PETA's idea: Call fish 'Sea Kittens'

[CaptainChewbacca]

I wish I was making this up.

When you think cute, playful, and snuggly in animals, the logical choice of pet is … trout? That’s what PETA thinks, anyway, in its new campaign to propagandize children into avoiding meat. They now want to call fish “sea kittens”, because then no one would ever think of eating a kitten — right? It’s almost good enough to be an Onion parody:

People don’t seem to like fish. They’re slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you’re swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by.

Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You’ve done enough damage, buddy. We’ve got it from here. And we’re going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it’s time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

I actually like fish. Broiled, fried, even grilled on a cedar plank, they make for tasty eating. Changing the name to “sea kittens” won’t make them any less tasty, or for that matter, any less slithery and slimy, either. It might give people a few ideas about land kittens that PETA may not like, however.
Britney Spears doesn’t get the worst of it, however:

A University of Edinburgh study found that sea kittens can retain information that they learned up to 11 months earlier, which makes them cuter and smarter than the president of the United States!
But not smarter than PETA activists who come up with silly euphemisms like “sea kittens”. And which POTUS do they mean? If this is still up on January 21st, I’m prepared to officially call PETA a racist organization, following the 2008 presidential campaign rules!

How does PETA so consistently fail? The comments on the blog are hilarious and worth reading.

[Dooey Jo]

Ah, but they forget one thing: Sea kittens inevitably grow up to be not-so-cute sea cats:



(that's a bunch of Atlantic catfish. They are known as "sea cats" here)

[Schuyler Colfax]

Why don't I come this forum more often? What new low won't these guys hit?

[Zixinus]

This is fucking hilarious.

Yum, kittens.

[Kanastrous]

Since I love eating land kitten already, I can't wait to try sea kitten. Must be a whole new taste experience.

[General Zod]

Does this mean PETA's given up the angle of trying to get people to consider fish to be as intelligent as a puppy?

[Shinova]

What otherworldly reality does PETA come from? I mean how does a large organization like theirs come up with these things!?

[Solauren]

PETA comes up with stuff like this, despite being a large organization, is due to the fact their collective IQ is equal to inbreed-dog with severe mental retardation.

To them, everything is cute and cuddly!

[Kitsune]

I was watching National Geographic Channel yesterday.....They had an episode about a Tiger attacking and killing a person in San Francisco Zoo a few years ago. It seems to be freak event even though they are trying to make it much harder for a tiger to escape the compound.

The real problem they seem to talk about is many big cats kept not in zoos or circuses but by private owners. You also seem to be able to buy a tiger cub for around $300. That is something that needs to be dealt with. Why can't PETA deal with situations like that?

[Ted C]

I recommend that everyone put their favorite recipe for "sea kitten" on the internet to annoy the heck out of PETA. I've already posted a recipe for "beer-pickled sea kitten" to my blog.

[Zixinus]

I was watching National Geographic Channel yesterday.....They had an episode about a Tiger attacking and killing a person in San Francisco Zoo a few years ago. It seems to be freak event even though they are trying to make it much harder for a tiger to escape the compound.

The real problem they seem to talk about is many big cats kept not in zoos or circuses but by private owners. You also seem to be able to buy a tiger cub for around $300. That is something that needs to be dealt with. Why can't PETA deal with situations like that?

Because that would require serious work and is usually done by animal protection agencies that actually give a shit about animals themselves.

Now, the Hot Air comment sections deserved to be quoted:

PETA drinking the bongwater again.

Mazztek on January 9, 2009 at 12:34 PM

Hey now, watch it, I belong to PETA:

People
Eating
Tasty
Animals

That’s is, I am going to wear my kitten fur coat at the next PETA meeting…I will call it my shark skin suit…

They won’t stop me from killing kittens.

/wait. what?

Feed your sea kitten cat meat.

Gotta kill all those horrible, EEEEVIL dolphins for eating sea kittens! Bad, Bad, Flipper!

Not only do I enjoy “sea kittens” , but I have probably unknowlingly enjoyed a few “land kittens” , from the local Oriental restaurant as well.

PETA’s upper management should all be sleeping with the fish... I mean sea kittens./quote]

I don’t understand why an organization with only four letters in its name can’t spell it correctly.

It’s PITA!!!*

* Pain In The A$$ (for the acronymically challenged)

[Alyrium Denryle]

I was watching National Geographic Channel yesterday.....They had an episode about a Tiger attacking and killing a person in San Francisco Zoo a few years ago. It seems to be freak event even though they are trying to make it much harder for a tiger to escape the compound.

The real problem they seem to talk about is many big cats kept not in zoos or circuses but by private owners. You also seem to be able to buy a tiger cub for around $300. That is something that needs to be dealt with. Why can't PETA deal with situations like that?

300 bucks? There are captive bred turtles that are not critically endangered I cant get for that... I cant get an albino red eared slider for less than that, what the fuck? Where are these people, I want to report them to the feds or interpol, because there is no way that shit is legal.

[Kitsune]

300 bucks? There are captive bred turtles that are not critically endangered I cant get for that... I cant get an albino red eared slider for less than that, what the fuck? Where are these people, I want to report them to the feds or interpol, because there is no way that shit is legal.

