Friends Fur Life

As many of you may have heard, trouble hit the Australia Zoo on Friday in the form of a 7-year-old boy.  This precious young child broke into the Zoo and fed several animals to a crocodile while bashing others to death with a rock.  13 animals total were killed, including a turtle, four western blue tongue lizards, two bearded dragons, two thorny devil lizards and a 1.8 metre adult female Spencer’s goanna that were all fed to the crocodile named Terry, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.  Under Australia law, the boy can not even be tried as a juvenile because he is under 10 years old, so they are looking into charging his parents.

While yes, the parents should be held responsible, it is ridiculous that absolutely no repercussions be placed upon the boy.  This was an intricate, complicated action, and he must have known that what he did was wrong.  This is a strong implication of deep-seated psychosis, and while authorities repeatedly choose to ignore the facts, animal cruelty at a young age almost inevitably leads to violence against humans as an adult.  If we take care of the problem while they are young, such as with aggressive therapy, it should reduce the risk of recurrence.  People who argue, “But he’s just a kid,” always tend to forget that Jeffrey Dahmer was “just a kid” as well.  Once they are allowed to be desensitized to violence against “lesser” beings, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump away to being desensitized to violence against humans.  The facts can not be denied, animal cruelty equals cruelty to all beings.