethanol, gassed with carbon dioxide and decapitated. The only justification they offer for this extreme measure was to analyze their blood ethanol level. It seems they never considered simply drawing their blood. Cost: $270,000.

6. Most Outrageously Repetitive: Fright Nights at University of Wisconsin: 25 years of terrifying monkeys.

The runaway winner of our Most Outrageously Repetitive award is a team of researchers at the Health Emotions Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Ned H. Kalin and his colleagues have been reporting on their use of rats and monkeys to study the neurobiology of fear since 1988.

There is no evidence that any of the experiments have helped anyone but the scientists. In a recent paper, they report on another 24 monkeys they frightened and killed, purportedly to study neurological components of childhood anxiety. Young male rhesus monkeys, ranging in age from 9 months to 4 years, were placed alone in a test cage and then a “human intruder” would enter the room and sit there for 30 minutes. After this episode, monkeys were anesthetized to have their blood drawn. Monkey behavior during the intruder episode is briefly described “freezing for at least 3 seconds, and tense body posture,” among others.

Unfortunately for children born with an anxious temperament, this latest study on the brains of frightened monkeys will have absolutely no effect on their life trajectory or help them if they develop a mental illness. Cost: $5 million.

7. Most Outrageously Inexcusable: Nicotine damages lungs of baby mice.

The Most Outrageously Inexcusable category goes to a team of researchers at seven institutions who exposed pregnant and newborn mice to nicotine so they could study the effects on their lungs. Mice were surgically implanted with “mini-pumps” to expose them to nicotine. Some were forced to drink it when it was added to their water source.

The researchers claim that even though the link between maternal smoking and impaired lung function in children is “incontrovertible,” this experiment demonstrates more precisely how that happens. Researchers claim that although we know that cigarette smoking causes lung damage in offspring, the exact mechanisms are “poorly understood.”

Here is what we do know. Animal “models” of tobacco and nicotine exposure have not helped to understand smoking in people. Animal studies have provided conflicting results when applied to humans, even failing to consistently replicate what we already know from human studies, such as the link between low birth weight and smoking during pregnancy. Cost: $2.4 million.

8. Most Outrageously Superfluous (Best Tax-Payer-Funded Vacation): Monkeys pumped with PCP to study “schizophrenia.”

Our Most Outrageously Superfluous award goes to a team of eight scientists from Yale University, UCLA, and pharmaceutical giants Merck and Pfizer. Their research was conducted on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts where wild caught monkeys are captured and used at the St. Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation. These researchers conducted a totally redundant study that attempts to show that the drug asenapine can diminish the cognitive effects of PCP, a hallucinogenic recreational drug also known as “angel dust.”

PCP was administered to the monkeys for two weeks, purportedly to mimic the cognitive impairments seen in schizophrenia, and then asenapine was administered for four weeks to reverse the effects of the PCP. But asenapine had already been identified as a drug of treatment for schizophrenia in people and was well into human clinical trials before this monkey research started. So what was the justification for this research? Why would scientists need to travel 3,600 miles to experiment on monkeys when the U.S. government already provides them with very large monkey colonies throughout the country? Maybe they just wanted a taxpayer-funded vacation on an island paradise. Cost: $525,000.

9. Most Outrageously Asinine: Psychologists strive for breakthroughs by studying sexual preference in hamsters.

Our Most Outrageously Asinine award goes to researchers at Cornell University for their study of the sexual inclination of hamsters to mate with a “foreign” hamster.
NIMH’s mission statement claims it is “paving the way for prevention, recovery and cure” of mental illness by fostering “innovative thinking and novel scientific perspectives. In this way, breakthroughs in science can become breakthroughs for all people with mental illness.”

First they exposed the racially different hamsters to each other for eight days in adjacent cages with a mesh barrier, so they could see and smell each other. Next they placed them in a cage together for five minutes and observed whether the female was “sexually receptive” to the male. They then repeated the five minute pairing of the same female Turkish hamster with a male Turkish hamster who she had not seen before.
They compared the two pairings and concluded that female Turkish hamsters were more likely to copulate with a “foreign” hamster than female Syrian hamsters. Cost: $2.3 million.

10.Most Outrageously Pointless: Stressed rats drink more than non-stressed rats.

In an expensive study of the obvious, psychologists at the Graduate Center for the City University of New York designed an experiment to see what effect stress would have on rats who drink alcohol. Of course, rats don’t drink, so first they had to get them used to drinking by mixing alcohol in their water.

