Ethics, Morality & Compassion

[Steve Gibson]

When all is said and done — aside from my interest in seeing whether I can shatter a glass with this technology — we ARE generally talking about deliberately bothering the lives of animals with the acoustic output of these devices. I addressed this important issue in my introductory posting, but because I really DO feel that this is important I wanted to create a place and topic where this issue can be further discussed and explored.

[Jason McClanahan]

Yikes this got long; TL/DR version: I personally believe it’s ok, as long as it’s used to modify the animal’s behavior and could actually be beneficial to the animal.

Having grown up on a farm, I’ve discovered that what is innocuous to me is considered harmful by others, so my opinion might not stand for the majority (but I’ll hazard it might for most of the rural folk). :-)

There are a few things to consider when examining the morality/ethicality of such a device. The primary question is: what is the user’s intent? If it’s for the thrill of watching the animal squirm, then there’s a problem, but if it’s to be used to modify the animal’s behavior, then, as long as it doesn’t cross certain boundaries, I don’t have a problem with it. Such boundaries would be things like causing excessive or permanent pain. A short amount of pain, quickly delivered and quickly removed, can effectively be used to modify behavior.

Personal anecdote: As I said, I grew up on a farm. (Full disclosure: My parents were not farmers, but all of my mother's relatives are, and my mother was until she married a park ranger, who had views very similar to the farmer relatives. I grew up in the middle of their combined land and helped out frequently, but got to avoid [most of] the 3 AM “find the cow before she dies trying to give birth” wake-ups.) ANYways, almost all of the relatives had cattle at one time or another. Cattle are notorious for finding ways to get out of pastures. And they’re persistent devils too. If they figure out that a particular section of fence is weak, they’ll keep trying and keep trying it until it gives and they get out. Do a bad repair job and a week later you’re going to be chasing a dozen cows across 3 miles of fields again. In addition, cows seem to have particularly itchy hides, and what’s the best thing available to scratch with? You guessed it, the barbed wire fence. Itchy hides that are apparently thick enough to shrug off multiple sharp pieces of metal. The fix? Electrify the fence. Now if Bessie noses the fence or rubs up against it, she’s going to have quite the shocking experience. But it ends as soon as she backs up, and there’s no lasting effect other than the cow going “Moo!” [Translation: “WTH?! That hurt!”] (Well … except for that one cow, but she was standing in water and was sick to begin with, poor thing.) Enough times and she’ll [hopefully] learn to not engage the fence. So, short term pain: a zap of electricity, for a long term gain: cows don’t get out, time’s not lost hunting them down, and innocent people are not at risk of going around a curve and suddenly having a thousand pounds of extremely fresh beef in the front seat with them. In other words, the cows receive a short, painful jolt of electricity in order to prevent them from risking being put down due to a broken leg or two. (That’s another side effect of growing up in the country, “Fido’s sick and it’s going to cost HOW much to treat him? Uh, how much to have him euthanized?”)

How does this huge ramble of an anecdote apply? Some areas have strict rules concerning animal noises, especially neighborhoods with Home Owner Associations. A lot of them have rules about animal noises and the owners of an incessantly barking dog could suddenly find themselves with a notice stating that their dog either shuts up or moves out. Getting rid of the dog runs the significant risk of it being taken to a pound where the chances are good that the animal will be euthanized. Not to mention the heartbreak some kid has when her dog gets taken away.

Ok, good intention check, does it still make it moral/ethical: maybe, maybe not. Do it wrong and it’s as bad as intentionally mistreating the animal. Have the setting too high and the animal could be injured is one way to do it; but I’m thinking more along the lines of being inconsistent. Few things drive me as batty as watching people haphazardly applying discipline, be it with their pets or their children. Mixed signals only causes stress and problems for all parties involved. So, if somebody wants to do this, they need to keep to a regime and not just blast the neighbor’s dog when there’s company over.

There’s also the risk of the neighbor figuring out what’s going on and having a fit about it. That’s getting into an area I’m not comfortable stating an opinion on without more consideration. I will say that it could easily go bad for the PSB user if the owner claims that they’re tormenting the animal, especially if it’s behind a fence and is not a direct physical threat to the person.

Then there's the whole angle of: is it any different than bark collars and invisible fences that use shocks to control the animal? Off the cuff I'd say yes. A bark collar or invisible fence is the owner applying discomfort to their animal, e.g. internal use whereas a PSB is a non-owner applying a similar method to somebody else's animal, e.g. external use.  (And yes, I know that properly set it's not pain but a variable degree of discomfort, but that goes back to the preceding paragraph and how the owner might interpret discomfort vs. pain.)

