Say what? She lies via omission to the parents, forcing them to make an uninformed choice.
Instead of letting a rabbit loose in the wild, they might have sought another home for it, because they didn't want it to die. Your sister's lies mislead them into thinking they can safely return the rabbit.
They're food. Rabbits. People eat them.
It's not better for the rabbit to be turned loose to be mauled to death by a housecat or eaten by a coyote. A shelter is going to euthanize, wasting good meat.
This is squeamishness masquerading as morality.
I do hover, object to lying. Like OP said - they(everyone in fact) have the right to make an informed choice. By omitting this information, people who are returning a rabbit aren't making an informed choice. It's a trick, a ruse, if money was involved I'd call it a fraud.
Nothing to do with squeamishness.
There's a difference between being technically correct, and being moral. While the language used is technically correct for the situation, omitting the information about where the rabbits end up is immoral.
Clearly OP understands that if the whole truth was told, they wouldn't be getting a free source of rabbit meat...
No of course not, it's none of the seller's business. If they say "hey we're vegan please don't eat our rabbits" that's a different matter, it would be at the very least polite to respect those wishes.
Why on Earth would returning a rabbit to a farm where they eat them be any different? In this case the possibility is perfectly clear.
If the person returning it knows that, then sure. The OP implied pretty heavily that they don't know the ultimate fate of the rabbits.
As far as these people know its "A farm where they sell breed and sell rabbits as pets", not a farm that raises them for meat.
In this case, the parties are close relatives, so I would argue that their threshold of duty to disclose such facts is somewhat higher than in case of complete strangers.
So there is no legal duty or obligation, but morally, the expectation on both parties are definitely not the same. Otherwise they would tell them that they would cook them when they return them. The fact they are hiding this information shows that expectations are not aligned.
That's an outright lie, since they aren't letting the rabbit loose to live on the farm -- they're eating it.
I ride right past a dog on a rotisserie.
I stopped to talk to the guy and he showed me his sign that said Dog Meat. After learning the words for dog meat in Vietnamese, I saw the signs everywhere.
Is there a culture where eating rabbit is taboo?
> They're food. Rabbits. People eat them.
Well people eat dogs and pigs so then by the same logic they are food.
Most people think rabbits are “natural” when they may actually be invasive. So they let them go. Finding a new home is the last thing on every one of these owners mind.
On the other hand, there is very real urban legend of a salt water crocodile that was captured in early 2000s in the Hongkong wild. It was hunted for months. Authorities have no idea if was a release, or travelled from nearby (more tropical) region. Read more about Pui Pui on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pui_Pui_(crocodile) She is even on show at the Hongkong Wetland Park. But if you want to see salties in the wild without too much effort or stress, you can do that in Singapore at a wetland reserve near Kranji.
The odds that it manages a litter first are higher, especially if it escapes pregnant, which rabbits generally are if they're able to be. Those pups are feral, not domestic, and have moderately better odds. Given enough generations, the domesticated neoteny is selected out by predation and now you have an invasive population of feral rabbits which can survive in the wild.
Rabbits are good as prey, great as pests, bad as pets.
You cannot release them into the wild, just like you can’t release penguins from the zoo into the wild. We spend most of our adult life teaching our children how to survive. Most people don’t teach their pets how to survive.
No offense, but your question makes no sense in the scope we are dealing with. But fwiw, most people released from prison don’t do so well with reintegration. Some don’t survive, some end up going back, and very few thrive.
Have you seen how much litter people throw on the ground? I think you might be giving the average person too much credit.
Unless you're talking about litter as in garbage.
But if you think dumping helpless animals under your care to fend for themselves is morally equivalent to littering, I'm not even sure what to say to that. It's not even in the same ballpark.
Without commenting on the amount of badness, the point is that they're both bad things that people nonetheless manage to regularly do.
I'm really not sure what is so objectionable about asserting that animal abuse is not the same thing as littering.
It’s the first part in the HN guidelines for comments:
“Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.”
I own a Norwegian forest cat he was a stray and then found and neutered as an adult. I pretty much know that he could survive just fine on his own by hunting rodents, which he sometimes does anyway. But I still wouldn't leave him to fend for himself because I know he's much happier as a pet and I also just don't want him to leave. That's the part I don't really get. And I'm not some bleeding heart animals should have human rights type person either. Even though squirrels are cute, I'm not shedding tears while cleaning one up that the cat brought in. It's a wild animal that got killed by a predator. That's just nature.
I don't understand the emotional calculus of doing thing to an animal you've lived with and taken care of for months. And I really don't think that is normal at all.
Be less concerned with your internet points.
Good point, I've been mildly about about that me too in some cases (I'm sbd else)
I have a friend who just acquired a ball python because the frat house behind her left the snake tank, with the snake inside it, out with the trash can. Many people have no regard for animals and even less regard for their impact on the world around them.
where i live there are wild rabbits and in previous years the population has literally exploded.
The Rabbits are smart, they build a den under my deck knowing the dog cant reach them and the dog keeps other predators away.
Then a red tailed fox moved into the area... and now instead of finding whole rabbits roaming the neighbourhood, you find the odd rabbit component. Maybe a rear quarter here, or a front limb there.
What she does not tell is that our brother-in-law is a chef and happily makes rabbit stew of the returned rabbits. If there was ever a win-win situation, this is it.