Abusing animals as a child to learn morality - normal?

[VeronicaChaos]

OK, so I was watching this amazing horror claymation animator that I'm now obsessed with, and this is one of the films, and it really effected me and made me think. Here's the video:



My story: This made me bawl, because when I was a little girl I was made a "circus" for my hamster just like the boy in the video, and ended up tossing my hamster around because my sister said that they were like cats and always landed on their feet. Whiskers started dragging her legs, and died the next day. Accidentally killing that hamster was the single most traumatic moment of my entire life, and probably the reason I was a vegan and vegetarian for over 10 years. I still haven't been able to forgive myself, and I probably never will.

One of the signs of a serial killer/sociopath is harming animals, and NOT feeling that remorse. Doing it for fun. I think that even though what happened to Whiskers is really sad, it taught me a valuable lesson about morality, life and death, and responsibility. I'm wondering if it's a normal lesson that children learn when they are too young to know better and how to take care of animals.

Have any of you learned this lesson the hard way? Or have any thoughts on it? I know it's a really morbid topic, and I'm pretty much in tears while typing this, but I'd really like to hear your guys' thoughts on the matter.

 

[Jupiter551]

I haven't had this experience, but there's a world of difference between a child accidentally harming an animal because they don't really understand, and one who deliberately does it to cause pain etc.

It's sad that your hamster died, but it was an accident.

Edit: and yes, it's normal, luckily none of my pets were hurt but I do remember we were unintentionally rough with our cats sometimes when we were children and parents had to tell us to be more gentle etc. Also my brother and I used to race our cats by dropping them in the pool and seeing which one made it to the edge first heh. I think that counts as mental abuse for a cat.

When my niece and nephew play with my kitten they sometimes need a reminder to be gentle - it's completely normal.

 

[IsabellaSnow]

Oh wow.

Poor hamsters

Sometimes children do accidentally kill animals at young ages, it's really why as a young child we shouldn't really be allowed to have animals too small without supervision. All kinds of things can happen, like playing with them on the stairs, dropping them, squashing them.
Animals are a good way for children to learn to take care of another creature and when they die they can learn to understand death.

One of my friends ex boyfriends used to buy hamsters/fish and do cruel things to them. Not like torturing them as in cutting them open, I can't remember actually what he used to do, things like put it on the roof etc, but he used to find it funny. It was disgusting. The pet shops stopped letting him buy them because he was reported to them, I think by my friend.
Not showing remorse, and even showing enjoyment when you kill a creature doesn't mean you're going to turn into a serial killer, but it does mean you have some serious issues!

How old were you when this happened with the hamster? From the sounds of it you were possibly too young to have a hamster, but then it's difficult when an older sibling tells you something. When you're young you do tend to believe what someone older tells you. Try not to feel too bad about it. It's horrible, but it wasn't your fault.

 

[EdgarAllenWhoa]

Well V. sometimes things like this happen to children.
When your young and something as traumatic as this happens it leaves a big trail in a it's wake.

When I was young I once shot a chickadee out of a tree with my pellet gun.
After standing in front of the poor thing for a few minutes the impact of what I had done sat with me.
To be honest, I still remember that moment looking down at what I had done...it stays with me after all these years
When we are young and memory engrams are still forming these major events tend to stay with us.
The ability to discern the right and the wrong of situation, empathy and remorse for an action taken shows that a person does not have the tendencies towards sociopath or a psychopathic illness. At least that's what I remember from my psych courses.
"There are two types of people in the world. Those who think they are normal, and the rest of us who know there is no such as normal".
Simplified yes, and maybe just words...but good words.
In the end, you were a child, you had no experience and this thing happened to you. Obviously, it had a huge impact on you and has carried on into your adult years.
In some ways maybe if you can think of it another light? This single horrifying incident that happened to you when you were so young helped you become the person who cares for animals and who would protect them later on life? I don't know, I am just tossing spit balls here.
Sometimes the best thing to do is let it wash over you...literally cry it out. Take away the good learned from a traumatic event and leave the bad behind in the rear view mirror.
Some where along the line people learned that crying is a weakness it's not. It's a natural emotion for any beings. It's an emotion that helps purge a lot of baggage. Sometimes you see people crying and they don't even know why, it's because of scenarios like this. They might not even remember but somewhere deep inside something was triggered and it needed a release.
I think the most important thing is that you don't let run/ruin your life. Acceptance is a state that must be met, it's part of you now, it's made it's way into you and it's there. I can't tell if you watching those videos is going to help...maybe it will...maybe it won't. Just don't let it take you over and damage other parts of your life that you need/want to be a part of. Don't let it take away other things that should be experienced.

Sorry if that got a bit heavy and maybe off target a bit but MEHH just thought I would throw in.

