[quote name='UncleBob']'meh. Like I said, it just seems horribly wrong to me to mutilate the genitals of any creature just because you want to modify the animal's behavioral instincts.
Why do we round up dogs and cats and put them into shelters in the first place? We don't round up birds, rats, squirrels, etc., etc.. Dogs and Cats can survive quite well in the wild. Just ask
Australia
Sure, stray dogs and cats may fall prey to other animals, cold/hot weather, lack of food source, etc., etc... But these are all conditions that effect "natural" animals in the wild as well? What is it about dogs and cats that makes us humans feel the need to "protect" them (even when "protecting" them means killing them)?[/quote]
Because dogs and cats exist solely because we created them. Hence, we have some responsibility for how they interact with native species. Before humans domesticated them, there were only wolves and various breeds of predatory cats. Thousands of generations of deliberate breeding and domestication produced what we now recognize as dogs and cats. This is not true of the wild birds, rats, squirrels, etc. that exist around us (although you could argue that they too have been dramatically affected by their proximity to us over the generations).
And yes, Australia's wild dogs and cats get along just fine.....to the detriment of pretty much every other animal in the ecosystem. They're a huge problem, one Australia would dearly love to get a handle on. So not such a good example, really.
Benjamouth: Fun fact - until recently, serial sex offenders WERE castrated, both as punishment and to dramatically limit their sex drive and/or aggressive tendencies. It's actually been in the news recently, because, as Governor, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee pardoned a serial rapist who had been castrated. Unfortunately, he then went on to rape and murder more women. More recently, they've started using hormones to suppress the sex drives of sex offenders.
More info here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2179388/