Housepets!

Original subject: "The most amazing banner ad on HP! What is Google telling us?"

OK, this amuses me enormously. I don't know if anyone else is seeing this one. I've got all the "behavioural advertising" flags turned off, so I mostly see banners that are triggered by keywords on the actual web pages. And this one keeps coming up on Housepets!:



PCR is Polymerase Chain Reaction, a tool used to amplify select DNA when you're analyzing DNA or working with recombinant DNA techniques. So, does Google's advertising engine know something we don't about the future of genetically engineered housepets?

Edited: Subject.

Uh oh! Google is into me!

If they create genetically modified housepets I am going to buy so many of them!

Stop getting my hopes up google!

SkyeCaptain wrote:If they create genetically modified housepets I am going to buy so many of them!

Collect the whole set!

So soon, we may each have our own Housepet? Splendid! Now I can talk to my dog without people giving me funny looks ^^

That could be an interesting thread.

If you could wave a magic PCR machine and create pets just like in the Housepets! world, would you? Small, short-lived, but apparently fully sapient bipeds created as companion animals for humans. In this world, right now.

You're giving me the option to turn my cat into Grape basically?

I can not say yes fast enough!

I'd do that in a heartbeat.

Not so much your cat, but perhaps her kittens.

I'd actually imagine my dog still attacking me and screaming in my ears every morning, but now more sentient. *shudders*

I would love to have a talking dog to pal around with. So yes.

For what it's worth, PCR isn't of any real use for engineering organisms, just in researching existing (or already-engineered) organisms. Sorry.

An HP cat and an HP dog. Always. And then HP puppies and kittens, a family to live with!

Sleet wrote:For what it's worth, PCR isn't of any real use for engineering organisms, just in researching existing (or already-engineered) organisms. Sorry.

TOON PHYSICS BIOLOGY EXCEPTION!

Anyway. It's magic.

So, think about it a bit more. Would it be OK to create permanent slave species like this? Would they thank you for it?

(though having my cat able to get his own food instead of going "MOW MOW MOW MOW FEED ME MOW MOW MOW" at 3 AM...)

I don't care what law may say, my pets are family. And interacting with them at a sentient level will make our bonds even stronger. (not to mention that if HP parameters were put into reality, the socual changes would be too big to be encompassed in a few aspects of life)

I.feel like sentient animals would quickly be given more rights as this hypothetical unfolded. Whether they would be dependents like the house pets model or considered equal to humans I can't say. But they certainly wouldn't be a "slave species." I think either way they would be just as capable of forming bonds with people. Possibly even more so given their ability to.communicate

So you think that in real life they'd be treated better than they are in the Housepets! universe.

Argent wrote:So you think that in real life they'd be treated better than they are in the Housepets! universe.

First of all, in the HPverse we already know that in Japan Tanukis have a full citizenship. Which means they are not pets. Their social position may better off than American pets.
In the US, for what we know so far, wolves could share citizenship with the human native tribes within the reservoirs. We do not know anything about the rest of the world, situations surely vary from nation to nation, for better and worse. just like us humans deal unnecessary suffering on our own kind basing on skin color and/or place of birth, language, religious beliefs, etc.

In our universe? A sentient animal would be a copernical revolution, a Djinn's bottle which, once opened, couldn't be closed again. With time, and yes, many sufferings for these 'new animals', though, things would go toward integration and peace. At least in the western world as we call it, we already live an animal-friendly culture. there would be legal heck to pay to extend such culture to the system as if for our own species, but again this is a virgin territory with too many unknwon factors to set a straight path. I am positivist.

So i can take it that you'd also wave your magic wand* and craft a companion animal in a heartbeat?

In the HP! universe, reading between the lines (and explicitly) pets have pretty much no rights, they can be abused and killed with few if any legal repercussions, and wild animals are fair game in very sense of the word. I would hope that sapient non-humans would be treated better, without the 'nature red in tooth and claw' meta-history, but would they be grateful for being created, particularly in the early days?

* Spinning is involved too.

Again:

1) we cannot possibly apply a valid social extrapolation for a fantasy scenario. Period. Any speculation is valid. We both are right and wrong, because any reasoning here is like inserting values for the Drake Equation and decide the result we like the best.
2) The HPverse is largely unexplored. The first time we heard of an exception about petdom wasvabout the Tanukis in Japan. In ancient times, animals used to be teachers, warriors alongside the humans, and magic-wielders. So we don't know what happened through history for dogs and cats to become pets with so few rights (unless, for example these two species were *always* pets, but with sentient beings I see that hard). Again, unless Rick writes down a full and complete history of this universe, any speculation is valid.

I don't think cats and dogs have fewer rights: wild animals and livestock have even fewer rights than pets: look at the "Down on the farm" thread, or the way the cats openly kill and eat birds and rodents, and Zach's comment to the forest dwellers "I hope you're not eaten".

And, yeh, we totally can extrapolate in a fantasy scenario, that's half the fun! You can disagree about the direction of the speculation, but the speculation is totally cromulent. It's like taking some SF writer's universe, where he's obviously picked the numbers he likes for the Drake equation, and try and figure out what that society would be like in areas he hasn't addressed in his books.

