Great Question!
I do note with interest that in another forum topic, vajeans comments that he’s zoophobic. Therefore he thinks maybe fish or ants are the best pets. Having just removed a 25-year-old retaining wall that was riddled with ants, I’m not much of an ant fan… but I presume vajeans was talking about an ant farm, which keeps them safely behind glass just like fish in an aquarium.
And all of the above reminds me of a true story about when Kate was very, very young. She asked her mother if she would be allowed to have a pet. Her mother asked “what kind of pet do you want?” Kate’s answer was: “One that doesn’t go to the bathroom.”
So there you have it: vajeans and Kate have one important criterion for petdom that they share: the pet should not go to the bathroom (or, if it does, it should be trained to use a toilet (including wiping and flushing)). I must say that I concur… Kate eventually got a dog which used our entire back yard has his personal latrine; we didn’t get to use it. Except that twice I year I would go out there with a weed-whacker to keep the weeds at least somewhat short. Do you know what’s even worse than hitting a slug with a weed-whacker? You’ve probably guessed: dog excrement. I often just threw my weed-whacking clothing away at the end of the session. Of course, it also got on my face and in my hair, so I would be forced to use the Canadian Cold water from a garden hose to clean myself.
Some people believe that the reason I’ve still got lots of hair despite being well over 50 has to do with the potent fertilization qualities of dog excrement, dispersed in a fine mist via a good weed-whacker…
Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that somebody will be able to genetically engineer a dog that doesn’t eat just about anything and thereby produces excrement of widely varying composition.
BUT IF THEY DID: I’d be all over it. Imagine a dog that had a few genes from a Kangaroo Rat. The Kangaroo Rat has evolved special kidneys that extract most of the water from their urine and special nasal cavities that extract water from their breath. As a result, they produce only a few drops of (very concentrated) urine per day and their feces is highly concentrated hard pellets.
AND: if they could have them collect those hard pellets and drop them in a toilet (where those few drops of urine would also be dropped), you might have the makings of a good pet.
Morality… Ethics… Religion… here’s the thing about that: the person generally considered to be the “Father of Genetics” is Gregor Mendel. He was German, and it would be all too easy to suggest that Hitler and Company came by their interest in “Aryan genetic superiority” honestly by virtue of genetics being something that Germans seem to have a gene for. So I won’t. But I WILL point out that Gregor attended the Augustine Abby of St. Thomas in Brno starting in 1843. Here’s a link to the abby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Thomas%27s_Abbey,_Brno Anyway, see the connection? The theory of genetics came out of a religious institution in the first place! It was a religious group that let the genie out of the bottle! So I suppose we can blame them for all the bad things that come from playing around with genes and chromosomes ever since.
Okay, seriously, here are my opinions on the matter of genetically engineered pets in point form:
- we have lots of dog breeds because people genetically select dogs and breed pairs with similar characteristics to strengthen that characteristic. That’s genetic modification. We do the same with cats, horses, cattle, etc. Is that evil? It is in that we don’t seem to let those dogs just naturally fall in love: they’re paired off like in an arranged marriage (which apparently have a higher probability of success than a marriage of the heart… but I digress).
- therefore: genetically engineering animals “the natural way” seems to be well accepted by society and has been for a very long time, even before Monks in the Abby started playing with peas to see how genetics might really work.
- HOWEVER: manipulating genes and chromosomes at that atomic level is kind of dangerous. Sure, I’d like a dog that could speak and understand, used the toilet and didn’t smell bad. If it glowed in the dark as well, that would be kind of cool. But there might be some unintended side-effects of humans playing with genes at that level. Perhaps dogs would hatch a play to take over our world (much like Dogbert… who you must admit is highly intelligent…)
There is a particularly good site where discussions of the ethics and morality of genetic manipulation take place. I refer you to: http://emonk.org
Personally, I think humans are just a step in evolution and that evolution is about to change from purely biological entities to cyborgs. But that just may be me…
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