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Anonymous
OP here.
My main point was that people obviously have a problem with seeing mousy suffer to death on that type of trap, and the solution of simply putting a roof over the action is very ironic and sad.
Here are some points I'd like to make:
We have a right to defend our property, even from animals that are guilty of no conscious crime against us. However, because we have the ability to reason and because we recognize the animals ability to suffer, we are obligated to take the animals welfare into at least minimal consideration. Since we have a huge variety of ways to control rodents, the use of torturesome devices is not justifiable.
Advocating the use of different mouse traps is by no stretch of the imagination equating animals to humans.
Despite their popular image, rats and mice are not major sources of disease in the developed world. Avoiding disease is as simple as avoiding consuming (either directly or indirectly) their urine or feces. If you go to CDC.gov and add up all deaths from the most common and deadly rodent diseases in the U.S. (leptospirosis, hantavirus, rat-bite fever, murine typhys, etc.) you'll find that they kill about as many people per year as lightning (10-20). For comparison, hunting accidents kill 177 people and the flu claims 33,000 lives annually.
The rat and mouse are considered model organisms by scientists because their biology and psychology is shockingly similar to our own. They are commonly used to test pain medication and the effects of psychoactive drugs like morphine. They experience pain and pleasure in likely an identical manner to humans and other mammals, as well as basic emotions like depression, joy, and curiosity.
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