{"id":335361,"date":"2026-03-12T12:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/335361\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T12:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:37:09","slug":"rescuing-baby-animals-may-amount-to-kidnapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/335361\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rescuing\u2019 baby animals may amount to kidnapping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many kidnapped animals, particularly prey species and ungulates, experience extreme stress and are susceptible to capture myopathy<\/a>, a metabolic disease that exhausts the muscles, causes organ damage, and is almost always is fatal, sometimes within minutes. \u201cIt’s basically like they get so stressed\u2026it can lead them into kidney failure, heart issues, and they often die from it,\u201d Barth says.<\/p>\n

And high enough cortisol levels\u2014also driven by stress\u2014can trigger a heart response, especially when paired with dehydration, says Erica Miller, an expert in wildlife medicine and veterinarian with the Wildlife Futures Program<\/a> at the University of Pennsylvania. Stress and a poor diet can also cause an imbalance of bacteria in a rabbit or deer\u2019s GI tract, leading to a deadly infection.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

As if all of this weren\u2019t bad enough, in some states, the mere act of taking an animal is legally a death sentence. Miller says that rehabbers in Pennsylvania counties with chronic wasting disease\u2014a contagious and fatal neurological condition\u2014are not allowed rehabilitate deer to avoid the spread. This can lead to euthanasia once the deer is brought to a rescue. In Arkansas and Nebraska, it\u2019s illegal to rehab deer statewide, so a kidnapping is a death sentence if the deer isn\u2019t immediately returned to the exact spot. It\u2019s also illegal to rehab some rabies-vector species in some states, so a baby raccoon, for example, would likely be euthanized in Idaho<\/a>, regardless of their health status.<\/p>\n

Looks like a duck, thinks it\u2019s a person<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the chance that a kidnapped animal will imprint on a human. This is especially common with ducks and deer. Imprinting is a way that newborn animals learn who they are, including species-specific behavior. For example, a duck raised by a human might not realize they\u2019re a duck. Imprinting is often an irreversible process. And when there\u2019s nowhere else for an imprinted animal to go, such as a local sanctuary that houses permanent residents, many imprinted animals are euthanized if they don\u2019t lose their fear of humans.<\/p>\n

Barth remembers one kidnapped fawn in pain from bloat who had already imprinted on humans by the time she arrived at the Alberta clinic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many kidnapped animals, particularly prey species and ungulates, experience extreme stress and are susceptible to capture myopathy, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[46011,2594,5373,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-335361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-animal-rescue","tag-animals","tag-deer","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}