cruelty

App Encourages Children to Torture an Insect and Control Its Body

Max Rivlin-Nadler · 11/09/13 11:58AM

Children love to tear bugs limb from limb. Eventually, however, the rush of sadism gives way to the pity one has for the lifeless form crumbled beneath their hands. The fragility of life, the small plane between being and nothingness has been revealed to the young individual and they turn to the heavens and reflect on the next few decades of struggling to accept their demise... Or they forget all that and strap on an electrode and control the insect's body through a cell phone App.

Arrests Made in Chinese Toddler Death

Lauri Apple · 10/23/11 04:20PM

Two people have been arrested for the hit-and-run death of Wang Yue, the Chinese two-year-old left to die in the street. No word on what the formal charges are; police used the now-infamous surveillance footage to identify the suspects. As much as we dislike how camera'ed up and Big Brothery our public spaces have become, we're glad this particular incident was captured on video. [Washington Post]

Collapsing for 10 Minutes Perfectly Normal Elephant Behavior, Says Circus

Seth Abramovitch · 08/10/11 09:49PM

Sarah — a 54-year-old Asian elephant performer in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with a known history of poor health — was filmed by animal rights activists collapsing onto her side as she boarded her boxcar after a performance in Anaheim, Ca.

The American Idol Contestants' Enormous Dream Mansion

Richard Lawson · 03/09/11 04:01PM

What's an extra cruel way to tease the American Idol finalists with wealth and fame only to tear the dream out of their hands one by one until no one is left? Put them in a seriously huge, $100,000/week rental mansion, so they can feel like kings and queens (mostly queens) for a day or two before they are sent tumbling, so so far, back down to miserable wannabe obscurity.

Woman Caught on Video Throwing a Cat into a Garbage Bin

Matt Cherette · 08/23/10 03:06PM

This is truly sick: here's surveillance footage from outside of a school in Coventry, England that shows a woman walk up to a cat, pet it for a few seconds, and then pick it up/throw it into a garbage bin.

Some People Give Their Kids Really Shitty Names

Ravi Somaiya · 02/26/10 07:17AM

Meet Stan Still, Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Bill Board. They're among the names a survey revealed actual parents gave to their actual children — human beings, remember — because they thought they were funny.

When Cutting Your Dog's Balls Off Isn't Mean Enough

Hamilton Nolan · 02/03/10 10:56AM

Do you hate dogs? Great. Awesome idea for you: adopt a dog, then decide that the dog's barking annoys you, then have the dog's vocal cords severed so it can't bark ever again. Stupid dogs, always behaving naturally. [NYT]

Dog-Starving Artist Just Gets More Unpopular

Hamilton Nolan · 04/15/08 01:27PM

Have you signed the petition against Guillermo "Habacuc" Vargas yet? He's the Costa Rican artist whose latest big exhibition featured him tying up a starving dog "without food and water under the words 'Eres Lo Que Lees' - 'You Are What You Read' - made out of dog biscuits while he played the Sandinista anthem backwards and set 175 pieces of crack cocaine alight in a massive incense burner." Some reports say the dog starved to death during the display; the gallery director says that's not true. Either way, Vargas is not a popular man with animal lovers. By now, more than a million people have signed a petition (you can sign here, if you're so inclined) urging that he not be allowed to recreate the work, and the cause continues to draw media coverage and generate new outrage. But the artist calls his opponents hypocrites. His defense, and a video of the exhibit in question (which is pretty heartbreaking), after the jump.

'Times' Iraq Horror: 'Blackwater Shot Our Dog'

Pareene · 12/18/07 03:20PM

Private security firm and deadly, answerable-to-no-one mercenary army Blackwater was involved in yet another shocking display of deadly gunplay in Iraq. Just months after Blackwater guards shot 17 civilians in cold blood on the streets of Baghdad, they SHOT THE NEW YORK TIMES'S DOG. Which, wow. The New York Times had a dog? And Blackwater just... shot it? "State Department investigators have made two follow-up visits to the Times compound to investigate the shooting of Hentish [the lovable, and no doubt absolutely adorable dog belonging to the Times]," according to Reuters.

New York Times in Iraq: "Blackwater shot our dog" [Reuters]