People have kept pets to fulfill practical duties. Dogs guard homes. Cats catch rats. Modern people like keep pets as company. Some people even treat their pets like their family members. Nowadays, people raise all kinds of pets: cats, dogs and rabbits are most common. Fish, birds and turtles are somewhat less common. Keeping rodents like guinea pigs as pets is somewhat of a fad and keeping miniaturized pigs, musk pigs and snakes have become more and more common. There are also colorful frogs, fuzzy spiders, crystal clear jellies and chameleons are the newcomers to pet shops. .
However, how much do you know about the original living environments and habitual behaviors of these animals? Will they ever get used to being reared by humans? Before they become your life companions, you have to do your research and homework to decide whether you can love your pet for a lifetime and take care of them both physically and mentally.
It is always easier to love than to get along
Every year after the winter and summer vacations, the number of stray animals will climb to the climax. Children |
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are easily attracted by lovely small animals, and they tend to buy one during vacations because they have more free time. However, keeping a pet will soon become troublesome and boring once the school starts, so their pets will be abandoned.
Keeping a pet can also be just a fad. If you don¡¦t think twice and take your time, space, patience and financial condition into considerations, having pets will always end up being a tragedy. The most recent example is jellyfish whim few years ago. Colorful and crystal clear jellyfishes swimming in a clear, see-through container is just very attracting, leading a trend of keeping jellyfishes. But most jellyfish keepers did not understand the habits of jellyfishes, and they did not do any research beforehand, so the jellyfishes turned out to die very soon.
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Another tragedy is to free the animals. To free the animals not only affects the freed animals but also the environment. Angler, a.k.a. ¡§trash fish¡¨ is the garbage collector in an aquarium. They are freed by human very often. Once they are freed and back to the rivers, they tend to vie with other fishes for the food. If there is no sufficient food in the rivers, they will eat aquatic plants and other fishes or their eggs, causing serious ecological crisis. Some animals do not have livability as strong as anglers do, so it is hard for them to survive once they are freed. For examples, the birds |
which get used to human¡¦s feeding cannot find food by their own.Besides, they don¡¦t know how to avoid attacks from enemies. Therefore, once they are freed, they cannot survive in the real world.Also, some wild animals cannot be reared by human. Once they are reared in pens, they will refuse to eat and die.
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A New Family Member
It takes a lot of mental and physical efforts to keep a pet. In addition to food and drink, keepers have to pay attention to their pets¡¦ health, take them to the hospital for inoculation, teach them good habits, and help them to become one of the family member. Furthermore, small animals also have mental problems. They will also suffer from melancholia if treated badly. Keeping a pet is just like raising a child, keepers have a long-term responsibility of taking care of them both physically and mentally.
| In order to protect animals and teach people in Taiwan to respect animals, the government announced Animal Protection Act in November 1998, forcing keepers to offer their pets basic care and protection. So far the protection list includes dogs, cats and vertebrates. Among them, dogs have to be registered, planted chips and injected rabies vaccines. If dogs are lost, transferred, dead or born, keepers must go through relevant procedures. These rules are set to prevent keepers from abusing animals, and to arouse people¡¦s love and responsibility towards animals. |
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As far as ¡§respect for life¡¨ is concerned, you should only rear those animals which can be reared. Before keeping a pet, you should carefully take into consideration your own conditions. If you can offer a pet everything it needs, then you can start to look for one, and take good care of it for the rest of its life.
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