No Covid vaccinations for pets because they aren't a priority

NEWS AND COMMENT: We, the public, know that lions, tigers and bears have been given Covid vaccinations. This tells us unequivocally that there is a Covid vaccine for animals, specifically zoo animals. This is because zookeepers who have been infected with Covid transmit the disease to captive animals at their zoo. This is important because the animals are valuable. They are an asset to the zoo and that asset needs to be protected with a vaccine.

RELATED: Tragedy: 3 snow leopards die of Covid

Free pet care clinic Seattle 2020. Ruth Fremson / The New York Times

However, despite the knowledge of an effective vaccination for animals, vaccines are unavailable for dogs and cats. This is simply because, on my understanding, that dogs and cats are de-prioritised.

The experts think that cats and dogs do not transmit Covid to their owners and other people living in their homes. One veterinarian, Dr. Elizabeth Lennon, working out of the University of Pennsylvania said that she is frequently asked when a vaccination will be made available for domestic cats and dogs.

The answer is that pets are simply not a priority according to experts. Dr. Lennon said that:

"To date, there hasn’t been any documented cases of dogs or cats spreading the virus to people."

And Dr. Will Sander, a veterinarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said that the risk of the disease spreading in pets is so low that any vaccine would not be worth giving.

RELATED: Can domestic cats transmit Covid?

This is a question of economics and finance and whether people can be bothered to vaccinate companion animals. At the moment the answer is that it is not worth vaccinating them.

My research does not specify absolutely that the vaccines given to zoo animals can be used on domestic animals. However, I can't see any reason why a vaccine used on a big cat like a tiger can't be used on a domestic cat. This is because they are exactly the same anatomically with some very minor differences excluding the size difference which is obvious. 😀.

But the point is that they are the same and they have the same physiology, so I would like someone to tell me why the vaccines made available to zoos in America can't also be made available to veterinarians. Is that such a big ask?

Even if the vaccine is de-prioritised for pets, it is hardly a great difficulty or burden to distribute it a little more widely to veterinarians.

Source: Seattle Times.

The truth about tiger and lion cub petting

Tiger cub petting is immoral and exploitative. Screenshot.

This a cool BCR video on cub petting. Tiger cub petting seems innocent and cute to the unknowing but the backstory is horrible and cruel. It is all about financial profit at the expense of animal welfare. The cubs are commodities to be exploited. The private zoos which run tiger and lion cub petting are immoral. They have to be to do what they do. Tigers and lions are exploited terribly all over the world. The rarer they become - and they are becoming rarer in the wild - the more they are exploited. Rareness is very exploitable in the human world. And cuteness is easy to monetize too. 

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

What happens to the cubs when they are 12 weeks old? They are no longer commodities. They are a burden on the expenses of these exploitative businesses. They don't want to feed and care for tigers if they can't make money. Are they killed? Probably. The parts are possibly sold to China where there is a constant demand for tiger and lion body parts to eat. It is quite mad as they believe that eating bits of tiger anatomy improves them; their health and their sex. Superstitious humans rooted in the past at the expense of animal welfare and wildlife conservation.

The two past masters of tiger cub petting are Jo Exotic and Tim Stark. They know each other. Joe Exotic is currently in jail serving a 22-year prison sentence for conspiracy to murder Carole Baskin whose business made the video on this page ironically. Joe Exotic mercilessly exploited lion and tiger cubs on his huge estate, his private zoo which was the largest in America until it was disbanded after he was sent to prison.

Tim Stark was also featured in the hit Netflix documentary series called Tiger King. He was one of the big cat exploiters in America. He's lost his livelihood. As I recall he voluntarily gave up his animals. Ironically, too, Jo Exotic's animals were taken over by Carole Baskin, I guess under a court order.

CAROLE BASKINS CAMPAIGN TO PROTECT CAPTIVE BIG CATS

Tim Stark made millions with his baby tiger playtime sessions. National Geographic reports that many owners of cub-petting attractions in the United States are facing lawsuits or criminal charges. They say that court cases are challenging the legality of certain practices incorporated within these private zoos, such as tearing cubs from their mothers before they are weaned and allowing tourists to take selfies and bottle feed them.

The lawsuits cite a range of infractions such as illegally buying, selling and shipping endangered species nationwide, poor veterinary care, poor animal welfare, poor nutrition and unclean and unsafe housing et cetera.

The imprisonment of Jo Exotic and the end of his exploitative escapades has perhaps marked the beginning of the end of tiger and lion cub exploitation in the America.

Should 'tiger' be capitalized?

