http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35101939/ns … ?GT1=43001

Hahahaha!

I live 4 miles outside of Punxsutawney, and I can personally confirm he does live better than most PA kids.

What other rodent has a day named after him?

DUDE.

A robot wouldn't be able to tell us whether Winter has ended yet or not...

PETA can shut their holes and become dinner rolls...

I just laugh at people trying to tell me animals are much happier in the wild. Are you people kidding me? Nature is nowhere nearly as kind as one might think. Always foraging for food in harsh conditions with the chance of being eaten by something bigger than you always on the horizon. I wonder if there's a study for animal stress levels in captivity vs the wild?

I'm not looking to get into a debate or a lengthy exchange with this post, but I just have to say this.

Sorry Idolores, but that is just fucked up. "Stress" and the kindness of nature don't enter into it, the crucial point is that the wild state of nature is the environment that animals are adapted to, their "natural" state, so to speak. An utilitarian calculation about where they would be "happiest" is just human bullshit and nonsense: they're not meant to be "happy" or "not happy", they're meant to live out their lives in their natural state. The "wild" state is the only real state for animals.

And that includes the human animal.

Well, I don't know about stress levels of animals in captivity vs. the wild, but animals tend to have considerably longer lifespans in captivity.  Whether that is due to plentiful food, veterinary care, regulated temperatures, lower stress, or anything else is certainly open to speculation.

Indeed. Another thing that is certainly open to speculation is whether a longer lifespan is inherently something positive or negative. I'd venture to say that most of the time, it in itself says very little about the "quality" of the life being lived. I think this is especially important to keep in mind when considering non-human animals, who by all accounts seem to experience time in other ways than we do (different lifespan, metabolism, most probably no formulated conception of "death" and the idea of non-existence as we have). If you put a lion in a cage and it gets all the "required" attention and care it needs (or rather: that we think it "needs") and therefore ends up living five years extra, is it "happier" than a lion living violently and dying violently in the wild? Anyone's guess, but I have a strong inclination to believe that the wild lion leads a fuller and "better" life. Likewise, is it better for a human animal to get all the "care" modern civilization can afford to be able to live to 90 or 100 and experience being siphoned through hospitals, clinics, retirement homes, etc. for the last 20 or 30 years of it's life and end up feeling lonely and isolated and worrying each day about an inevitable event it knows is only coming closer and closer, or would that animal have experienced a fuller and better (albeit shorter and tougher) life if it were born tens of thousand of years ago, before all this madness started? You know, the time before school shootings, organized religions, the plethora of modern-day clinical psychological disorders, bloated and oppressive governments, reality TV (or just TV, period...), massproduced and standardized idiots, nincompoops, and dullards, overpopulation, etc....

Oh there goes my big mouth again. And I swore I wouldn't get involved and start ranting about this!

[Nota Bene: I'm definitely not a member or fan of PETA, I'm just babbling my own musings here. ]

Nice job reiterating my point there, chief.

You're welcome.