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Comment by Bizarro | Hacker News Reader

That means cats must have a daily visual contact with other felines, and hamsters or guinea pigs must be kept in pairs. And anyone who flushes a pet goldfish down the toilet is breaking the law.

Say what? So in Switzerland I can go to jail for not making a play date for my cat, or buying a little friend for my hamster?

What's next, you can't kill a spider that's creeping around your house?

People need to understand that there's always intended or unintended consquences for all laws. And laws like this have a tendency to make nasty precedents for other stupid-ass laws.

This is just more anthropomorphic emotional immaturity.

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Feel free to go to Switzerland and change the law if you think so. You are perfectly free to try and get the consitution changed, as long as you can convince 100'000 citizens to agree with you.

As it stands: yes, the laws do work. It's not common for private households to be inspected, but farms do get inspected, and eventually shut down for repeatedly flouting such laws. If someone were to report you (i.e. private household) for similar violations you would likely get a police+vet visit and your pets would be confiscated (and you would carry the costs of that, in addition to being fined). Do it often enough and there would eventually be a criminal case.

To me the law is probably well intended but likely ineffective. Beside, it's their country and having self-determination, let them do as they will.

That said, who is going to ensure no one breaks the law? I guess it mostly will affect commercial food preparers, but it's not like people at home will turn themselves in or they'll have embedded monitors on live lobsters who will rat out a cook. If they really meant it, just make sale of lobsters for eating illegal altogether.

Why not get companies like Amazon and Google involved? People are setting up microphones all around their houses and some even are adding cameras now. Hell even Amazon with their new stores could offer a lot in this field.

We can just have the algorithms work out who is breaking these kinds laws and then just add the fine to their amazon bill.

You can say people would be against this but im sure with enough conditioning and lobbying the populations will understand how this helps secure animal rights.

That's your perspective, but consider what was also said about the Women's rights movement in Victorian times: "Give them the right to own property? What next? The right to vote?!".

Some considered those laws equally absurd.

It's as easy to catch a spider and throw it out as to kill it. So fo the right thing and have a respect for a little wild animal.

If it's poisonous, killing is considerably easier.

Venomous. Poisonous is when you die from eating it (like a pufferfish). Sorry if I come off as pedantic, I just see this very often and think it’s a pretty basic distinction.

But is the venom also poisonous?

Most venom isn’t poisonous, as your gastric juices denature the proteins and enzymes which make them dangerous. Big HOWEVER though, is that if you have a cut or any route to your bloodstream in your mouth or throat... then you can be envenomated that way. In addition some animals are both venemous and poisonous, such as tarantulas with urticating hairs.

My wife refuses to kill southern house spiders (harmless). She names them, usually some variant of “Charlotte.” Talks to them and drops off dead bugs for them to eat.

As a bonus, we don’t need to decorate for Halloween.

I like the spiders. They eat the flys and other bugs. Of course they do so in a method that would be outlawed in Switzerland.

You're making an assumption that it is indeed the right thing to do.

I catch all spiders at home with a wine glass and piece of paper and throw them out. I do the same with all the flies. No need to kill. Also, I am grossed out to see people smashing insects at home.

Do people not have Black Widows where they live? 90% of the spiders that I encounter in and around my home (mostly in my garage and my garden) are Black Widows and I thoughtlessly and indiscriminately kill them on sight. When I didn't kill them, they seemed to try to take ownership of different areas of the garden or garage. This happened where I lived in LA, in Goleta, CA, in north Santa Barbara county, and in Orange County. The only place I didn't experience this issue was when I spent a brief period in Riverside County. No spiders in that place, I always assumed it was because it was summer and > 100F highs every day. As if spiders give a shit about a heat wave, but it seemed to have some truth to it.

My thinking is: I don't want to risk my own or my wife or a guests personal health, and so I "deal" with them. Am I wrong?

Guess I'm lucky then... I've lived in LA for about 28 years and I don't think I've ever seen a black widow. Actually I remember when I was ~3, I was sitting (legs crossed) on the patio, my neighbor came over and smashed a scorpion near me with a hammer. Remember it vividly, mostly because I didn't understand why he killed it (at the time). As an adult, I don't recall seeing scorpions, brown recluses, or black widows..

I used to live in Michigan, and much of my extended family still lives there. We're used to black widows, and don't kill them (even though one of my cousins got bitten by a brown recluse and came out pretty badly, you're really in no danger so long as you exercise a few ounces of prudence).

> Do people not have Black Widows where they live?

Nope. I think the most dangerous animal you'd encounter around here is the tick, which is related to the Lyme disease it might carry.

If it's the right thing, then should it be a law?

The optimist in me says that the Swiss are erring on the side of doing as little harm as possible, and respecting the rights of creatures we understand far less completely than we like to think. The realist in me suspects that this is largely politicsl, driven by unfounded, but popular notions of universal animal welfare which ultimately come from a compassionate place.

The cynic in me thinks that this is some rank hypocrisy from the former bankers of the third reich, who still struggle when victims try to recover assets, as they eat an average of about 160lbs of meat per year.

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