These great minds, who take the award for Most Outrageously Pointless, decided that complex life stressors in humans could be studied in rats by putting them into a restraint chamber. Rats were restrained one hour each day, for ten days in a clear cylindrical tube that prevented them from moving.

The results showed that the stressed rats “drank” more alcohol than the non-stressed group. The researchers also appeared to be unclear about the voluminous literature confirming the adverse effect of alcohol on human memory. So they put the groups of rats through memory tests and discovered that the drinking, stressed rats performed better! No wonder these scientists are confused; they’re relying on animal experiments to study human behavior. Cost: $1.4 million.

Schippers Rape Kit For Girls

Posted by emptyallcages on February 24, 2013

Posted in: FACTORY FARMING, Uncategorized. Tagged: animal cruelty, artificial insemination, cruelty, factory farming, pigs, provoked, rape kit, schippers, slaughterhouses, sows, vegan. 3 comments

Source: Bea Elliot’s PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Just a picture is needed to show the severe brutality all factory farm animals suffer before they’re slaughtered for human consumption. If you want more information, click the picture to read more at PROVOKED.

Sources: Guardian, io9.com, gizmag.com, NBC News, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), Wikipedia, LiveScience.com

Editor’s Note: This NOT a typical science/tech article, nor does it belong under non-animal research alternatives. What we have here shows the continuing heartless and sadistic sociopathy of humans. Vivisection. Not just vivisection, but “neuroscience for everyone” from the US military and Backyard Brains. It seems we cannot leave even the smallest forms of life alone, to live as they would chose, without being put through some kind of vicious tests based on twisted curiosity. It’s been a fact since 2009 that all beings feel pain and stress. In fact, it would be hard to argue that in order for any species to survive and evolve, they must feel pain in order to learn how to avoid danger- just as these poor insects undoubtedly do. ARAs say it all the time- sometimes I’m ashamed to be human.

In 2006, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) asked America’s scientists to submit “innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs.” A Darpa programme manager and Cornell engineer, wrote in a pamphlet the agency issued to the prospective researchers: Perhaps the military didn’t need to start from scratch; if they began with live insects, they’d already be halfway to their dream flying machines. All they’d have to do was figure out how to hack into insects’ bodies and control their movements.

It makes sense to pattern robots after insects— after all, they must be doing something right, seeing as they are the most successful animals on the planet, comprising roughly 75 percent of all animal species known to humanity. Indeed, scientists have patterned robots after insects and other animals for decades — to mimic cockroach wall-crawling, for instance, or the grasshopper’s leap.

But we have high tech ways to study this, right now, so that we don’t have to hurt anyone to make progress. Scientists know this and still they insist on putting a living being in agony. Apparently they’ve been doing it for a while, completely ignoring more accurate learning options.

“We’ve been spending the last 20 years or so looking at cockroaches trying to get around barriers and recording what’s going on,” says biologist Roy Ritzmann at Case Western University, “Finding out how a cockroach’s nervous system directs its motion tells researchers where to implant electrodes that would control the insect’s movement. Robots could traverse a disaster site a lot more ffectively if they’re programmed to think and move like cockroaches.” So why do insects make such great candidates to become cyborgs in the first place? For one thing, they can move with a system of locomotion that’s as sophisticated as that of most mammals. Also, insects have open circulatory systems, and they recover quickly after surgery. But most of all, their locomotive and navigational abilities make them excellent cyborgs — and great templates for us to learn more about locomotion and flight in general.”

Typically, sadistic vivisecters lie about what they do and how it necessary, but that statement is especially stupid…In the 21^st century we need to learn about navigation and flight?? The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has to date (2012) invested $12 million into research since it began in 2006. It currently supports these cybug projects:

Roaches at Texas A&M.
Hornet beetles at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.
Moths at an MIT-led team and another moth project at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.

Darpa and scientists knew that insects were living feeling beings before the general public did and yet they continued to brutalize 1000s of them over the years:

“People have the idea that insects are simple creatures, but Ritzmann says that’s just not true. “It’s not that insects are simple automatons that we can learn first and then apply to bigger animals.” If anything, insects are just as complex and versatile as larger creatures.”

This video shoes the complete procedure of taking a wild life form and turning it into a remote controlled slave.

