The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in Australia has issued a severe penalty to an Australian teen as she forced a quokka to vape.
Quokka, a marsupial is a short-tailed scrub wallaby. The quokka is standing on its back legs and furiously licking the e-cigarette gadget. Perhaps, it mistook it for food in a video. Later, the adolescent Australian teen put the gadget down the quokka’s throat, forces quokka to vape
When the authorities got hold of the video, they immediately started an investigation into this matter. They were calling it “completely and utterly irresponsible and unacceptable for this poor defenseless, vulnerable animal to be subjected to that kind of cruelty,” RSPCA WA executive manager Hannah Dreaver told 9News.
If and when cops capture the offender, she will face a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Also, monetary penalties of AUD 50,000 for animal cruelty.
Animal cruelty
Quokkas are in the category of vulnerable to extinction. “Those animals are really, really vulnerable,” Dreaver said. “They’ve become used to human interaction so they’re not running away from us” but are instead “actually seeking it out”.
The RSPCA has issued a warning to individuals not to engage in such acts of cruelty. Thereby, emphasizing that not every food or liquid is a part of their natural diet. Foods and liquids apart from their natural diet are extremely damaging to them.
Authorities caution that alcohol can “potentially kill an animal as small as this”. It was after a young teenager was feeding alcohol to a quokka. The authorities fined the teenager too.
“What concerns us is that people do this and post it on social media thinking it’s funny when it is actually intentional cruelty that can have severe or fatal effect on the animal,” authorities said.
