In humans, we don’t usually castrate them because it throws their hormones out of whack, and causes all kinds of issues, but wouldn’t that also be the case for some animals, since their hormones systems are fairly similar?
Why is it that that we remove the testicles entirely, rather than giving them vasectomies like we do for humans?
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In humans, we don’t usually castrate them because it throws their hormones out of whack
I think you’re right, it also causes hormonal changes in animals. It’s just that usually we see those hormonal changes as beneficial behavior changes, like lower aggression. So in part we do it on animals to affect their hormones deliberately. For instance castrated cats usually have a lower tendency to pee in the places they shouldn’t.
At least in people, though, doing that can also cause problems like bone density loss, which seems like it might cause more health issues than it would otehrwise help.
That’s the case in doing it too early in animals as well, especially noticable in larger breeds. There’s been a longtime pushback for dogs to get spayed / neutered at later ages, than one size fits all.
Also there are other interesting studies that differ between humans and animals, such as the lifespan of animals that are neutered / spayed tends to be longer than the other way around, and supposedly in humans it’s the opposite.
I didn’t do a ton of vetting when I was researching the information though, so I don’t know how well the studies were controlled and what they accounted for.
Edit: Also some vets do offer vasectomies as an alternative to neutering, but it is usually far more expensive.
spayed/neutered humans do live longer than their intact counterparts. There was a paper on Thai men who were castrated to serve as royal guards. IIRC, they lived 17 years more than average.
I can’t speak for all other animals, but I imagine it’s often for similar reasons as why they do it for cats: removing the hormones means they’re much less likely to display unwanted behaviors such as marking/spraying, territorial aggression (fighting) towards other cats, and roaming. Those behaviors all stem from the desire to mate, and if they don’t have testosterone from the testicles, they don’t experience the desire to mate. Unless you don’t mind the smell of concentrated cat urine everywhere, adult male cats with testicles don’t make very great house pets.
With female cats, they completely remove the ovaries (rather than doing a tubal ligation) for similar reasons. If they did a tubal ligation instead, the cat would still go into heat, meaning lots of yowling and trying to escape, and an increased risk of marking/spraying, just no longer able to get pregnant. In my region, they also usually remove the uterus, but it appears that varies globally.
its crazy that its possible to mod a cat
efficiency. i bet its 10 times quicker to lop them off than surgically tie the tubes
I always though they lob them off, but in reality the inside of the testicles is taken out and the skin “bags” remain andbin time the skin just evens out down there.
At least that’s how our vet did it.
Yes, the testicles are removed and they don’t cut material off the ballsack.
Relate question, why don’t animal get tons of health issue like osteoporosis ? Or the get it but no one cares as they’llbe slaughtered for Meat.
They do, but don’t live as long as humans. So it doesn’t progress as far.
Because you want that hormonal changes in your pets.
