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Cao Pi
Guest
Stuffing animals is just plain cruel
By Jenny McCartney
Published: 7:00PM BST 11 Sep 2010
For Oshine there will be no more sweets, jelly and marshmallows Photo: PA
One of the most melancholy sights last week was that of Oshine, the vastly overweight orang-utan – now on a strict diet – whose South African owners had fed her on a diet of crisps, Gummi bears, burgers, chips and cereal. In pictures, Oshine’s glum little eyes stare out from her enormous form, a testimony to human dysfunction superimposed on to the animal kingdom.
Even with her wildness shamefully dulled by captivity and overfeeding, Oshine has proved no exception to the rule that fat animals are generally reported in jovial terms, in this case with chucklesome headlines such as “podgy primate”. Waddling, wheezing dogs and cats that look as if they have swallowed a balloon pump are regularly presented as amusingly naughty casualties of their own greed, rather than their owners’ foolishness.
It is said that owners enjoy keeping animals that look like a little bit like them, to which there is a gloomy side effect: as Britons steadily get fatter, so do our pets. It is estimated that by 2015, half of all dogs in Britain will be obese. The dog may indeed be man’s best friend: increasingly, I’m not sure whether it works the other way round.Stuffing animals is just plain cruel