Cross Breeds

How did animals survive for millions of years with no vets to care for them?

So why do we need expensive vets for our pets. If the animal is cared for it will stay healthy until it gets old when it should be allowed to die a natural death same as it would in the wild. Or should we employ lots of vets to 'Treat' all the wild animals as well?

Public Comments

1. If you love your pet you want to keep it healthy and alive for as long as possible, and not die in the struggle for survival as animals usually do in the wild. And there are veterinary hospital that treat injured wild animals. Besides, the animals that people usually keep as pets (cats, dogs, aquarium fish and so on, disregard iguanas for a second) are artificially bred species that don't exist in nature, so "the wild" for them is a meaningless term.
2. Well, I think you kinda answered your own question, at least from a zoological point. Vets are here to care for domesticated species (mainly). The concept of domestication at least partly implies that these domesticated creatures would not survive if reintroduced into the wild fauna. Now, if you're getting at an ethics/philosophy bent, that's another question altogether. I recently brought a 4-year old dog into my household, one who was a puppy-mill dog. She had spent her entire adult life thus far being bred over and over again, trapped in a cage, being fed a diet of some gruel substance which totally destroyed her teeth. Just the other day, she had to have over twenty teeth pulled. It was expensive, yes, but hopefully her quality of life will improve greatly. There definitely is a purpose for vets.
3. How did we survive when we had no medical practitioner?....there used to be a lot of epidemics and pandemics where millions of lives were lost..infact one of the important reasons for the growth of human population is due to advancement in medicines and research which has enhanced the lives of humans.....for animals they go by the law of nature....and survival depends on the type of animal species ....not all animals were able to adapt the same way....that's why the dinosaurs became extinct so after a meteoric(or asteroid or whatever name) explosion took place they became extinct....the ability to adapt and fight for survival along with a strong immune system and a good reproductive capacity has enable those species which has these qualities to survive...and not all the species...<<why do we employ vets>>..... we want our pets to be in perfect health just like our loved ones...so we need someone who is able to understand its lifestyle and functioning to keep it healthy as long as it can.......employing lots of vets to Treat all the wild animals would be a little impractical because there are so many wild animals and each can contract so many different kinds of illnesses........ so vets can handle only certain common animals which are accessible to man...of course he can perform research on wild animals....... but treating them would not be easy.....where man has not yet finished studying his own physiology completely!!!!
4. there are a few ways to look at this. the first is that there were a lot less conditions/injuries that humans directly caused like dog fighting and such. another is that they didnt. if you were an animal with a broken leg you were pretty much done do to "survival of the fittest" if you werent fit then you didnt survive. and along the lines of the previous reason, diseases we see now in animals were wiped out because if they had an ailment then they didnt pass it on to the next generation.
5. Since when are wild animals in nature treated by vets? Sure, zoo animals have veterinary care, but as far as wild animals..they fend for themselves. Sure, some injured ones end up at rehabs, but no one goes out randomly into the wild looking to capture and treat animals with ailments..it is basically survival of the fittest as it has always been.