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Concerns over therapy ferrets used to kill rats at UK’s largest children’s prison
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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Ughhh, what the hell is wrong with people?!
First, how the hell do we still have children's prison??
Second, not humane to the rats or ferrets.
Third, making the children watch their therapy animal produce/receive gore, wtf? Hey kid, remember Rikki Tikki severing that rat's jugular? That's your only comfort in here!
Fourth, who allows their therapy animals to potentially get injured or spread disease? Are these animals not there for calmness, not to be hardening their wild instincts?
Holy hell, these people can't handle animals, let alone children with issues that need real help and compassion. 😡
I’m curious about what the humane euthanasia guidelines are in this scenario. It’s all just so weird.
Prevention (ie. building maintenance) is the real first step. Rodents want food, warmth, shelter just like we do, so they want to get in places. Remove their access and then nothing needs to get killed, at least not by humans.
Otherwise snap traps are largely considered the most humane, as they're relatively reliable, and as long as things go as planned they are quick and effective compared to most anything else. Nothing is going to be 100% reliable, hence the right thing to do is not let them in, which again, as they're housing large numbers of children, should be the priority of a halfway competent staff.
Prevention definitely makes sense. So do snap traps, I just didn’t know if the old school method was considered as painless as possible. I don’t like poisons because of trophic concentration. Not currently dealing with rats but I do want chickens again someday so I’m sure I’ll face this question eventually.
Poisons kill in a pretty ugly way and make their way up the food chain as you said. Snap traps don't work all the time, but using good ones minimizes the chances of suffering, but it's still going to happen, that's just somewhat unavoidable.
I help with wildlife rescue and see the effects of poison on raptors, so I appreciate people not going to poison as a first option.
The problem with snap traps is that rats are clever little bastards. If there's more than one rat, the survivors quickly learn to avoid the traps if one of their peers gets its neck snapped.
I own a big old house in a place where there are rats in the woods nearby. Closing off every potential rat entry point was a time-consuming pain in the ass, but it was pretty effective once it was finished.
I'm thankful the only rat I ever found was someone's escaped pet. I enjoy the mice/rats as much as I do most other animals, whereas they just need to stay outside or in the clinic and we get along just fine. I'd rather block holes than hurt them, they're just doing what they need to do for themselves after all.