[HPforGrownups] Hagrid the animal abuser (was:Hagrid and Draco WAS:Re: Dumbledore...

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 166162

From: houyhnhnm102 <celizwh at intergate.com>
>Hagrid's affection for his pets would clearly be 
>anthropomorphic if they were real animals (Norbert's 
>teddy bear, for instance), but since they are not, 
>maybe we can't judge him by RL standards.  Firenze 
>commends Hagrid for the care he shows all living 
>creatures.  Maybe in the Potterverse, we are not 
>supposed to look beyond that.

He may have given Norbert a teddy bear, but he also knew, in detail, how to properly incubate the egg, how imprinting works, what to feed him, etc. In other words, he really DOES know how to care and train magical creatures. And it IS a dangerous subject; consider that Dumbledore implied that the last Care of Magical Creatures professor lost at least one limb permanently (check his official intro for Hagrid in POA). That is why I thought that Dumbledore should have asked Sprout to give Hagrid some help; Herbology seems to be similarly fraught with danger, with the books mentioning several times student injuries from the class.  

Going back to anthropomorphic animals, I also note that one of the problems in the WW is the attitude towards intelligent so-called "magical creatures", as sub-humans (even those who are capable of mating with humans and producing fertile offspring). Of course, Voldemort is taking advantage of this, but, as you point out, the "animals are not really different than humans and should have the same rights" theme is poking its head through. 

Luckily, most of the kids reading the books will probably not have occasion to have unsupervised contact with, say, owls or boa constrictors. And JKR seems to be savvy enough to make the animals with whom kids might have unsupervised contact act more like the real thing. At least in the United States, with more and more contact between suburban dwellers and deer (aka rats with antlers), bears, wild geese, coyotes, hawks, falcons, etc. making them to appear to have human like intelligence would, as you point out, endanger both the children and the animals.