Recently, a cat called “Librarian Director”, lived more than three years in a renowned university in Beijing, has beencruelly killed on the grassland it used to play around, which caused great concerns of Nelvan Amerogen, a Dutch psychologist. She issued a report titled “A Survey of Animal Abuse and Violence from the Perspective of Psychology”, pointing out that: in recent years, animal abuse in China has been an increasingly disturbing phenomenon. The abuse, deliberately tortured or killed animals, is not isolated individual behavior; instead, it is unacceptable violence, which has a tight relationship to child abuse, family violence and other social violence. According to the research conducted by American and European professors during the past 25 years, animal abuse and family violence are likely to happen at the same time; the former is seldom isolated, but combined with illegal violence, such as robbery, attack, rape, arson, murder, etc. in other form to show the power of controlling others. The research shows that children grown up in violent environment are much more likely to commit abuse when they become adults, which is the repetition of the violent scenes they witnessed as children. Animal abuse is the alarm, warning about children’s anti-social behaviors including abuse and adults’ tendency of committing crime.
Thus, universities and colleges should pay close attention to the cases of abuse, offering psychological service to students who conduct abuses to root out the possibility of actual crimes. The education of caring for life and humanity is a process of encouraging people to care and respect other people, animals and environment, and getting aware of the inter-dependency between all kinds of lives. If children are fostered to be justice and merciful for animals, they will be much more fair, kind and considerate.