[steveg...@gmail.com]

Steve

The “Portable Dog Killer” potentially has less ethical uses. Back in 1988, an ultrasonic gun - disguised as a pair of binoculars - was used to try to prevent a horse winning a race at Ascot racecourse outside London, UK.

See  http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-01/sports/sp-229_1_ultrasonic-gun

Steve

[tz2...@gmail.com]

My interest is for my car and/or motorcycle where it might get deer or other animals to NOT try to get in or stay in my path which could be fatal for one or both of us.

If you saw all the dead mangled deer and other animals, and if there was something that would get them off the road, it would help everyone.  I have an amp on my motorcycle that should be loud enough (cyclesounds.com).

[Damage]

If the sound of the engine on the motorcycle doesn't scare them I don't know what will.  I don't think it's an issue of them being scared.  They are already scared, which is why they freeze up like "a deer in the headlights".  I suppose they 'think' that if they remain still the predator will pass them by.

[tz]

My bike isn't that loud and it's the wrong frequency even if I
exhausted my other options. Dogs also can be a problem.

[Ian Wright]

Hi, I'm not so sure "It could be beneficial to the animal" is a a very good justification, and I would be wary of using it.

The main reason dogs bark incessantly is because they are unhappy. The most common reason, particularly with big dogs that are problem barkers, is because they are not payed enough attention and/or not given enough excersise.

I have researched problem dogs a lot, for the same reason most do - I have not just one next door, but I live in a poor neighborhood of small houses and yards and many people insist on having either one big dog or many medium size ones as "Guard Dogs".

Of course the problem is lack of consideration or education of dog owners - a dog that barks too much is about as much use as a dog that barks too little. The dog that cried "Wolf!" if you like.

The other thing is, big dogs need not just exercise, but also interaction - the need their brains and reactions exercised as much as anything.

So the dog that is just left in a yard and a house is an unhappy dog. Great example is my next door neighbor - I knocked a few times to politely ask that they stop their Alsatian jump at our wall and bark like crazy every time I go in the yard... only to be told "It's a guard dog, it can't be trained.".

Which of course is not a smart thing to say... what defines a guard dog? I believe it's the dogs training.

But anyway, I digress. This project seems to be a last resort - their is always going to be risk using such a device.

Talking to neighbors should always be the first port of call, although it rarely brings a response. However having tried can be useful further down the line.

Second port of call is local Animal Control. The effect of calling Animal Control varies locality to locality. Where we are, three complaints and three logs from different neighbors will have a dog removed. After the first call, they send someone to the dogs residence. If it carries on it's time to call on the neighbors, who nine times out of ten it seems are either too chicken to get involved or simply aren't as bothered as the person directly next to the offending residence.

If animal control are no use, call the local (Not 911 of course!) police at the weekend when animal control are out of hours... if you catch someone manning the phones with some sympathy you could get a result. Not likely, but worth a go. We scored lucky there and it (seems so far) to have had an affect.

After that though, it seems you are on your own. If you look at local city or town laws you will find you are actually protected. People have gone to a civil court before and had results, of course be prepared for an unreasonable neighbor to hate your guts. Animal control and police are anonymous, civil court is not.

Frankly, at this point myself and my wife have exhausted all avenues, and we pretty much know it will start again next door. I am limited on technical knowledge but I will be watching this project, I have found this is a huge worldwide problem as well as one I suffer from. I applaud Steve for stepping up and looking at it, there is no real last ditch solution as of yet.

Also, people have pointed out something like this could have ethical issues if not used for it's intended purpose by the creator(s).

Well, so is a kitchen knife if you stab someone (Like your socially ignorant next door neighbor who won't train their dog and have some respect for other peoples peace and quiet). Science and technology is full of examples, from handguns to computers to cars to TNT.

If anything, this could save a lot of work for paramedics and police - neighbors coming to blows or worse is a huge suck on their time and attention.

My rather long winded point is I think, that it should be noted something like this should be a last resort after using the law machine has been exhausted and hits a brick wall. Everyone has the right to be in their home or walk down the street undisturbed by other peoples ignorance.

[Ian Wright]

Sorry Jason, I picked out one line. I agree with pretty much everything else you said, their certainly would be a lot of angles to look at before using such a device.

When I spoke about less ethical issues, I was referencing someone else in this topic.

My Google Groups experience is not great, I apologize for any confusion!

[Steve Gibson]

Thanks for your post Ian.  I agree with everything that you said.  And I certainly agree that any and all non-technical solutions should always be attempted first.  In fact, in all the horror stories I've heard, that's always been the case.  I think that most people would naturally attempt and hope to resolve such problems with the problem pet's owners first.  I know that all of my own friends have, and I have been direct witness to my best friend's efforts at amicable solution.

[David Thomas]

As with any tool, it is neutral until used. Hammers can build or destroy a home.

