• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

New Forum: Ceph Care Ethics

tonmo

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Welcome to the new Ceph Care Ethics forum!

This has been added to the "Cephalopods Main Forums" forum category, which is part of a re-listing of forums that are currently underway!

The purpose of this forum is to share information about ceph care ethics, including rules & regulations, opinions (no flaming; attack the idea, not the person), and suggestions for parameters in ethical cephalopod keeping.

We'll be moving relevant threads here shortly, meanwhile, feel free to jump right in!

:grad:
 
gjbarord;182997 said:
Not sure what the best way to start this thread would be. Here goes:

What does the ethical treatment of cephalopods mean to everyone?

Greg

Maximizing their well being and minimizing their suffering.
 
To me the only person that gave a good definition of what the law should accomplish is Robyn. I agree that setting a standard (particularly with invasive study) for number of animals used and other criteria would promote comparable results but believe this should be a guideline (which impacts funding) not a law (and the guideline would need to be international, not available to a law). I believe the problem becomes, no one ever seems to be able to get common guidelines established and accepted so we fall back on law to force SOME kind of standard. This has much to do with the number of animals sacrificed for a study, the use of anasthesia and euthanasia more than any long (for a ceph) term care. In the case of cephalopods, alternates and dead vs live does not have a lot of meaning but would have to be defended because we use it for all other animals and the people writing the words will cut and paste that part in :roll:

The part that gets dicey is answering questions like, "is it cruelity or science to pull of the legs of a daddy long legs" or in the case of cephs to amputate arms to study pain, regeneration or the independence of a limb. Ethically, would you need to kill the animal first? Many would scream yes without taking in to consideration that the animal is frequently amputated in the wild and still has active regeneration genes (which we are supposed to have as well but they are turned off). On the other hand, many lab animals are only kept alive for a study so should you euthanize it first? Should you make lab animals available to the pet trade in stead of euthanizing them if they are still viable. I dare say this would get a huge NO but to me, is more ethical than euthanization of a viable animal (and then you must define viable).

My personal "ethical" definition goes outside what the EU rulings are addressing and is simpler to state and evaluate. My thoughts on what should be part of an animal ethics law also do not address end keepers but involve setting an allowed loss rate from collection to final distribution and banning a collector/shipper/wholesaler from providing a species if it cannot meet the minimums. No rules on numbers per tank, or anything specific, just loss ratios. The best methods (note the plural), whatever they turn out to be will provide a more ethical treatment of any group of animals. The hard part is setting the numbers per species but that is not as hard as trying to force a standard of care that may not be optimum (or is even not known). This could also address the live catch and sell animals for the food industry (lobsters, crabs, frogs and cephs). My thought does not address tank raising and I think this falls outside of any ruling because the cost of attempting it is high enough to allow total freedom to anyone willing to try.
 
Yay to the start of this forum this is obviously a hot topic at the moment over here in europe, but as evident from TONMOCON IV that it is a very important question for everyone.
 
perke;183217 said:
The part that gets dicey is answering questions like, "is it cruelity or science to pull of the legs of a daddy long legs"

Dicey indeed. One answer to that question is another question. Does it depend on the reason why the legs are being pulled off? I'll argue that it does.

Here are some answers:

Because I can.
To study regeneration in invertebrates - with no real plan or control.
To study regeneration in invertebrates - with a plan, controls, etc
To study ways to eradicate daddy long legs as my wife thinks they are evil bloodsuckers and the job of husbands everywhere is to defend their wives from small helpless insects.
To study a protein found in their legs that may cure cancer.
To extract a protein found in their legs that has been proven to cure cancer.

On way to frame the research is to ask the question, what is the potential for positive impact and how does that compare to the potential or actual suffering. I suggest a sliding scale as a place to start.
 
I'll add one to your answer list that I think sort of reverts to my first question but is likely a common answer (given or not) and central to the ethics considerations.

Because we don't know anything about daddy long legs legs.
 

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