Vivisectors Shamelessly Admit to Mind Control and Inflicting Pain

“A lot of people have been implanting probes near the muscles controlling the abdomen,” Ritzmann says. “If you could tap into the areas of the brain where the animal is making the command determining where it’s going to go, you could do this a lot more subtly.” Of course, this type of mind control would first require knowledge of how the brain sends these commands.

But one researcher is already exerting a different type of mind control over insects. At the University of Oxford, neuroscientist Gero Miesenbock uses genetic engineering, chemicals, and lasers to modify fruit flies’ brains and behavior. After isolating the parts of a fly’s brain responsible for certain behaviors, such as jumping, flying, or broadcasting a mating call, Miesenbock engineered flies in which these brain cells would be sensitive to light. Shining a laser at the flies from a distance was enough to stimulate these behaviors. Miesenbock even managed to make female flies enact a male behavior: vibrating one wing to “sing” a mating call.

And Miesenbock’s mind control goes deeper than influencing behavior. He has also implanted memories into fruit fly brains. And in the process, he discovered the brain circuit responsible for the flies’ memory information. “In order to make fruit flies avoid a certain odor, you could give them a shock every time they were exposed to that scent. The conditioning works because the insects form memories in which the smell is associated with pain. But Miesenbock bypassed this conditioning — instead implanting memories directly into fruit flies’ brains.”

Backyard Brains: Neuroscience for Everyone

Two mentally ill vivisectors have completely lost their minds and now offer kits to inflict pain and control the minds of innocent beings living in your backyard.

Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo, former researchers, are taking these techniques and making them available to anyone with an internet connection and about £50 to spare. In 2009, Gage and Marzullo established Backyard Brains, a company that sells low-cost kits that will turn any interested amateur into a deranged vivisector.

Their first product was known as the SpikerBox. On sale for $99.99 (£65), the device lets customers observe neural firing in a cockroach in real time. (A set of three roach slaves is $12 extra.) For their
second product, Gage and Marzullo decided to push the boundaries further, to venture beyond brain observation and into brain control. They created a kit that provides their customers with all the tools they need to take over the nervous system of a living cockroach. “In principle, the Backyard Brains RoboRoach is nearly indistinguishable from the beetles being made in a university lab. It means we can all experiment with vivisection in our own homes-kids and adults.” (adding even more sociopaths to society who will turn into serial killers.)

Owners’ and product details state:

“If you’re new to the hobby of animal mind manipulation, the cockroach is an excellent place to start. Because a roach relies on its long, fluid-filled antennae for a host of sensory and navigational functions, its nervous system is stunningly easy to hack; all a wannabe roachmaster has to do is thread a wire inside each antenna. (“It’s like it’s designed to be a cyborg,” Marzullo says.)

” The wires run out of its antennae and into a small black box Marzullo has glued on to its head. He plugs this “connector” into the cockroach backpack, a red-and-green assemblage of circuit boards. The electronics are slightly modified versions of circuit boards that come from a widely available toy: a plastic, remote-controlled inchworm called the HexBug that retails for about £7.50 at toy stores. When these circuit boards are linked to the head-mounted connector, Marzullo and Gage can use the remote control that comes with the toy to deliver pulses of electricity to the roach. “The world’s first commercially available cyborg,” Marzullo says.”

Gage and Marzullo attract controversy because they are taking biotechnology out of the lab and putting it into the hands of the public. And they are criticised for meddling with animal bodies for “trivial” purposes.

“Most people, Marzullo explains, have accepted the use of animals for scientific research, military defence or food. “But if you exploit animals for education,” he says, “people aren’t cool with that.” Is educating students about the nervous system – and potentially encouraging a new generation of neuroscientists – a less-justifiable use of animals than hunting out mines or earthquake survivors? It’s time to start thinking through these issues, because now that the tools of brain control have been liberated from the lab, there’s no telling how they’ll be used.”

“Backyard Brains is tapping into this movement, giving amateurs access to some of science’s most sophisticated tools and techniques. The latest, greatest cyborg critters may come not from state-of-the-art labs, but the minds of curious kids and individual hobbyists. Though scientists will continue to build their cyborg animals, Marzullo says he fully expects that “kids will be able to hack these things, like they wrote code in the Commodore 64 days”. We are heading towards a world in which anyone with a little time, money and imagination can commandeer an animal’s brain. That’s as good a reason as any to start thinking about where we’d draw our ethical lines. The animal cyborgs are here, and we’ll each have to decide whether we want a turn at the controls.”

