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anon6789 @lemmy.world

Owls Aren't Pets

I occasionally come on photos and videos of people with "pet" owls or owl cafes.

Owls are beautiful and soft, but they aren't meant to be around us being cuddled or whatever. What is cuddling to us causes anxiety to them. It isn't owl behavior. They tolerate it sort of if they are imprinted, but it makes them more underdeveloped and under equipped to be themselves than it does to make them good company.

Handling birds of prey, a person will get nipped or cut, but these hands are seriously grabbed up and cut, yet in the video clip they still have the owl restrained and continue "playing" with it.

If this hand is any sign of how happy the owls are here, I feel bad for them. If they don't like their handler touching them, I can only imagine how upset they are being touched by strangers all day.

Dogs, cats, and farm type animals have been domesticated and are used to humans to a decent extent. Most animals though will never be domesticated. They want and need to be free.

32 comments

  • Ugh I hate those owl café videos :( The owls always look miserable, they're solitary nocturnal animals forced to be awake during the day for people to interact with them

    • It's frustrating to me, because though I know it's wrong, I still wish so much that it wasn't. It's easy to picture myself interacting with some of these animals like in a storybook.

      The last few years, I've struggled with my relationship with animals as a whole. I've had terrible luck with pets since I moved (dogs, cats, and fish) to the point where I question if there's some unknown biological hazard where I live. I've basically given up on even having a pet domestic animal and it makes me question a lot of the relationships between humans and animals.

      I've taken more to being a friend to my backyard animals, trying to make my surroundings a better place for them. I leave them to do their own things and stay as an anonymous benefactor to them. The squirrels and jays are my closest to friends. They're smart enough to have learned I'm the one that leaves them treats, but they maintain safe distance and a healthy sense of danger though.

      This month I started working at the wild animal rescue, and it is immediately unmistakable that these animals want nothing to do with us. Even when they aren't very healthy, they do all they can to escape, to keep from being held, to stay hidden, etc.

      We are just not made to be compatible. It is sad to us, but it is for the safety and health of the animals that they can't be our buddies. If we do love them, we need to respect that innate biological boundary. We can admire them, care for them, advocate for them, and darn near anything else, we just can't live together happily.

      • I think animals are similar to humans, in a way that they have a diverse palette of personalities. There are assholes, maybe most are assholes, like humans.

        Occasionally there are encounters that are different and the animal seems to understand and appreciate that you are a good human, a friend.

        I live in the city and one night at 2am, i was at the window and a cat came by and sat at my window. I happened to have cat food at home, gave it some.

        This became a small ritual, for the months to come, it came every night at 2am for a visit and, most importantly, the treats, obviously. I like to think they had a home and i was just a snack-stop during his nightly hunting.

        Your backyard animals reminded me of the little guy, i mean ferocious hunting cat Furioso.

        Doing animal rescue will mostly give you stressed animals, that are in full "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" mode. "You're gonna touch me?" "Take your bloody hands off me"

        Relationships with animals can only happen in other situations, like your safe backyard, where the approach is mutual.

      • Please don't give up on having a pet! My adult child (34) had the most terrible luck with pets, they all died or had to be rehomed. After several years of settling down with their current live -in partner for five years, now, last year a stray kitten in poor condition wandered up to them at work. By the end of that week, that kitten was indoor, being fed, loved and scheduled for the vet. Two vet trips and a round of antibiotics later, that now-adult cat refuses to exit the house, sleeps in their bed with them, and is in the available lap of the moment when humans are available and the cat isn't playing, eating, or window-gazing.

  • While I love animals I know that most aren’t okay with being touched or being close to people. It’s part of loving animals is understanding boundaries and how to have a healthy relationship with them. Most people just aren’t raised to properly respect them since they are so used to having dogs who want to be around their owners a lot.

    I’ve learned a lot of how to properly respect animals with this one family of robins in my mom’s backyard. They always come back each year and lay eggs in the same nest. That nest being right on one of the porch lights. So we keep an eye on them around the time we know they will have babies. Just check once in a while to see if the babies are all there or will be getting ready to take flight for the first time. Want to make sure that if one falls that our dogs don’t get to it. And that we don’t disturb them when they taking care of their young.

    With my cats I always give them a part of the house that it their space. I don’t go there much so they know it’s safe for them to be there when they need a break. I keep my room as a space that they don’t get to visit much. The rest of the house is safe game though for me or them to be in whenever. If I had to say why my cats love me so much it’s because I understand how to give them their space when stressed.

    • It feels like a relatively recent thing that people treat animals like they are independent creatures with agency of their own.

      Also like you mentioned, the animals we are personally familiar with are largely domesticated ones, and we're less and less familiar with animals in their natural states.

      It sounds like you have a great understanding though. My cats definitely had times they wanted to be alone, so it's good you provide that for yours. They're more than capable of finding us again when they feel like having company.

32 comments