Disclaimer: This post contains violent and disturbing imagery of animal cruelty
A few days ago, a video showing a bunch of boys burning puppies alive surfaced on social media and sent the country into an uproar. It was disturbing on so many levels and raised a ton of questions regarding mental health, animal rights and such. It was so bad that one of our writers even penned an open letter to people who torture poor, innocent animals!
In the short clip, three boys are seeing throwing puppies into a roaring blaze and the screams of the poor pups has got to be one of the most bone-chilling things I have ever heard. To make matters even worse, the boys can be heard laughing in the background! They even pushed the pups back into the fire as they were trying to escape.
This insane act was preceded by another brutal video where a crappy excuse for a human being flung an innocent little dog off the roof of a building! To be honest, you’ll find no dearth of videos depicting animal cruelty in India.
In my head, this is as bad a killing a human being. It just is. As a dog lover, seeing someone inflict such pain and suffering on those poor animals was enough to send me into a rage. But more than angry, I was confused. The thought of burning dogs alive and throwing them off buildings never even entered my head before but here were these people doing exactly that! Calling it an inhuman act would be shaming the word inhuman!
I turned to the internet for some answers. I had to find out what caused this madness!
After much research, I came across various sources that seemed to confirm my theory. People who tortured animals as children were more likely to turn out to be maladjusted adults and psychopaths! In an article published by Psychology Today, Dr. Gail F. Melson says that, “Animal abuse is often the first sign of serious disturbance among adolescent and adult killers.”. And I for one tend to believe her.
Cruelty towards animals is most definitely a precursor to violence towards humans.
Look, we’ve all roasted ants under a microscope but taking pleasure in watching dogs burn is just plain sickening.
Several mass murderers and serial killers have also confessed to experiencing sensations of pleasure from butchering smaller animals and pets when they were children. Notorious serial killer, Ed Kemper was only 10 when he buried the family cat alive and if that wasn’t enough, he also dug up the corpse later and decapitated it! Another insane serial killer, Jeffery Dahmer collected dead animals and loved torturing bullfrogs and cutting up fish. In fact, there is an insane list of serial killers who either tortured animals and outright killed then when they were younger.
Most psychologists agree that cruelty towards animals is one of the three warning signs of future psychosis. The other two being prolonged bed-wetting and setting things on fire (juvenile pyromania).
Look, most of us grow up and stop stomping insects and the like, but that is not the case with people with psychopathic tendencies. After the thrill and high of killing a four-legged creature, they will definitely move on to larger prey, the two-legged kind.