[Ian Wright]

The more I think about it, the more uses I'm seeing use for something like this as an ethical alternative to a few things.

- Law enforcement often has to deal with agressive dogs guarding premises they need to enter, sometimes the don't want to giving warning to their presence. (As do some military.)

- It may need different frequencies, but something that could disrupt an angry bear may be something people traveling on foot in the wild could prefer to carry rather than a gun for protection. 

- A larger non portable version could help with problems such as rats or even insects for largely unattended farm buildings. 

- If it works for dogs, then it should also affect wolves and coyotes. They can obviously both be a problem in rural areas all over.

- Bird scaring for agriculture/gardening - it would beat the hell out of loud bangs, hook up a/some car batteries to a device in the middle of a field/garden.

I'm sure there are a million and one others.... if designs can become reality and practical to manufacture, first to market will probably do very well. I appreciate this is not done for money, but I think it's worth noting it's impact could be quite a large one.

[Steve Gibson]

One of the benefits such a device would have, for wild animal handling, is that the effect generated at the animal would be absolutely outside of its life experience.  

This is an important point I made during my original PDK podcast:  I wanted to SURPRISE the aberrant canine.  It was in NO WAY necessary to harm it, and I never did.  It was only necessary to shock it out of its own arrogance regarding its right to terrify passers by.

I believe that the natural selection evolutionary process has conditioned ALL animals -- humans included -- to fear the unknown, since something we haven't encountered before might well be lethal to us.  So, from an evolutionary survival standpoint, it's better to run away to live (and reproduce) another day.  Those creatures who lacked such a flight instinct often became something's dinner and were thus unable to reproduce.  Consequently, evolution, which is all about optimal survival strategies, strongly favored the strategy of fleeing from the completely unknown.

I would imagine that blasting a approaching beast with something the likes of which it has NEVER before encountered would cause it to instantly rethink any planned attack in favor of getting the heck out of the area.

[Steve Gibson]

The importance of four decades...

My continued research is bearing some unanticipated fruit: It appears that, at least in the case of crows (which are particularly smart (and loud) birds) there is probably a means of startling them at a great distance without in any way "blasting" them.

It turns out that there's an entirely different way of dealing with animals which DOES NOT INVOLVE blasting them with anything that's at all loud. Instead, we use "hypersonic heterodyning" by amplitude modulating ultrasound at audio frequencies. It turns out that the propagation of sound waves through the air does not happen linearly at high sound pressures. The speed of sound through a medium is a function of the medium's instantaneous temperature and pressure. And high pressure sound causes localized warming of the air, which changes the sound's velocity from wave to wave.  This creates a non-linear response occurring within the ultrasonic beam itself ... which essentially means that we are able to cause an ultrasonic beam to "mix down" or "heterodyne" with itself.  So from ultrasonic, comes sonic.

The result is an audible lower frequency sound that resolves itself AT the listener's head. This would/should have the effect of startling the listener, since the affect appears to be something located RIGHT next to them. My guess is that this would work well with birds to move them away without hurting them in the slightest. Crows, which are both wary and smart, would probably quickly learn that "those trees are haunted!" and steer clear of them, choosing to alight elsewhere.

So, we SOLVE the entire ethics/morality/compassion problem by creating a new technology that we could aim directly at humans ... and all they'd hear is someone whispering loudly. But when aimed at animals the effect of someone whispering loudly in their ear would startle them WITHOUT in any way damaging them. (Unless, I suppose, they fell out of their tree! :)

[shadowcom...@gmail.com]

A while back I read about a new type of speaker for surround sound systems that somehow generated the sound so that only you would hear it instead of blasting it into the whole room. I don't recall the name of the company that was designing it, but this technology you are describing sounds like the same thing. There is an old article from usa today talking about the technology - http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-05-19-hss_x.htm It's an interesting idea anywhow.

[Steve Thompson]

Right this is the same technology mentioned in the speaker thread, in fact it is the same technology used in "audio handcuffs" that protect cruise ships.  I think that this idea is great especially since the only creatures aware of the sound would be the crows.  The various noise levels or sounds that urge them to move along is a different matter of experimentation entirely. 

As far as ethics are concerned, I don't think that annoying an animal that is annoying you is unethical.  This also would allow for use on canines (or any other animal) in the audible range.  Personally, I like the idea as an experiment to see what could be accomplished with such a device.  I don't have any annoying animals in my life, but occasionally there are people that like to hang around outside my building and cause all kinds of ruckus.  Being able to blast them with some Beethoven so as not to disturb anyone else would be truly great.  I don't have any ethical issues with this whatsoever.  Likewise being able to shatter glass and achieve resonance would be pretty wild as well.