While I'm being the technicality stickler, animals are already sentient. What the HP! animals are and real animals aren't, however, is sapient.

good point for Sleet

Argent wrote:I don't think cats and dogs have fewer rights: wild animals and livestock have even fewer rights than pets: look at the "Down on the farm" thread, or the way the cats openly kill and eat birds and rodents, and Zach's comment to the forest dwellers "I hope you're not eaten".

And, yeh, we totally can extrapolate in a fantasy scenario, that's half the fun! You can disagree about the direction of the speculation, but the speculation is totally cromulent. It's like taking some SF writer's universe, where he's obviously picked the numbers he likes for the Drake equation, and try and figure out what that society would be like in areas he hasn't addressed in his books.

I'll be needing some time to elaborate, then.

I'll confess, here and now, that sapient, talking animals, specially canines and such, are my greatest dream, but sadly talking animals are nice things. Humans can't have nice things. They break them. Do bad stuff with them and to them. Things that most of us wouldn't even concieve.
I wish we could have them, I really do, but until mankind uses and treats nice things responsibly and all nice-like, the answer is no.

Argent wrote:(though having my cat able to get his own food instead of going "MOW MOW MOW MOW FEED ME MOW MOW MOW" at 3 AM...)

That was hilarious, but I thought you had a boa constrictor, not a cat! You know, you are one of those very few individuals that, the more they talk, the less I trust them.

Seth wrote:I.feel like sentient animals would quickly be given more rights as this hypothetical unfolded. Whether they would be dependents like the house pets model or considered equal to humans I can't say. But they certainly wouldn't be a "slave species." I think either way they would be just as capable of forming bonds with people. Possibly even more so given their ability to.communicate

They WOULD CERTAINLY be a slave race (At least during the first few centuries since their creation.), even if not explicitly said so, we would just make up some euphemism like "Fluffy people under supervision of human people." and make them believe they have more rights than they actually have.
Sapient individuals on Earth nowadays hardly ever do something if it's not practical or proffitable. Be it a better lifestyle, satisfying a need, money, or making our consciences a little easier, we don't like doing stuff if it doesn't make anyone, be it ourselves and/or someone else, feel better.
That being said, no one would spend FORTUNES on creating anthropomorphic animals just so they can live in harmony with us.
No. It would be more like the Billion Dollar Man: "We gave you life, now you gotta work for us, buddy!"
Even if it's just serving as pets and companions for humans, they would still have to probide that service.
Otherwise.... they would be disposed of.
And believe, activist can't save you when someone in power wants you gone for good.

Argent wrote:In the HP! universe, reading between the lines (and explicitly) pets have pretty much no rights, they can be abused and killed with few if any legal repercussions, and wild animals are fair game in very sense of the word. I would hope that sapient non-humans would be treated better, without the 'nature red in tooth and claw' meta-history, but would they be grateful for being created, particularly in the early days?[/size][/quote
Yes, they would be grateful for their existence, until they find out we are abusing them for being our creations.
Then, SOME of them, the ones that would wish for first-class citizenry and a place in politics, will not be THAT grateful, but will still defend their lives, and let's face it, they may get violent about it.

Sleet wrote:While I'm being the technicality stickler, animals are already sentient. What the HP! animals are and real animals aren't, however, is sapient.

Yeah, I used to use the word "Sentient" myself, until Wikipedia revealed to me that was the wrong word.
The Star Wars franchise needs to be informed of this.

Silly Zealot wrote:

Argent wrote:(though having my cat able to get his own food instead of going "MOW MOW MOW MOW FEED ME MOW MOW MOW" at 3 AM...)

That was hilarious, but I thought you had a boa constrictor, not a cat!

We have five or ten snakes, more cats than I want to think about, two anoles, a variable number of rats, and whatever wild birds and mammals my wife rescues from the cats.

Is everyone else getting ads for medical and scientific equipment, or is it just me? The latest was a really cool super-expensive visual bolometer from Fluke.

If I had that equipment I would make myself half animal.

(the DNA canisters are labelled Ebola, Termite, Beaver, Cow, and Godzilla)

Actually considering the possibilities I would just have to be a fox with opposable thumbs and big teeth and claws. It's all you need in life. That and Internet.

Ah, well, while we're dreaming, I'll go with a group mind embodied in a pack of asian small-clawed otters with thumbs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJeGS1ltDnY

Not sure if to indulge and join in into this voluntary furryfication, or remain human and exploit those who desided not to.

I thought Argent would prefer to be a ferret. With blue hair. And a backpack.
His avatar has all of that.

What, and lose the ability to send part of myself off on errands while I'm busy doing important otter things like cavorting in a babbling stream?

Well, I don't know about that, but whoever did the HTML for that page needs help. I gave up trying to get to the next strip.

Wow, an early work by Rick Griffin. That'll give those Rickeologists something to do over the weekend.
(also, how'd you find this, Zealot?)

Through a link in one of his deviantart submissions.

I also made a thread set to focus and discuss In the New Age, but almost no-one paid it a visit!

where's this thread you speak of??

There is a forum search function. Right here.