I have not personally researched it and almost afraid to.....This info is from the National Geographic program. Even if the numbers are wrong, say $1000, I still don't think they should be pets.

My dog, if I got her as a puppy, usually goes for around $600 from what I have seen. I got her older from a coworker who her ex-husband threatened to take her to the pound. He also was a city cop and I live in another city.

[CaptainChewbacca]

$300 for a tiger-cub is black market prices in southeast asia or africa. Buying a tiger cub and getting it into the US would be far more costly, and highly illegal.

[Kitsune]

$300 for a tiger-cub is black market prices in southeast asia or africa. Buying a tiger cub and getting it into the US would be far more costly, and highly illegal.

According to my reading, it is not illegal in the United States to own a Tiger.

Also "Approximately 5,000 to 10,000 lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and other large exotic cats are kept as pets in the United States" according to this article. Hopefully it is down from the date of the article

[General Zod]

$300 for a tiger-cub is black market prices in southeast asia or africa. Buying a tiger cub and getting it into the US would be far more costly, and highly illegal.

According to my reading, it is not illegal in the United States to own a Tiger.

Also "Approximately 5,000 to 10,000 lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and other large exotic cats are kept as pets in the United States" according to this article. Hopefully it is down from the date of the article

Five to ten thousand? That seems insanely large. Where are these people getting their figures from?

[Darth Wong]

PETA is actually taking ideas from South Park!

I'm not kidding. Watch the episode in which Stan and the boys manage to convince the regulatory authorities to force grocery stores to label veal as "tortured baby cows" instead of veal, and veal sales immediately plummet to almost nothing. It's the same idea.

[TithonusSyndrome]

$300 for a tiger-cub is black market prices in southeast asia or africa. Buying a tiger cub and getting it into the US would be far more costly, and highly illegal.

According to my reading, it is not illegal in the United States to own a Tiger.

Also "Approximately 5,000 to 10,000 lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and other large exotic cats are kept as pets in the United States" according to this article. Hopefully it is down from the date of the article

It may not be illegal to own a tiger, but it certainly isn't legal to own any pet if you haven't got provisions and space for it that is both safe and humane - and if it is, then it shouldn't be. How many people can claim they have both of those?

[Kitsune]

It may not be illegal to own a tiger, but it certainly isn't legal to own any pet if you haven't got provisions and space for it that is both safe and humane - and if it is, then it shouldn't be. How many people can claim they have both of those?

That is the way it should be and think that PETA would be better to chase real problems not eating Sea Kittens.

I looked into the possibility of getting a Fennic Fox as a pet but decided that it would be an incredible amount of work and would not be fair to the Fox and it weighs less than four pounds...

[Mayabird]

*sigh*

Look, people, I'll say it again: PETA is not actually about results. It's about rich brats wanting to feel self-righteous without actually doing anything. They read about civil rights movements and women's suffrage and all those things and want to think they're being all important and doing good work like them and animals are pretty so they think they'll do animal rights. Only thing is, accomplishing anything requires a lot of thankless grunt work. My aunt, for instance, takes care of animals for the Humane Society, which means a lot of time feeding animals, cleaning up their crap (often on the floor, which then needs cleaning), making sure they take their medication (ever tried to feed a cat pills? What about ten of them?), and so on. Endless labor, day in and day out which smells bad and isn't all that fun at all. A lot of the animals come in sick or mistreated, but most get rehabilitated and are successfully adopted out to good families. She gets results, but it's a lot of crap to that end.

Yeah, rich brats shoveling crap. Sure. That's why they put out stupid press releases or have their protests in front of KFC and other stupid things like that. It's showy and gets them attention and gives them the illusion of doing something (look at me! I'm at a protest rally! That means I'm doing something!) without shoveling crap. They also enjoy the negative attention, because then they can think they're being persecuted, just like the civil rights people in their minds. They go from stupid idea to stupid idea because actually working on an actual problem is, well, work.

Stupid lazy rich self-righteous brats. That's all PETA is.

[Zablorg]

It's pretty infuriating that those tigers are being sold at such low prices and as Chewie indicates, people can't take advantage of it. When I first heard they were so cheap I thought some organization could buy thousands of them in bulk, like a big tiger bailout!

[Master of Ossus]

PETA has taught me a valuable lesson. Seems that cats are nothing but land-fish. Put that way, they sound WAY more delicious. I'll look for them next week in the supermarket.

[CaptainChewbacca]

PETA has taught me a valuable lesson. Seems that cats are nothing but land-fish. Put that way, they sound WAY more delicious. I'll look for them next week in the supermarket.

During the great depression, my great-grandmother learned several ways to prepare 'roof rabbit' to feed her children. Apparently, its very lean and not that flavorful.

[Ryan Thunder]

Stupid lazy rich self-righteous brats. That's all PETA is.

So... Greenpeace sans the nuclear hate?

Although, I guess not everybody in Greenpeace is rich.

[Darth Wong]

Has anyone tried looking at the website attached to the OP? It looks like the website for a child's video game. At one point it says "Sea kittens [fish] are just as intelligent (not to mention adorable) as dogs and cats": a rather preposterous statement to say the least.

It's too bad they have to be such imbeciles, because there are so much better reasons to crack down on the fishing industry, such as its wanton destruction of fish stocks just outside international boundary lines or its use of drag lines which destroy coral reefs.