Hedgehog spray painted in Leeds United colours shows we need a reset on how animals are treated - Tania Isabel
While the World Cup played out, we repeatedly heard that football ‘brings out the best in us’, but the opposite was true last week when a hedgehog (named Honey by rescuers) died after being spray-painted in the colours of Leeds United Football Club. Carers from Prickly Pigs Hedgehog Rescue said the attack left Honey with breathing difficulties and paralysed with fear before she succumbed to a "cruel and unnecessary death".
Cruelty to animals is a serious offence, and it’s well established that normalising it in the eyes of children sets them up for antisocial behaviour in adulthood.
A 2019 review of 32 studies concluded that cruelty to animals in childhood and adolescence was associated with bullying, behavioural problems, and juvenile delinquency. Animal abuse is also one of the pillars of the Macdonald triad, a set of factors widely accepted in psychiatry to indicate violent tendencies in children.
The theory checks out: serial killers Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer all engaged in animal abuse. Leeds hospital killer Colin Norris practised insulin overdoses on rabbits before murdering four elderly patients.
Of course, killing kittens and murdering humans are extreme examples, but what about the other, more routine ways we teach our kids about how to treat animals? Most of us are guilty of sending mixed messages to children, who naturally love animals.
Their first friends are stuffed bears, their early joys feeding ducks and drawing dogs. But, from the get-go, we lie to kids; reading books about idyllic farm life that in no way reflect the true horrors animals endure and using euphemisms to get them to eat the legs of the lambs they adore.
Even Christmas, which ostensibly marries childlike innocence and peace on Earth, places a deformed, decapitated bird with hollowed-out bowels at its centre. You must admit, it’s weird to serve a ham sandwich on a Peppa Pig plate.
It’s this early-ingrained speciesism that leads most Brits to say they abhor animal abuse, while also paying others to decapitate hens, tear calves from their mothers, and suffocate salmon.
From toddlerhood, we learn to compartmentalise, and it’s only when we stop to critically question why we denounce an attack on a hedgehog while scoffing down a roast hog that we truly start to live our values and reconnect with our inner child who didn’t divide animals into ‘friends’ and ‘food’.
Yorkshire is home to fascinating wild animals: resourceful marsh frogs, family-oriented dormice, and playful otters. It also houses eight ‘mega farms’, where more than two million equally resourceful, family-oriented, and playful chickens, cows, and pigs are confined for slaughter.
We can help wildlife by familiarising ourselves with local rescues, providing water on hot days, and using humane, non-lethal deterrents. We can help all animals by erasing the imaginary lines we’ve drawn between species.
Author Bradley Miller once famously said, “Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.”
Animals deserve to be treated with respect.
Tania Isabel is a long-time animal campaigner and a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA.