Boredom, exposure to domestic violence among reasons people abuse animals: Experts

SINGAPORE – From amusement to displacement of anger, psychologists said that people abuse animals for a wide variety of reasons.

Promises Healthcare senior forensic psychologist June Fong told The Straits Times that some people abuse animals to relieve negative feelings like loneliness and frustration. Others do it as a form of retaliation, against the animal or its owner.

In December 2022, a cat died after a boy allegedly threw it off the 22nd storey of an Housing Board flat in Boon Lay.

Meanwhile, a teenage boy was arrested after a video showing him trying to perform obscene acts on a tabby cat in Bukit Panjang went viral.

The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) told The Straits Times that 2023 has seen a “disproportionately high number” of cat abuse cases in 2023. It investigated 11 such cases from January to March. In comparison, it probed 16 cases in the whole of 2022 and 11 cases in 2021.

These instances of youths abusing animals could be due to boredom or a desire to seek thrills, but Ms Fong said that a history of domestic violence and childhood abuse could also play a part.

“If a child has witnessed someone else torturing an animal or hurting someone without consequence, they learn that it is not wrong to hurt another person or animal,” she said.

And while a youth and an adult may experience similar urges of hurting an animal, Ms Fong said youths tend to be more impulsive, being less capable of exerting the necessary self-control or mental reasoning to rein those urges in.

“Youths may also lack the ability to think about long-term consequences. They may see animals as an ‘easier’ target, especially so for stray animals, as the youth might think that nobody will notice if something happens to it,” she said.

Dr Annabelle Chow, clinical psychologist at Annabelle Psychology, said some youths may engage in sexual intercourse or sexual behaviour with animals out of curiosity or to seek affection, but there are other factors like intellectual impairment.

She also noted that there are links between being a victim or witness of sexual abuse in childhood and engaging in animal sexual abuse.

“Childhood victims who experience such adverse traumatic events are at higher risk of committing animal and sexual abuse in later life,” said Dr Chow.

Ms Lynn Tan, clinical psychologist at The Psychology Practice, said that among many reasons, individuals may also hurt animals to impress their friends or for entertainment.

She noted that while there are no local numbers that indicate that cats are more susceptible to abuse as compared to dogs, cats may remain targets of abuse owing to their smaller sizes, accessibility, and some of their behaviour traits like responses when being attacked.

The history and associations Singapore has towards cats, including their perceived “invulnerability” derived from the saying that cats have nine lives, beliefs about black cats and luck, or attitudes towards strays, may have contributed to them being targets, she added.