 NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Baying forlornly,
hissing at strangers and increasingly dehydrated and hungry, tens of
thousands of pets have probably been left behind in the devastated city
of New Orleans, animal care agencies say.
Animal rescue workers from across
the United States are combing the city deserted by its citizens when
Hurricane Katrina approached almost two weeks ago. They wade through
thigh-high muck, commandeer abandoned boats and use crowbars to bring
stranded animals to safety
."The cats are terrible. Out of every
10, nine are scratching and biting and hissing," said Jane Garrison
of the Humane Society United States as she cuddled two terrified dogs
in an aluminium dinghy.
Dogs often leaped into their arms, she said.
Dogs also like swimming in filthy water and eating their
own feces. Both dogs and cats evolved in the wild and have complete,
intact sets of survival skills which don’t involve human beings. That
they are able to so completely change their character and behavior is
evidence both of the persistence of evolutionary genetics, and of the
presence of human-controlled genetic manipulation and modification.
The survival instincts are hardwired in cat and dog
brains, the result of millions of years of evolution (dogs are descended
from primitive carnivores known as miacids. Miacids ranged from gopher-sized
to dog-sized animals, and appeared in the Lower Tertiary about fifty
two million years ago).
On the other hand, the cute, docile personalities
we have come to know and love are relatively recent. In the case
of dogs, probably only a few thousand generations. Cats are an
even more recent invention, having become useful only when people started
developing stockpiles of grains, about 10,000 years ago.
We say invention, because dogs and cats are two of the
oldest examples of intelligent human intervention in the process of evolution.
By selective breeding and lifelong exposure to humans, "primitive" peoples
were able to practice genetic modification and create a distinct sub-species
of Canis Lupus (wolf),
modeling its attributes and personality to meet human needs; heightened
senses and watchfulness, an alarming bark, loyalty and protectiveness
to humans, territoriality, etc.
Meanwhile, what to do with the dogs and cats of New
Orleans? Hopefully, concerned do-gooders will rescue some of them, and
try to reunite them with their families. But experts say that once
a domesticated animal goes feral, it can require years of care and therapy
to help them regain their previous lives. In some cases even then
they are never the same.
Combined with the increasingly obvious fact that many
Americans refused to go anywhere without their pets, even at considerable
risk to their own lives, this makes the Dowbrigade hope that new FEMA director R.
David Pauliso is a pet person, because future disaster planning had
better take our four-footed friends into account.
from Reuters
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