 

[southsamurai]

well by the time i had pets enough to be partly responsible for their care i was old enough and caring enough to do my very best to make sure they were properly kept. from the hamsters and rats to the cats and later on dogs, im rather obsessive about giving proper care. i don't always succeed at being the best by my own standards, but i try hard.

there is some old 8 mm film of me as a kid of about 2 or 3 that haunts me. i was too young to even remember the event itself, but i've seen the movie so many times its become a memory of its own. its just a chilly day, me and my father in the yard of the home we lived in at the time. he's in his flannel and jeans, me in my little green parka and corduroys. you can just barely see this little green thing as my father passes a frog to me. it can't be more than half an inch long or so. i guess i didn't like the cold or the wet of it, i don't know for sure, but i threw the frog down. then my little 2 or 3 year old self stomps it several times. just a kid too young to know what he was doing, to comprehend that he was snuffing out a life for no reason at all.

do i blame the little me for it? no, of course not. at that age it was a sensory experience and a reaction to it. but every time i saw it over the years it sank in deeper and deeper that it was just a frog. doing its own frog thing when two giant monsters come along and kill it.

sometimes when i tell the story to people they're like " so what? it was just a frog." and most people chuckle at the ignorance of childhood that we call innocence. heck, i can even see the cute factor in it occasionally if i divorce myself from the knowledge that i did it blindly. you see, its not that i have a problem with taking life. i eat meat, and have no problem with killing an animal to get it if need be. such is the cycle of nature, i am no better than a wolf chasing caribou, or a frog snatchiing flies from the air. something must die so that something else may live ( even if what is dying is a plant). i have come close to killing other human beings while defending myself from them, and would feel no guilt if i had been required to.

but that frog? i feel deep shame at that because there was no purpose. there was only the animal and unthinking response to an icky feeling. that response was to destroy. it is an action i have not repeated ever, on any scale because of the feeling. if i have to kill an insect in my home, or on my body, i do so, but always with the intent, the knowledge that i am going to kill it. that i am going to end life for whatever reason. i always feel a wash of shame that i choose my own need over that of the creature, no matter how disgusting or useless. when i have hit animals with my car over the years i am usually reduced to tears for a time because of the pointlessness of it.

that basic feeling of shame at destruction. the desire to not be that sort of person led me to many actions and decisions over my life. it played a part in my choice of going into health care. it turned me into the kind of person who would slide into a ditch at 50 miles an hour rather than hit a rabbit or squirrel. and when i have hit an animal i must turn back and at least witness what i have done. on occasion i have had to grant final mercy to some creatures that were injured beyond the ability to recover. heck, sometime when i haven't gone on so long already ask me about my neighbor's dog.

in any case, would i have been a person who cares about the taking of a life without that little flash of movie to guide me? i don't know. i hope so. i wish i had had the chance to find out

 

[Miss_Lollipop]

My ex husband abused animals. He set a cat wearing a sweater on fire and watched it burn as a child. He also abused dogs sexually in his teens. He blew up a frog one time.

And, he struggles with many personality disorders, anger and violence. He is not a healthy human. He says he feels guilt at the painful things he did, but I don't think he really does.


SO i don't know if its a 'normal' way to learn morality. Maybe if you automatically feel guilt afterwards (like you did with your hamster)

I can remember pulling my cat's whiskers out as a young child. The cat hated me after that and I wanted him to cuddle me, so I learned not to do that anymore.

 

[LilyEvans]

I don't think it is so much a way to "learn" morality as to really grasp the morality you already have for the first time.

When I was young my cousins and I were running barefoot around my uncle's ranch. I accidentally stepped on a tiny toad, squashing it to death. While my cousins all thought it was gross and funny, I was inconsolable-- I hadn't meant to kill it, and I had never killed anything before anyway. It was really traumatizing to me and I didn't even do it on purpose. One of my cousins, on the other hand, was always tackling his dogs, cutting whiskers off cats, etc. Is he a sociopath? No. Does he have behavioral issues? Absolutely. He and I have very different views on what is "ok" and what is not, which brings me back to my point that an experience like yours really only serves to put a child in touch with their existing morals, instead of instilling that morality in them.

 

[dustinxxxizzle]

I was peer pressured into tossing a frog up into the air when I was younger. My friends were doing it-- you know the lame excuse. We were walking in the grass next to the road and the frogs my friends tossed into the air landed in the grass, so in my childhood mind I figured they were okay. I tossed the toad I had picked up and it veered to the side, coming down hard on the road. My friends laughed and I was traumatized.