Should the word 'tiger' be capitalized? I have answered the question already. It should not be capitalized because it is not a proper noun. The word 'tiger' is a common noun. But if you are referring to the 'Bengal tiger' or the 'Amur tiger' the first world in these wild cat names are proper nouns. 'Bengal' describes the name of a geopolitical, cultural and historical region located in South Asia. 

Image: MikeB

There is an Indian state called West Bengal. Therefore, Bengal is a proper noun. 'Amur' is a region in Russia. Once again it is a proper noun because of that. The full name is 'Amur Oblast' which is a federal subject of Russia, located on the banks of the Amur and Zeya Rivers in the Russian Far East.

To recap, tiger should not be capitalized because it is not a proper noun but if the word is prefixed with a place the first word in the name of the tiger is capitalized as place names are proper nouns.

Sometimes people mistakenly change the name of a wild cat species. For instance, the Canada lynx is sometimes referred to as the Canadian lynx. This is incorrect. Some people refer to the Asiatic leopard cat as the Asian leopard cat. Once again this is incorrect.

Subspecies of tiger are always named with the region where they live prefixing the word tiger. I have mentioned the Bengal tiger. There is also the Sumatran tiger, Siberian or Amur tiger, South China tiger, Javan tiger, Malayan tiger, Bali tiger, Indochinese tiger and Caspian tiger. See the list of tiger subspecies by clicking here and here to see where they live. And click here to see a page discussing the coutries where the tiger is or was native.

Cat History in Pictures

A series of pictures and accompanying words that describe some milestones in the history of the cat. We have to start at the beginning, which is the era when the cat did not exist on the planet. Of course, the first cats were wildcats and it stayed that way for millions of years until relatively recently.

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This first cat history picture shows the complete development from the animal that was the precursor to the cat, the Miacid, to a highly selectively bred purebred cat in this case a Snowshoe cat - but it could be anyone of the well established cat breeds in the picture.

The time frame from the bottom picture to the top picture is about 60,000,000 years (60m or 60 Ma).

It is believed that the genus Felis (Felis lunensis - Martelli's Cat) appeared about 12 million years ago. 2.4 million years ago the ancestor to the European wild cat appeared.

The Near-eastern wildcat or African wildcat was first domesticated about 9,500 years ago we think so you can see how relatively recent the domestic cat is. Read more on domestic cat history.

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The earliest recorded lion fossil is dated about 3.5 million years ago. The picture, left is of a lion in cave paintings from the Palaeolithic period (2.6 million years ago - 10,000 years ago).

However, the history of the big cats is not certain. It is thought by some that the lion appeared in African about 1 million years ago.

Jaguars roamed over Europe about 1.64 million years ago. See history of the big cats.

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Jumping forward to relatively modern times, the picture left shows the domestic cat in Ancient Egyptian times 1400 BC - almost 3,500 years ago.

The picture shows a slice of cat history. It appears to be of a domesticated or semi-domesticated cat, the precursor of today's Egyptian Mau purebred cat, catching a bird. It appears that the cat was trained by the person in the picture to do this. Cheetahs were also trained to hunt (16th century)

The Ancient Egyptians had a long and close relationship with the domestic cat and worshiped the cat at one time for a period of 2,000 years. The cat was first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, which includes the Nile delta in Egypt.

Above : picture of a statue of the goddess Bastet from the temple of Queen Berenice, who was the wife of King Ptolemy III (246-222 BC). Location: Alexandria, Egypt. See post.

Bastet festivals were popular until about AD 390. People made sacrifices to the god. Cats were killed for the purpose. Were the Egyptians truly cat lovers?

It seems not. See Egyptian cat art.

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Moving to modern times, cat history now is more about the development of the cat fancy and the cat breeds.

The picture left is of a champion purebred show cat, CHAMPION FULMER ZAIDA,  of 1902. The cat fancy started not long before that in the late 1800s in England, UK. See Persian cat history. Development of new breeds has now, 2012, all but stopped.

However, the most pressing aspect of cat history for us today (2012) is not about the domestic cat but the wild cats and pressingly the demise of the tiger in the wild.

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The tiger is heading for extinction and quite rapidly as the human population expands equally rapidly.

The extinction of the tiger (and the other wildcat species) began in earnest in the mid 1800s to early 1900s when they were shot for sport or skins. Poaching of the now rare tiger for tiger body parts to supply the Chinese medicine market (see e.g. tiger bone) continues today and is the biggest threat together with habitat loss. Ironically, as the tiger becomes rarer its bones become more precious to the commercial market and thus it is more likely to be shot or poisoned and dissected for its body parts.

At that time artists had the habit of anthropomorphizing the wildcats in drawings. See Tiger for a lot more.