Animal abuse during war time?

March 3, 2008 2:02 PM

Can you provide information on acts of animal abuse/cruelty taking place in other countries during war time? More inside...

A recent, unlinked here, Youtube video involving a puppy in the desert of Afghanistan got me thinking about this question. A few examples (that I've creatively imagined) would be soldiers catching cats with their bayonets during WWI or lighting alive pigs on fire in Vietnam. Links will come in handy too. Thanks.

posted by hammerthyme to pets & animals (8 comments total)

What about the bombing of the animals in the Berlin Zoo (Tiergarten) during WWII?
posted by mynameisluka at 2:08 PM on March 3, 2008

I'm looking for more deliberate acts.
posted by hammerthyme at 2:11 PM on March 3, 2008

In the Vietnam War, water buffalo were frequently killed -- for sport, as a way to punish villagers, as a tool of war on both sides.

Here is an account of wounding a water buffalo that was being used by the NVA as a mine sweeping tool. Here is an excerpt of congressional testimony mentioning the killing of water buffalo and connecting that to the Indian wars of the previous century (the website this is on has a clear political slant, but I've seen the quote before, so I think it is probably legit). And Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried has a story of cruelty towards water buffalo, too.

The Animals in War memorial is a monument to the systemic cruelty borne by animals used in war. Here is an emotional piece on the memorial with details of what some of the millions of animals used in wars faced -- don't read if you are sensitive about these issues. Animals in War is a book mentioned in some of the articles on the memorial.
posted by Forktine at 2:21 PM on March 3, 2008

Dogs with bombs strapped to them were used as anti-tank weapons by the Russians during WWII. See here.
posted by NucleophilicAttack at 2:38 PM on March 3, 2008

There are links to other animal abuse videos in the first half of this comment on the Digg thread concerning the puppy incident. I haven't watched any of them and I assume they're graphic/disturbing. If you search for other threads about the puppy incident, you will find lots of links that people have posted.
posted by desjardins at 2:39 PM on March 3, 2008

[a few comments removed - the less this is about the Digg thread, the more likely the OP will get answers to the question, thank you.]
posted by jessamyn at 3:33 PM on March 3, 2008

When Tokyo was being bombed during World War II, the army demanded that the large and dangerous animals be killed so that they wouldn't get loose and run amok in the streets.
posted by Jeanne at 4:03 PM on March 3, 2008

A couple of chapters of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami dramatise the slaughter of most of a zoo in manchuria during the Japanese retreat in WWII.
posted by scodger at 10:42 PM on March 3, 2008