We can only pray that these unstable deranged “people” become incapacitated in some way, soon, before they can breed anymore insanity.

Sources: PeTA, S.E.A.N. , 620wtmj, Topix, Madison.com, Youtube ,NBC news, Animal Alliance

Why do animal rights activists do the “bizarre” things they do- like street protests, yelling with bullhorns, vegan outreach, chaining themselves to various things, leafleting, calling out politicians and “researchers”, drenching themselves in fake blood, liberating animals from places that torture them, fighting for new and stronger laws, beating drums, sitting in cages, blocking entries, mass phone calls, gathering petition signatures, filing law suits against huge profiteers often at great risk, publicizing animal research records, going broke housing homeless animals, getting branded publically, sending mass emails, marching through researchers neighborhoods, etc?

BECAUSE WE HAVE NO CHOICE! Billions of animals are dumped, beaten, electrocuted, tortured, skinned and killed each year around the world. The numbers never go down, even though there are so many non-animal alternatives now that whole countries are banning the abuse. The sociopaths who abuse animals fear exposure for their horrific acts, and if profit is involved, the laws will support profiteers by decriminalizing even the most heinous forms of abuse on innocent animals while excepting money to do so. The general public wrongly trusts law makers, refusing look any further. Animals that perform for us in any venue are beaten to do so. Animals that are farmed and skinned so they we can feel prettier wearing their fur are in unimaginable agony. So what are activists supposed to do to open the public’s eyes to the truth that’s so horrific people can’t look or listen- even though this global animal holocaust is really happening?

We believe if the general public is shown what abusers work so hard to hide, they will be compelled to stop accepting and funding it. Useless taxpayer funded animal research, circus animal atrocities, fur farm live skinning. If this were incorrect, abusers would let people right in to their death camps instead of slandering peaceful activists with labels like “terrorists” to deflect the public’s attention away from their abuse of animals. The more attention the activist can generate, the more likely the world will look at the truth.

This is why all people of notoriety, stature, fame or wealth must answer the call to duty to be loud, sustained voices for the voiceless. Posing for a poster is not enough. It’s
obscene to have resources and know about the suffering, but do nothing to fight the torturing of innocent animals. Would Meryl Streep be unable to get work because she defends animals? Would she be made to spend 8 months in court fighting a peaceful trespassing charge? No, because they couldn’t run her out of money or get people to believe she’s a “terrorist.” This happens to peaceful, decent activists all the time. If celebrities would do constant, peaceful protests to show the truth, or sponsor bills all the way to law, it would effectively neutralize much of the profiteers’ resources to hurt animals.

ENTER 73 YEAR OLD JAMES CROMWELL

Oscar nominee James Cromwell was arrested Thursday February 7 2013while protesting experimentation on cats at the University of Wisconsin. Cromwell, best known for playing the loveable farmer Hoggett in Babe, burst into a University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents meeting holding up large poster of a cat, which appeared to have a metal clamp implanted in its head, and shouting.

Cromwell’s Protest Video

PETA and Cromwell expose the university’s experiments on cats aimed at helping the deaf are cruel and have not been successful. “As many as 30 cats a year at UW have had holes drilled in their skulls” Cromwell says in the video. “They are deafened, starved for days at a time and then decapitated. This is not science. This is torture. And it is criminal.”

He was taken into custody by police and has since been released. Cromwell was joined in the protest by PETA spokesman Jeremy Beckham. Cromwell was escorted out of the room in handcuffs.

Following the protest, the director of the UW–Madison Research Animal Resources Center, released the following statement: “Today’s events are just another attempt by outside activists to draw attention to a cause. He added that “exhaustive independent investigation by the USDA, which regulates the use of animals in research, concluded that PETA’s allegations are baseless.”

This pic shows what the USDA says is legal. Yes, this poor little guy named Double Trouble is wide awake in UW-Madison’s tourture lab.

On Friday, Cromwell released a statement:

“After my friends at PETA showed me the horrifying photographs of a gentle cat named Double Trouble, one of dozens of cats who was cut into, deafened, killed, and decapitated by the University of Wisconsin Madison in a cruel taxpayer funded experiment that’s still going on, I knew I had to join PETA’s campaign to end this abuse. Cats at UW have holes drilled into their skulls, metal coils implanted into their eyes, are deafened with toxic chemicals and starved to force them to cooperate in experiments that are obviously cruel and aren’t contributing anything to human health…Read More

Now that a celebrity has exposed UW cat vivisection, the issue is immediately broadcast world-wide, while we drench ourselves in fake blood or dress in animal costumes to try to get minimal local coverage for the same animals’ suffering. Celebreties: Answer the call of duty like Cromwell does!

