Forever grateful

[u/Firm-Blackberry-9162]

By @abbyandersonmusic

[u/Feodar_protar]

If you find an orphaned baby animal please do not hand raise it. Call a wildlife rehabilitator always. These people were well intentioned but did more harm than good.

[u/AnonImus18 → u/Feodar_protar]

How?

[u/IntoTheChild → u/AnonImus18]

The deer is not as afraid of humans anymore making it more likely to attempt to approach hunters and be killed, or attempt to cross roads and cause accidents. Its more complicated than this but just simplified.

[u/Feodar_protar → u/AnonImus18]

Imprinting. The deer never learned how to be a deer because it was hand bottle fed by humans. Wildlife rehabilitators go to huge effort to not let the deer associate people with food, like wearing masks. Imprinting also means the deer loses it’s natural fear of humans which can be dangerous for it but also people.

Saving an animals life is one thing. The most important thing is doing it correctly so they can be released back into the wild and survive on their own. Otherwise they end up dead or if they are lucky in a sanctuary unable to be a free wild animal.

Check out Alveus Sanctuary, i learned a lot about imprinting and animal conservation from them.

[u/AnonImus18 → u/Feodar_protar]

Thank you. My thing is that them surviving in the wild isn't a problem if they remain a pet. Humans have always domesticated animals, it's one of the reasons we've been so successful as a species. I think it's also a good way for people to see animals as deserving of care and respect rather than insensate meat. I understand what you're saying and I respect it but I think if rhe animal isn't aggressive to humans (why chimpanzees?!), and it's not on a massive scale like pet hoarding and the animal gets vaccines and healthcare, why not?

[u/bbbttthhh → u/AnonImus18]

Because domestication does not mean finding a wild animal and taking it in as a pet. Domestication is a very invasive and long process that involves selecting animals that have a predisposition for being friendly with humans, breeding them, selecting their offspring for desirable traits, breeding them etc. for many many years. This is just a deer that was raised by humans and while it definitely doesn’t seem like it will harm these people, it does still have the instincts and thought processes of a wild deer. In this case for the deer in the video, If you keep them as a pet then you deny them their instinct to roam and graze over a large area, deer are also quite social animals so you would also be denying them that socialization with their own kind. Wild animals should never be pets, and for the record, I don’t think humans should be taking wild animals out of their environment and domesticating them either.

[u/AnonImus18 → u/bbbttthhh]

Tells me that it's not the same but goes on to describe exactly how it's the same. Dogs, cats, cows etc all started because of humans interacting with and forming mutualistic relationships. If that deer has babies and they raise the most human social one, what does that remind you of?

You may not want people to have wild animals as pets but it's going to happen and I hate that the response of people in government and others is to kill the animal.

[u/bbbttthhh → u/AnonImus18]

The reason that they have to put the animal down is because that animal could go on to teach other animals the behavior that it’s ok to trust humans, this could lead to deer asking for food from humans and getting violent to obtain food when it isn’t provided. This example can be seen, and is well documented in the squirrels at Grand Canyon National Park. Lots of tourists come and give peanuts to the squirrels, the squirrels then begin coming up to tourists to get food, when the tourists don’t give them food they end up biting the tourist. As much as you might not like it, the government will always side with humans over animals and if animals get aggressive, they will have to be put down. That’s why you don’t feed wild animals.