That and a trip to the country fair when I was a teenager is what caused my decision to go vegetarian. They had a really small goat fenced in and you could buy some food for him for a quarter and feed him. Even though you weren't supposed to, I carefully pet him and could feel pure loving emotion coming from him. As soon as he finished eating the food, I felt pure panic and distrust radiating from him. I sobbed the whole way to my family's car and even though it didn't fully click for me until years later that the handlers were probably starving him until the day of the fair and abusing him, it has stuck with me all of this time.

So, yes. I think as children, or really at any age, you can learn and develop a lot of who you are through interaction with animals.

 

[FrenchKitty]

OK, so I was watching this amazing horror claymation animator that I'm now obsessed with, and this is one of the films, and it really effected me and made me think. Here's the video:



My story: This made me bawl, because when I was a little girl I was made a "circus" for my hamster just like the boy in the video, and ended up tossing my hamster around because my sister said that they were like cats and always landed on their feet. Whiskers started dragging her legs, and died the next day. Accidentally killing that hamster was the single most traumatic moment of my entire life, and probably the reason I was a vegan and vegetarian for over 10 years. I still haven't been able to forgive myself, and I probably never will.

One of the signs of a serial killer/sociopath is harming animals, and NOT feeling that remorse. Doing it for fun. I think that even though what happened to Whiskers is really sad, it taught me a valuable lesson about morality, life and death, and responsibility. I'm wondering if it's a normal lesson that children learn when they are too young to know better and how to take care of animals.

Have any of you learned this lesson the hard way? Or have any thoughts on it? I know it's a really morbid topic, and I'm pretty much in tears while typing this, but I'd really like to hear your guys' thoughts on the matter.

You mentionned sociopaths not feeling the remorse you felt, but it's not what your lesson was about. You had empathy from the start, you just had no idea what could kill a hamster and what was safe for it, so what you learnt wasn't empathy, you learnt..... gravity , the fragility of a hamster's bones,and that hamsters don't land on their feet like cats lol.
If someone had told you "hey,let's murder that hamster with a knife" you probably would have run to an adult for help , and probably screaming really loud, too.
You certainly knew the value of life before this happened, it's instinctive in people with empathy. You learnt how fragile it can be though

 

[Rose]

There's definitely a difference between accidentally killing your hamster because you didn't know better and/or there wasn't an adult present and killing it just to watch it die.

As the oldest of three siblings, it was ingrained in my head that 'all little things' need protecting. Luckily I skipped out on lessons about morality/death because I was always in mommy mode and wanted to make sure my 'babies' were ok (my mom never left me unattended with my siblings, but she let me think I was helping.) That just seemed to naturally translate to protecting animals and small creatures too so that when my siblings got out of toddler stage, I was able to help pass that on to them. We always had pets and watched our mother feed the local birds and make bird houses so it just came natural for us to want to take care of animals.

I think children who aren't raised around animals or children who aren't encouraged to foster that nurturing instinct may have more trouble with this. When it's drilled into your head that you need to protect life around you, (unless you're seriously unhinged, in which case you probably need some sort of professional help) it's hard to go against that nature and hurt something. When you're given some sort of responsibility to help care for an animal (under adult supervision) then it's easier to understand the importance of that responsibility.

Nurturing some feelings of remorse and guilt are good and help us figure out what's right versus what's wrong.
Taking care of things=good.
Feeling some remorse if you hurt something and trying to atone for that=good.
Killing and feeling no remorse=bad.


Er...Hope this post makes sense. I re-read it a few times and feel like it sounds silly. :?

 

[Jupiter551]

My ex husband abused animals. He set a cat wearing a sweater on fire and watched it burn as a child. He also abused dogs sexually in his teens. He blew up a frog one time.

Holy shit...no offence and stuff but the thought of someone who could do that walking around in society is scary as fuck.

 

[Just Me]

Have any of you learned this lesson the hard way? Or have any thoughts on it? I know it's a really morbid topic, and I'm pretty much in tears while typing this, but I'd really like to hear your guys' thoughts on the matter.

This is part of life. We all learn lessons the hard way at one time or another. Sometimes that is the only way we learn a lesson. I am sorry this was such a traumatic incident for you and continues to be. Take heart in the fact that you did learn a valuable lesson, actually two. I am willing to bet you did not believe everything your sister told you after this incident.

I remembered this 60 minutes piece from a few weeks ago and thought it might be appropriate for this discussion. Nature or nurture, genes or the way you were raised.



and a short followup

 

[Miss_Lollipop]

My ex husband abused animals. He set a cat wearing a sweater on fire and watched it burn as a child. He also abused dogs sexually in his teens. He blew up a frog one time.

Holy shit...no offence and stuff but the thought of someone who could do that walking around in society is scary as fuck.

jup, you have no idea.

From what I hear, he's doing better... and 'becoming' a better person. But I will not be surprised to turn on the tv and see that he has gone on a shooting rampage in a walmart or something.