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN- MADISON

The University of Wisconsin has a long history of crimes against animals to answer for, a list of horrors which, quite shamefully, shows no sign of collecting dust any time soon. At one time UW was ranked as the worst animal laboratory in the country by PeTA. Such a distinction should come as no surprise given the millions perhaps even billions of student and taxpayer money that has paid
for over a half century of animal testing.

Of course, UW has tortured and murdered countless animals over the years the following atrocities are just a few of the better-known examples of abuse. Most of the details of these experiments remain unknown.

Beginning in the 1950s, UW’ Harry Harlow was responsible for torturing perhaps thousands of primates in so-called psychological research. Methods involved impregnating monkeys via rape racks and then isolating the infant immediately after birth for several weeks, thereby inducing extreme fear and anxiety. Researchers would then give the mother back her offspring and observe how she mauled the baby.

Again in the 1970s, the same Harlow began inducing depression in rhesus macaque monkeys by placing them in small vertical chambers, or pits of despair. He usually used infant monkeys for this purpose, isolating them for weeks until they stopped moving altogether and assumed a hunched position in a corner. Most animals did not recover and remained psychotic until their death. (must see the link!)

In 2004, 3 monkeys were cooked to death at UW. Three marmoset monkeys were left in their cage when it was sent through a sanitizing cage-washer. They were scalded to death by sprays of chemical wash. Joseph Kemnitz, the center’s director, confirmed that the three animals were killed after being left in a cage as it was being sanitized at the research center in mid-July. “It was a terrible accident,” Kemnitz said. “Probably the animals died of the heat exposure. It was probably a very quick death.

In 2005, true to its reputation, UW has continued to utilize animals in its research. UW once again faced criticism for testing Taser stun guns on pigs. Eric Sandgren, director of UW Research Animals Resource Center, ignored the criticism and allowed the testing to occur. The results: Tasering pigs produces no useful information about similar effects on humans.

In 2008 Inspections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have revealed other abuses. Primates were reported to have been subjected to the push-pull method, whereby drugs are directly injected into the primate’s brain as it is locked in a restraining chair. The experiment lasts hours or even days. One animal expired as the researchers took a lunch break.

Also in 2008, a new wave of negative reports hit UW. Among other complaints, the USDA was concerned that many animals were not given painkillers during experimentation. Mr. Sangren, ever the apologist for animal cruelty, responded, “The USDA tells us what we could be doing better. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve broken the law.” It is this type of pathetic response to a breach in UW’s own protocol that UW has rightfully earned the reputation that it has.

In 2009, UW-Madison researchers violated state law when 26 sheep died in experiments on decompression sickness. There were no charges because Dane County DA Blanchard found that UW-Madison was violating a state statute that forbids anyone to “kill an animal by means of decompression,” but that it didn’t violate criminal law because the sheep weren’t killed “intentionally or negligently.” In the studies, sheep are placed in a hyperbaric chamber and then subjected to increased atmospheric pressure, followed by decreased pressure, to simulate a quick ascent.

“So what’s the point of having the laws that do these things if the district attorney isn’t going to prosecute?” asked Rick Bogle of Alliance for Animals. “We’re talking about animals dying in excruciating pain.”
2012 / ongoing, UW researchers dodged federal penalties for decapitating a cat named Double Trouble, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals triggered outrage in the animal-welfare community after publishing on its website photos of the dead cat used in a hearing experiment, which it obtained using the Wisconsin Public Records Law. Records revealed cruel and useless experiments, in which Double Trouble—like other cats used in UW’s sound localization studies—had holes drilled into her head, a steel post screwed to her skull, electrodes implanted in her brain, and coils implanted in her eyes. After UW staff deemed their experiment a failure, Double Trouble was killed and decapitated. UW experimenters justified using up to 30 cats per year in this experiment so that they could “keep up a productive publication record that ensures our constant funding.”

“These are curiosity experiments and aren’t applied research and produce no findings,” said Justin Goodman, director of PETA’s laboratory investigations department.
Researchers at other universities use human volunteers to study how the brain processes sound.

