Summary of my survey

Hello.

  I conducted a survey on animal rights the other day and now I will show you the results.


  I got 23 participants, 6 males and 17 females, including 18 Japanese, 4 American and 1 says White.

   In the No.1 question, "Do you think animals have rights?", about 48% answered yes. They think animals have rights to live, or same rights as human. However, about 40% answered I don't know, so I guess those 40% haven't really thought about this issue before. I hope this survey became a opportunity or motivation for them to think about it in some way!

   In the question No.2, "Have you ever donated or contributed in some way to any organizations or groups which work for animal rights?", 65% said no. I checked the nationality and only one american answered this as no, and other 4 said yes. This means most of the 65% were Japanese. I asked the youth PETA to promote my survey on their twitter, and they replied to say they can't, but some people saw my tweets to youth PETA kindly participated it, so I guess the American participants are relatively interested in this issue than my Japanese friends, and this will be the one reason for this result, but I think Japan is less aware of the issue comparing to a country like America. This is only my guess, but there is a tendency to think animals as objects or products in Japan. For example, Japan's famous "kawaii" culture, people love kawaii stuffs. They buy anything they think it's kawaii and want to keep it. Like puppies. However, a puppy grows up. When they get bigger and the owner doesn't think it's not kawaii any more, what happens? This is one reason, not the biggest reason, but one why there are many animals in shelters in Japan.

  In the questions "Do you think animals have feelings?" and "Do you think animals feel pain?" Almost all the people said yes. On the other hand, many says they don't object to zoos or aquariums or pet stores. From this result, I concluded that people are still not aware of the situations of those animals for entertainment and pet stores. This is probably because pet industry is huge in Japan, and  zoos and aquariums are also one of the big businesses in Japan. Especially the pet store issue is not generally known yet, so I really want to inform people about pet mills and inhumane breeders.


  That is why I chose this topic for our NGO "Best Friends For Pets."  This NGO try to make young people in Japan aware of the suffering animals (especially dogs and cats) by puppy mills and breeders, and want them to know they can save the animals. We want people to know that animals aren't objects, they are not born to please humans, they are living individuals just like us.
  Targeting young people is efficient we think, because they have power to change the future. We want each person to realize that the one is a part of the big movement to make greater future for not only humans but also all creatures.
   To get young people's attention, we use Instagram as our web page. Nowadays, SNS greatly influence and inspire young people's behaviors and lives. Twitter has the largest user population, but Instagram requires users to post pictures. That means people see the images first, so we think visual images have more power to get attention. So we work on Instagram.

  Some of the images we post can be shocking to you, but we want you to see it, because that is what's happening around you, that's how animals suffer behind our demands. We want you to know it's something related to your life. We want you to know you can change it. So we don't want you to look away. There are so many lives waiting for you to save them.

   Our presentation didn't go very well, but we welcome your participation any time! ( I don't have the feedback papers from my classmates so it is on my partners post.)

Please check our page @BestFriendsForPets on Instagram!