Games containing squirrels

I haven't seen that guy in ages. Did he get a reboot?

Oh my. 🤪

Supposed to be, yes. Actually is, I guess not.

Fact is I really did discover a recently deceased arboreal creature in my back yard, didn't know what to do with it, decided to make a poll, and every poll needs a GA, so here we are.

I did not mean to offend.

Escape from Biostation

Coincidentally, I've been thinking about aging pets and how pets might change in the future. Aside from having an interest in futurism and science fiction, our old dog died just before Christmas and I've been looking at rescues for the last few of months.

My opinion is that if you could turn off aging like a switch, say with special pet food, you'd see shelters full of a combination of a) a pitbull puppies, and b) grown pitbulls allowed to age through neglect before being abandoned because they're no longer cute. If the food was more expensive, rescue organizations themselves would have to choose between feeding a puppy and keeping it a puppy and knowing it had much better odds of being adopted, or letting it grow older and feeding more dogs (there's a polynomial equation in there for the cost of feeding a puppy anti-aging food, versus feeding it normal food, versus food requirements as it gets older).

I can't justify a dog getting experiencing aging related conditions, suffering and death...but part of me is insistent that the goal of a puppy should not just be solely to exist as a puppy, but for it to grow into a dog. We've long abandoned the idea that our pets exist for breeding, and the jobs many of them hold instincts for are psychological quirks of breeds in modern days (such as border collies herding children). There are too many people who just want puppies and abandon dogs when they get older for me to say people wouldn't want eternal puppies, but no one's really had to cross that bridge of the idea that a puppy will never be anything but a puppy (and anti-aging dog food technically would only delay that). To me, it seems like someone stuck on a threshold, knowing they should cross it but not wanting to for selfish reasons, and that's someone's got to be mindful of when it comes to pets. I can't say a puppy won't be happier than a dog, or that selective breeding's neoteny hasn't made dogs a better fit for human companionship over wolves, but in my old fogeyism, a puppy never being allowed to grow up seems a bridge too far.

Science fiction's often tackled anti-aging, and often done so with the angle that it's natural and that's the way it should be - or at least that there'd be unconsidered consequences. It's not the same with pets, since we have such an inherently asymmetric relationship with them. It seems easy for someone to justify keeping a puppy as a puppy (especially over them abandoning it), while it's verging on a scifi horror story for someone to have a child that they forever keep a baby because that's what they want from it.

If that future arrives, I assume the answer would be yes.

For now you will have to make do with a clone of your dog for $50,000.

Good to know.

That's what I do after cleaning up after the dog.