If animals had a religion, humans would be the DEVIL!!!

That is absolutely disgusting. I weep for that poor animal. – comment on Twitter.

OMG – what sh*t. What horrors people get up to. I don’t want to sound racist. I want to be respectful of different cultures and races but this is obviously Asia somewhere and there is so much animal abuse in Asia. I think the reasons are twofold: being developing countries (some of them) they need working animals to make a living and that almost inevitably leads to animal abuse and secondly, in countries like China and perhaps Vietnam the culture seems to be that either animals work for their lives or are eaten. It is pretty basic.

I find it unbearable to look, how can people have so little empathy? – comment on Twitter.

If you want to read a nice summation of the relationship between the Chinese in China and animals please read the words of Ai Weiwei, the contemporary artist. Click this link to read the article.

I cannot describe how much this upsets me and makes me so angry. – comment on Twitter.

Does that picture make you wince in mental agony? It does me. Ricky Gervais sums it up nicely. Humankind is the devil on so many occasions in our relationship with animals.

It is the complete lack of sensitivity and respect for the sentience of animals which shocks me. This a primate by the look of it – a chimpanzee – that they have shackled in this most inhumane way. Chimps share 98% of our DNA. This is like shackling a human.

Animal or human what we see is a crime under normal circumstances. And if in the country where this photo was taken there are no animal welfare laws protecting animals from this kind of barbaric treatment then shame on the blasted country. Shame on them for not having the will to create and enforce animal welfare laws which would make what you see an arrestable offence and on conviction a five-year prison sentence.

The title and Gervais’ quote originates in William Ralph Inge who said:

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

AND

Deliberate cruelty to our defenceless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty.

William Inge was a brilliant man. A priest and an author. He had some strong views some of which were the product of the era during which he lived. Wikipedia’s introduction is as follows:

He was born on 6 June 1860 in Crayke, Yorkshire. His father was William Inge, Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, and his mother Susanna Churton, daughter of Edward Churton, Archdeacon of Cleveland. Inge was educated at Eton College, where he was a King’s Scholar and won the Newcastle Scholarship in 1879, and at King’s College, Cambridge, where he won a number of prizes, as well as taking firsts in both parts of the Classical Tripos.

He is a man very much in tune with how I think on animal welfare. And the quote which is a modified version of what he said and which I’ve used is brilliant. He did not believe in democracy nor welfare benefits which he said penalised the competent and encouraged the feckless.

If animals had a religion, humans would be the DEVIL!!!

Chimpanzee gestures can be understood by fellow primates such as humans