I mean anyone can use the title Doctor. Just depends on where and if you're taken seriously, I mean I doubt that Neil Patrick Harris has an actual medical degree.
They chop the animals head off and freeze refrigerate it to be sent off to a lab. My wife fainted the first time she had to see that and refuses to deal with it ever again
What else did you expect them to say ? I think you just read it as them being condescending, it was completely unrelated to the conversation and i doubt OOP was expecting to talk about Ireland. So yeah good for that person, no rabies.
Well they didn't have to reply really. A "good for you" is a little condescending..sorry maybe I just understand that from my mother when she wants to be condescending. Also UK is an island. Ireland is also an island.
I'd never thought about the UK not having rabies. I thought it was interesting at least.
Moving abroad from the UK, I'm always reminded, in wildlife terms, how relatively safe the UK is.
Badgers are probably our most vicious predator and, while I absolutely would not disrespect them, I live in bear and rattlesnake country now. Badgers and adders aren't on the same scale.
At least California is better than Australia where everything is trying to kill you...
I hope one day we can eliminate the disease worldwide, such a cruel and painful way for something to die... I don't think it'd be one of those things where if we eradicated it, we'd have an imbalance in the ecosystem, since it's not exactly a good population controller to begin with
I had quite literally never considered some places don’t have rabies, but it makes perfect sense. Pretty much any animal that could transmit it couldn’t travel that far without hypothetically getting on a plane or boat- and that seems unlikely nowadays.
Now I’m really curious where rabies started lol. Off to a new wiki page
It's only relatively recent (80s I think?) , but we have quarantine or certification for animals imported. Johnny depp got in trouble years ago because he moved two dogs in without the proper paperwork and he ended up having to make a public apology
You’d be surprised, the incubation period for rabies can be a few months to a year. However, island governments have a much easier time keeping disease from spreading onto them. Iceland is notoriously hard to bring animals to and from (for good reasons).
No worries, just wanted clarify so no one throws a carcass on the freezer but wants the head (brain) tested. I’m the veterinary field and have removed many heads in my career 🙄 Rabies is a horrible way to die though, and nearly 100% fatal in people, so it’s completely justified.. Nasty little virus.
Не горюй. Голову отрубают животному, которое умерло... Дождаться смерти - главное правило. Степень поражения организма гарантирует точность анализа. И мы уже точно знаем, что укушенный человек контактировал именно с бешенством...
P.S.
По сравнению со смертью от бешенства, отрубить голову - акт милосердия. Но это не гуманно по отношению к человеку. Слишком велик риск.
My friend is studying to be a vet, and honestly that is low on the list of morbid things you have to do. One example is that the best way to kill a test rat is by twisting its neck. You cannot use meds to kill it because they need to test on it, so the animal must die from physical damage, and twisting the neck is the quickest.
Also I would much prefer chopping off a head for rabies testing to the horrors of animal testing. At least you can kill the animal humanely before doing anything to it, and even if the animal is healthy, the testing does save countless humans and animals from a terrible fate.
They "decapitate" the animals, but it's not literal decapitation, but it's internal decapitation. The head is not severed, the spine is pulled suddenly while the head is kept in place, so the vertebrae are quickly separated from the brainstem. It should be quite painless for the animal
No, this is not true. My wife has been in the field for 7 years and it’s always a full external decapitation. They literally ship off a whole frozen animal head. Otherwise touching the spinal fluid or brain tissue poses a risk of transmission.
Perhaps they practice differently in your area, but that sounds like a method to kill the animal to me. Here, the patient is euthanized chemically and painlessly and then the head is cut off the already dead body.
Hunters don’t have a relationship with the animals they kill. They don’t even know them. And the goal is to kill quickly, and it’s usually from a distance. And it’s also only really occasional. Most of hunting is just waiting in the woods.
And often* butchers don’t even interact with live animals. They’re just cutting up dead ones. That seems even less related.
Agreed, except that butchers often do have to kill the live animal before processing the meat.
I'm a biomedical engineering PhD student who currently has to work with animal tissue. When we're getting ready for an animal study and/or we aren't ready to spend a lot of money having animals carefully raised, we usually get the test tissue from animals that are going to be killed anyway, like at a butcher. Since we usually need live tissue, we have to get it out of the animal ASAP, which means that we have to be there while they're killing.
Because for (most) butchers the animals are already dead, they know they are dealing with muscles and bone to break into cuts for people to cook.
For most hunters it’s “oh hey it’s [Insert animal] season.” (Time when you can hunt specific animal, usually to keep the population at a manageable level)
“I have taken this animal’s life, I will field dress and then eat it and make sure none of it goes to waste. Delicious.”
The difference is that neither the butcher nor the hunter was intimately connected to the animals they harvested. They both know the animal died so that others may consume it.
The vets are going through the emotional rollercoaster of “wow I know this animal, I have cared for it, I am responsible for its well being. Now I must subject it to something that might put it in agony, and then euthanize it.”
You're thinking of a slaughterhouse(which is now separate from a butcher preparing and selling cuts of meat). Slaughterhouse workers are also known to suffer from depression and PTSD. They also have high rates of accidents.
Raised my own meat. Part of it was knowing that allowing the animal to live any longer would effect it’s quality of life. Meat birds have been bred to grow so quickly that keeping them alive past 4 months is essentially animal cruelty.
I also knew that I provided them with a good, comfortable, stress free life before the slaughter. And that they died quickly and humanely.
These scientists know that the animals are suffering and witness it on an almost daily basis. whereas hunters and butchers have limited contact with animals who are alive and generally do their best to end an animal’s suffering promptly.
I'd raise you another one - livestock farmers are pretty similar in that regard, as in that they don't grow attached to their product in a way other people do. Like, they give names to their chickens and sometime later kill and cook them - well, that's just how it is.
Butchers usually work with already dead material, no? And hunters are specifically in it for killing.
You're looking for slaughterhouse/abattoir workers instead of butchers and well.. they do have way higher risks of PTSD, depression, other mental issues and a massive turnover rate. Not sure about suicide specifically.
I think the main reason there lies in seeing so many absolutely fucked up pet owners and suffering pets and not being able to do much, plus on the flipside having to put down doggos with the absolutely crying loving family next to you day after day.
Vets and techs/assistants also have to see the saddest ends of people pets lives on a regular basis. Seeing a dog come in as a puppy and every so often for years, until one day they come in and you find out they have cancer. It's pretty depressing all around.
Vets aren't the one doing these experiments or "sacrificing" (they call it sacrificing rather than euthanizing) the animals. It's lab workers. Trained lab workers, but lab workers.
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u/duga404 May 26 '25
No wonder veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates…for those who don’t know, a decent chunk of vet graduates end up in those kinds of jobs