is it morally wrong to own pets?

As long as they're not being abused or tortured an animal has no rights to me, so no.

To own domestic animals, no, it is not morally wrong.

To own Wild animals yes it is, you are depriving them of their natural "self" and only endangering the animal, yourself and those around you.

Well if you mean like a pet chimpanzee, or tiger or something. Then yes I find that wrong. Dogs, cats and other common house pets are fine.

When you say pets, what animals are you referring to?

If everyone gave up on owning animals all at once and just let them "be free" a ridiculous number of them would die.

Absolutely not

Only if your pet is a human.

No lol. I don't like pets so I can't say

domesticated animals are already reliant to us.

nah...

where do you draw the line?

What's the difference between wild and domestic animals? There are wild dogs and there are domesticated dogs for instance. And what is so different from a pet chimpanzee compared to a pet dog?

@donatellorawks: The difference is in your question. One is WILD (and taking it in is depriving it of its habitat and potentially endangering those around you) and one is DOMESTIC (reliant on humans, they literally need us to survive in the wild). He's saying anything wild its wrong to keep, anything domestic is perfectly fine, in fact owning a domestic animal is beneficial to them since it'd probably get put down if it didn't get sold.

Well, the problem I see here is that there is still some gray area on distinguishing between wild and domesticated animals.

I would like to ask if its possible for a wild animal to turn domesticated? All you had to do is "abduct" the animal while it was a baby and take care of it (via imprinting), is it that simple?

The pet industry offers a HUGE variety of pets - Dogs and cats are the most common, but there are more "exotic" examples like lizards, frogs, snakes, or maybe even Orang Utans. The problem could be with the pet industry for offering creatures which had not yet evolved over the centuries like cats and dogs did to be reliant on humans.

the distinguishing point between wild and domesticated animals is that the domesticated ones have generations worth of domestication into them that they are born relatively calm to humans whereas the wild ones will always be instinctively cautious to every creature except its own race.

even if you take in a wild animal when it was a baby, generations worth of natural instinct to it is more likely to kick in. we already have countless stories of supposed domesticated wild animals killing their owners.

the pet industry doesn't legally sell orangutans or generally anything as big as a human because chances are they are more than capable of harming us in a snap. the smaller exotic ones are still wild, you just don't see that wildness because they are generally harmless to you because of their size, except for snakes and certain lizards.

A lot of people in the world don't have the quality of life my dog has.

Exotic animals no. Dogs, Cats, Canaries, Ferrets,.... yes. But only if they are well taken care of.

No, because most domesticated animals would go extinct and/or get slaughtered in the wild.

It depends on how the animal is treated.

Sadly, there are many volatile sub-humans in this world who exploit, abuse and neglect animals.

Hershey Cat and Kami Dragon are more than my pets. They're my friends.

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with owning a cat, dog, hamster, guinea pig, etc. These animals all have been domesticated by mankind. It's silly to think that it'd be better to let all of these domesticated animals loose in the streets.

I'm not a fan of birds being kept as pets. It seems cruel to keep them in tiny cages. This same idea may extend to spiders, snakes, and fish. I never really thought of them in this way.

Nopes

@johnnyz256: Ah, but we breed dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, snakes etc. for our own amusement. They don't exist in these numbers naturally.

Is it right to bring so many animals into the world just for our desire for animal companionship? Especially when so many end up abandoned, abused and killed?

Something to think about.

No.

@sprior93: God did give us the animals for our use. They are not to be abused, of course. That is wrong.

More like hygienically wrong.

If we didn't domesticate them while's back they'd all be dead by now.

Dogs, Cats and the like, no. If we leave them alone in the streets, they get killed by cars, starvation or diseases most of the time. If you have the money and the time to take care of them, then why not?. The wrong choice would be leave them.

It depends. I don't like birds as pets they need freedom.

Dogs need humans.

Cats don't.

Ant Colony? Sure why not if you know how to take care of them.

Most breeds of domestic dogs have had most of their survival instincts bred out a long time ago

Anyone tries to take my dogs I'll kill them. They're my kids.

smh

Pretty much this, but IMO it would be morally wrong to abandon animals we've bred to be almost fully reliant on us anyways.

Owning pets just subtly freaks me out because of the vast differences between the pet's and the owner's perceptions of the world and thus their understandings of the relationship.

It reminds me that relationships between individuals, including those between people, are based not on how the people actually are, but their representations in their own and each other's minds, which vary from person to person.

- The artist formerly known as DarthMummy

You do realize I exaggerated for affect right?

I think it's irresponsible of humans to move creatures out of their normal environment/natural environment. Really pets are completely reliant on their human "owners".. most likely they would die without the owner.. They don't have rights and are basically no better than trash/toys...

Dogs and cats are fine to own because at this point that's all they're good for..

Man the nuts are out in force. Peta would be proud.

No I did not *redirects smh to himself*

Another controversy revolving around pets is how people "own" pets, or how it's "yours". A lot of people say that kinda of stuff is wrong as well.

Kind of like enslavement in a way. I myself personally see pets as adopted animals in my care, not as something that belongs to me, or is "my ___".

No.

Animals that most people keep as pets have been domesticated for tens of thousands of years. Their survival capabilities are already stunted, so releasing them into the wild would be a death sentence. They need us at this point.

Option 1

No

Still the perfect answer^

Correct

Yeah, let's see how well that does with dogs.