Documents and never-before-seen photos from the University of Wisconsin’s lab detailing abusive experiments on an orange tabby cat named Double Trouble

Newly Discovered Slow Loris Species Already Threatened

Posted by emptyallcages on January 26, 2013

Posted in: PRIMATES, Uncategorized. Tagged: ann nekaris, black market, borneo amirican journal of primatology, dr, international animal rescue, Kayan loris, little fireface project, New slow loris, ppoachers, venomous, wfft. 2 comments

Sources: Discovey News, Little Fireface Project International Animal Rescue, Americal Journal of Primatology, The Guardian, University of Missouri, New Planet

Editor’sNote: The popular loris tickling youtube video is not posted here because it has markedly fueled the illegal trade of baby lorises who are ripped from their mothers in the wild. A spokesman for YouTube said: “All videos uploaded must comply with our Community Guidelines, which prohibit animal abuse. ”If we do find that videos do violate the guidelines, we remove them, usually in under an hour.” The company declined to comment on the loris clips.

Published just 4 weeks ago in the American Journal of Primatology, a new, venomous, primate has been discovered Borneo. And they are already in trouble from low life poachers. The large eyes, two tongues and ‘teddy bear’ face of the nocturnal Nycticebus kayan, discovered in Borneo, makes it attractive for illegal poaching

“Unfortunately, in addition to habitat loss to deforestation, thousands of lorises are being lost each year to black market pet trade, traditional medicine, and superstitious rituals.” The world’s only venomous primates could be gone in the flash of an eye, as the illegal trades see ravaging of populations.

Researchers have discovered a new slow loris species in the jungles of Borneo, according to findings published this week in the American Journal of Primatology. Known for its toxic bite, the slow loris — a nocturnal primate found across Southeast Asia — is closely related to a lemur and is characterized by unique fur coloration on its face and body.An international
team of scientists pinpointed the new species, found in Borneo’s central-east highland area, by studying the distinctive colorings of the faces of the animals.

Because they aren’t domesticated they are afforded some legal protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Even researchers note keeping the intelligent and social animals as pets is cruel and the animals often do very poorly in captivity. And the terrified animals often have their teeth cut down with nail clippers to prevent it from biting the trader. This brutal practice is common among wildlife dealers in Indonesia before selling lorises in markets or at the roadside, and many of them die from the trauma or from septicaemia within days of capture.

Poachers steal infant lorises from their parents in the wild to sell at open-air markets in Indonesia, where they are traded for as little as £10. The export market is most lucrative in Japan, where lorises stolen to order sell for £3,500. The trade is now expanding into the US and Europe, with illegally smuggled lorises reported in the United Kingdom.

Dr Anna Nekaris, reader in primate conservation at Oxford Brookes University, said there is also a “massive” trade in Poland and Russia. “I have visited markets in Thailand where they advise on how to smuggle them into Britain,” she adds.

Even zoos have difficulty meeting their nutritional needs for certain insects, tree gums and nectars and zoos rarely succeed in breeding them. Nearly all the primates in the pet trade are taken from the wild, breaking the bonds of the lorises’ complex and poorly understood social structures. The teeth they use for their venomous bite are then torn out. Many of them die in the squalid conditions of pet markets. Once in the home, pet keepers don’t provide the primates with the social, nutritional and habitat requirements they need to live comfortably. Pet keepers also want to play with the nocturnal animals during the day, disrupting their sleep patterns.”

“YouTube videos of lorises being tickled, holding umbrellas or eating with forks have become wildly popular,” said Anna Nekaris, study co-author, primatology professor at Oxford Brookes University and MU graduate. “CNN recently promoted loris videos as ‘feel good’ entertainment. In truth, the lorises gripping forks or umbrellas were simply desperate to hold something. The arboreal animals are adapted to spending their lives in trees constantly clutching branches. Pet keepers rarely provide enough climbing structures for them.”

The only Loris rescue center in Thailand is run by Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand. At their center they receive over a hundred lorises a year from all over the country and most are released back to the wild within days, having small to medium injuries from electric shock or wild traps.

“The pet trade isn’t the only threat to loris survival. The animals also are used in Asian traditional medicines. The methods used to extract the medicines can be exceedingly violent, according to Nekaris, who also is director of the slow loris advocacy organization, Little Fireface Project.

For example, in order to obtain tears of the big-eyed lorises, skewers are inserted into the animals’ anuses and run through their bodies until they exit the mouth. The still-living animals are then roasted over a smoky fire and the tears that stream from their eyes are collected and used to supposedly treat eye diseases in humans.”