I’ve seen some disturbing footage lately, and I wanted to weigh in. The first video was of a woman in England tossing a cat into a garbage can, or “wheelie bin” as the Brits call it. The second was a girl tossing newborn puppies into a river in Germany. These obviously upsetting videos caused a rapid uproar as they spread throughout the internet at lightning speed. (click on images to read the articles)

This can have positive and negative consequences, of course. On the positive side, both of these people have been identified and their cases are being examined. On the negative side, video viewers can be a very passionate bunch. Hopefully the death threats don’t go beyond just threats. The woman claimed she thought it was a funny joke and that she was just playing with the cat, assuming it would be able to wriggle out of the bin. And the girl says her grandmother told her to get rid of the puppies because they were very ill. She figured throwing them in a raging river would be a quick death. So, it is possible they were not trying to simply be horrible human beings. On the other hand, perhaps the stories are a cover. Or maybe these two are not in good mental health. Whatever the case, had the videos not been posted on the internet, these two may have never been caught. And they may have never seen the error in their ways. But I guarantee they’ve had to think long and hard about what they’ve done, now that they’re under such scrutiny.

It’s nice to know the public cares about animal abuse. Even if most of them don’t pick up on the irony of sending death threats to animal abusers, and then eating a burger and drinking milk, both of which come from factory farms where the animals are probably treated even worse than these poor, defenseless creatures.

But the point of this post is to say that, when it comes to capturing animal abusers, the internet is a wonderful tool. It’s hard to believe the “internet explosion” was only about 15 years ago. Can you imagine life without it now? What a different world it would be…