Roadkill – dead red squirrel
I am racking my brain now as to why any individual would receive pleasure from killing a helpless creature. Then again, there are those narcissistic, sociopathic and psychopathic types amongst us…but I don’t think that covers all the people who get some sort of dark pleasure from eliminating the life of a smaller creature. Some people seem to aim for small animals that include snakes, turtles, squirrels, raccoons, possums, prairie dogs, and cats in particular, going out of their way to hit them outside of their driving lane’s lines. The part about cats in particular is a whole other topic – the irrational hatred of cats and its relation to the need for dominance and control in most people.
Crushed Box Turtle: Roadkill
If I remember correctly, I think I remember a friend of mine I was driving with once purposely speeding up to hit a squirrel that was trying to cross in the parking lot of our apartment complex…I asked, what are you doing? I received in response a chuckle and something along the lines of …a dismissal and that it wasn’t that big of a deal. What the?! Sick pleasures. Of course it shows that I love animals and why shouldn’t we all? Animals were put here for us, but not just for food, but for us to cohabit-ate with on this earth, not to dominate. I think it shows the how our society is deteriorating in a rapid rate when it comes to empathy, spirituality and love.
An experiment conducted by the University of Clemson on turtles crossing roads found out that indeed, some humans do need to feel “dominate” and crush a helpless defenseless creature in order to feel better about themselves. Nathan Wheeler, a senior at the University of Clemson placed a rubber turtle in a well-traveled road near a campus apartment complex. During the first hour he observed as seven drivers swerved to purposely run over and crush the shell of the turtle.
In another experiment, Mark Rober, an engineer at NASA, placed rubber animals in the roadway to see what happened. He found that about 6% of drivers out of a sample of 1000 cars swerved to run over the rubber animals (not knowing they were rubber of course) – mostly, these were people in trucks, SUVs and larger vehicles. Showing a more empathetic side, another 6% of drivers actually stopped to help the creatures.
The Slow Moving Turtle & Vehicle Danger
There’s a new science of human-animal interactions called anthrozoology based on the premise by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strausse that we can learn a lot about human behavior studying how humans interact with animals. If you’ve ever read about psychopathy, you will remember that these people with this type of personality disorder started their lives torturing, maiming and killing animals – getting a “high” or extreme pleasure from their hurtful acts. This seems to relate perhaps and how our society is becoming more an more narcissistic which fits with the increasing lack of empathy amongst our human population towards animals.
Every day millions of dogs, cats, snakes, squirrels, possums, turtles and you name it, are run over and decimated by drivers. In another study that took place in Canada, fake rubber animals in the form of a non-poisonous snake, and a turtle were placed in the middle of the road to see what happened. The researchers observed three types of behavior from the drivers-those who: a) ignored the animal b) swerved to hit the animal and c) pulled over to the side of the road to help the animal. The results showed a normal distribution Bell Curve with most people (94%) ignoring the animals and a smaller amount (3%) displaying extreme kindness in pulling over to help the animals while on the other end there were those who deliberately tried to kill the animals (3%).
Turtle Crossing Road Kill experiment
What is also interesting in another study is that only 2% of women went out of their way to run over the animals in contrast to 7% of men. It seems men are more apt to lack empathy for animals (which might translate on over to humans). The intentionally running over of snakes might best be explained by the extreme fear some people feel towards these creatures; however, the turtle crushing cannot be explained so easily (neither is appropriate of course) and points again to a sadistic desire to control or hurt others.
Read more at
http://www.businessinsider.com/six-percent-of-people-run-over-animals-2012-7
Renaissance Soul Reflections 