An ailing alligator was seized from an upstate New York home where it was being kept illegally, state officials said.
Environmental conservation police officers seized the 750-pound (340-kilogram), 11-foot-long (3.4-meter-long) alligator on Wednesday from a home in Hamburg, south of Buffalo.
The home’s owner built an addition and installed an in-ground swimming pool for the 30-year-old alligator and allowed people, including children, to get into the water with the reptile, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The alligator has “blindness in both eyes” and spinal complications, among other health issues. The reptile was sent to a licensed caretaker until a place is found where it can receive permanent care, according to a release from the agency.
I love how we’ll treat this gator with respect but cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish – all can get fucked.
All sentient life deserves a chance. Go vegan!
This specific alligator, sure. There are quite a few gator farms in the south that farm them for their tails.
What’s the use of alligator tails?
You can cut em off and they’ll regrow em. In fact if you don’t cook it soon enough it starts to regrow the alligator.
Infinite alligator cheatcode!
It is meaty and tastes like chicken.
Um. So are chicken. And they’re less of a hassle.
At least that’s how it seems from my not alligator tail farming point of view.
Less of a hassle in most parts of the world, sure. But if you live near a swamp/bayou it’s not much of a hassle. It might actually be less since chickens have a habit of being eaten by alligators. Not a chicken but when I was a wee lad living on the bayou, a gator somehow got our gate open and went to town on a duck that landed in our yard. That was a bloody, feathery mess.
I suppose that makes sense.
Food.
That doesn’t negate my point in the slightest. Why do we care about this one animal while doing fuckall about the billions of others we kill every single day?
We tend to care more about pets than we do farmed animals. I do think the distinction is a little silly overall but that is currently the way it is.
Probably the same reason you buy gifts for your friends but not for strangers: emotional bonds are not universal.
