Two Types of Animal Abuse

Animal abuse falls into two broad categories.

Active abuse involves direct cruelty to animals. It is when someone purposely tries to cause harm to an animal, like torturing or beating it.

Passive abuse is neglect, a lack of care towards pets. This happens through inaction. It usually arises when a pet owner is unaware of, or simply does not bother with, the animal's basic needs: food, shelter, medical attention, and so on.

Reasons for Animal Abuse

Studies on the reasons behind animal cruelty have uncovered a range of motives. These include causing pain and suffering for some personal benefit, hurting animals for pleasure, and plain apathy towards animal suffering.

1. Meat and Food Trading

Most people think of animals as a source of food. While eating meat cannot exactly be classified as animal abuse, people involved in trading animals for human consumption often treat animals very cruelly. Animals on rearing farms live in very poor conditions. They are not fed properly, kept in unhygienic surroundings, or given medical care, no vaccinations, no treatment for diseases or injuries. Traders care little about this, as they are more focused on their profits.

Overcrowded battery cages in a factory farm, illustrating poor conditions for farmed animals.
Factory farms keep animals in cramped, unhygienic conditions, one of the most widespread forms of passive animal abuse.

2. Entertainment

Animal abuse during the making of films is common all over the world, including some big-budget Hollywood movies. Many times it has been alleged that the treatment given to animals during film-making is objectionable. Serious harm (including death) has been caused to animals on set.

Animals are also badly exploited in circuses. The working and living conditions in circuses are not suitable for the health and survival of animals. Yet there are no laws to ban the use of animals in circuses.

Events like rodeo, bull-fighting, and cock-fighting are all inhumane activities encouraged by humans for entertainment, without a thought for the animals and their suffering.

3. Testing in Animal Labs

Animals are tested in labs to find cures for human diseases. These animals are infected on purpose to see if new treatments work. They have their bones broken (just like a human might suffer in an accident) to test new and improved medications. These poor creatures are often not even sedated. Nothing justifies this kind of animal testing. Some of the stories about animal abuse in testing labs are spine-chilling.

A white laboratory mouse in a small cage inside a research facility.
Animals in research labs are sometimes infected with diseases or subjected to painful experiments, often without pain relief.

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4. Psychological Reasons

Intentional abuse has deep links to serious psychological problems. Surveys of psychiatric patients show that people with psychopathic personality disorders have a tendency to torture pets and other small animals. This type of behavior is called zoosadism. It is also often found that children and adolescents who show cruelty towards their pet dogs and cats have themselves undergone abuse, or have witnessed abuse at home.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the two categories of animal abuse?

Active abuse (directly harming an animal on purpose) and passive abuse (neglect, failing to provide food, shelter, or medical care).

What is zoosadism?

Zoosadism is the term for deriving pleasure from torturing animals. It is linked to psychopathic personality disorders.

Why do people poach animals?

Poachers kill animals like elephants for ivory, leopards and crocodiles for their skin, and minks or foxes for fur, all sold for jewelry, decorative items, or other products.

Are animals tested in labs?

Yes. Animals are infected with diseases and have their bones broken to test new medicines and treatments. Many are not sedated during these experiments.

How can animal abuse be reduced?

Strict laws, proper punishment for abusers, and a shift in attitude (treating animals as living beings with rights, not personal property) are all needed to reduce animal abuse.

5. Poaching and Hunting

Although hunting animals is illegal in many places, poachers know how to get around the law. Leopards, cheetahs, crocodiles, snakes, cattle, and alligators are killed for their skin. Minks, foxes, beavers, jackals, rabbits, skunks, and possums are killed for fur. Elephants are slaughtered for ivory. Tiger nails, feathers, horns, and animal bones are used for jewelry, making various instruments and decorative pieces, and bone fertilisers.

A wildlife ranger displays confiscated ivory and leopard skins seized from poachers.
Every year, rangers seize tonnes of illegally poached wildlife products, but the trade continues to threaten many species.

Animals are skinned alive for their fur and skin, and many times bashed to death. What does this say about humans? And where is the conscience of the people who start these acts of violence against animals?

What Can Be Done?

Animal abuse can be reduced greatly if people stop treating animals as personal property. People abuse animals more when they see them only as food, companions, or entertainment, not as living beings with their own needs and feelings. Animal rights are as important as human rights. Abusers should face the same kind of punishment as people who harm other humans or children. Only then is there real hope of reducing (and eventually stopping) animal abuse.

As long as abusers are allowed to go free without being made to account for their acts of violence or neglect towards these innocent creatures, there is no way to stop it.

Strict laws need to be put in place to protect these animals who are at our mercy. The way we treat creatures who depend on us reveals our true character. As Milan Kundera writes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

"Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
, Mark Twain

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