Is animal cruelty getting worse?

There is a shocking trend of children filming and sharing footage of killing and torturing animals, a new report has revealed.

A number of young people are sharing videos and photos via WhatsApp groups of themselves targeting animals with ball bearings fired from a hand-held catapult, causing devastating injuries. Some footage also shows them then "kick and abuse" the animals as well as "pose holding their dead bodies", said Sky News.

The broadcaster said it had found nearly 500 members of these groups and more than 350 photos and videos shared of the abuse, which includes "pigs, deer, pigeons, foxes, squirrels, pheasants, rabbits, geese and ducks".

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There are currently no laws against buying and owning a hand-held catapult, meaning there is little legislation in place to prevent these attacks from happening.

The report comes after figures last year showed a rise in cruelty and abandonments of cats and dogs in the UK, while reports of animal abuse on social media have also increased.

What did the commentators say?

The RSPCA said the abuse of animals, dogs in particular, is happening on a "massive scale", as it revealed a 27% rise in reports of cruelty over three consecutive years up to the end of 2022. The charity's figures showed that there was "one dog abused every hour across the country", said The Times, meaning that "27 dogs are intentionally harmed every day". The data assessed "intentional harm", which includes "attempted killing, poisoning, beating, improper killing and mutilation". Cats too were subject to increased levels of abuse, the RSPCA reported, with a 25% increase in cases from 2021 to 2022.

What the figures are unable to show, however, is the cause of this rise. One hypothesis is the increase in pet ownership during the Covid-19 pandemic, which was a "turning point" for levels of animal abandonment, said The Telegraph. Many "pandemic puppies" missed out on vital socialisation during lockdowns and many are "showing serious issues" and owners are finding it "hard to train them".

The subsequent cost-of-living crisis and the "rising financial strain" on pet owners is also attributed as a cause, said The Independent. While dogs and cats make up the sizeable majority of cruelty cases, there has also been an increase in "exotic pets such as snakes" left abandoned, said The Telegraph, as owners struggle to afford the cost of heating their environment.

The issue of rising animal cruelty transcends pet owners, however. According to the UK Safer Internet Centre, there has been a "significant rise" in animal cruelty cases reported on social media. It said most of this was related to a "sadistic global monkey torture ring" reported by the BBC, with users, including many in the UK, "paying macaques' owners to film them being tortured and killed". It said "groups ranging from hundreds to thousands of people" worldwide had accessed and encouraged the videos and they were "widely accessible to the general public" on social media.

What next?

The government has recently taken steps to try and combat higher levels of animal cruelty. In January, tougher sanctions on animal welfare standards came into force, while an amendment to the online safety bill last year means social media sites "must remove animal cruelty content" or "face the threat of substantial fines", said The Guardian.

However, parliament "urgently needs to look at changing the legislation" to more specifically combat the use of legal weapons such as catapults, Conservative MP Henry Smith told Sky News, including "restricting sales to under-18s" and a "criminal sanction" for those using them to "inflict injury and suffering".

It is all part of a continuing "animal welfare crisis" in the UK, Dermot Murphy, RSPCA inspectorate commissioner said, adding that the "cost of rescuing animals is at an all-time high" and services have been "stretched to the limit".