My friend's mom was walking their dog, Dudu, in the neighbourhood last Thursday when a dog-hunting police car arrived. The mother told the officer that Dudu was a licensed dog, or a dog with a hukou. And she rushed upstairs to get the hukou.

　　The cop agreed. But before she ran back down with the licence, the dog-hunting vehicle had already vanished, along with her pet.

　　It took them a whole day to finally find the dog, which had been "imprisoned" with more than 100 other canines in a kind of concentration camp in the city's north, on Liuchang Road. The dog was frightened, thirsty and hungry. And a tooth had disappeared.

　　In Beijing, when a CCTV reporter asked a doctor fighting SARS what kind of support they needed from society, she said it was simple understanding, because some schools had persuaded their students to stay at home and companies had even asked their employees to take a long holiday.

　　Crisis is the best time to reveal human nature. We have seen numberless acts of selfless devotion by medical workers. We have witnessed a lot of generous donations for combating SARS being made by businesses and ordinary citizens.

　　But we have also seen panic buying, hostility towards people from Beijing and Guangzhou - even if they're proved to be healthy after quarantine - and, finally, the unfounded plain blame on animals for their alleged role in spreading the SARS' coronavirus.

　　Insgroupsto protect themselves, some pathetic pet owners have reportedly thrown their "companions" out of the window or bludgeoned them to death.

　　I am not a pet lover or animal rights campaigner, but neither do I think we have the right to abuse animals, not even in the situation of a crisis.

　　Excessive human development has greatly diminished the biodiversity of the earth in the last century. And if this situation is allowed to continue, it won't be long before the aggressive human species are the only creatures on the planet and surely that will be the doomsday of planet Earth.

　　How many times have we relished eating wildlife as a delicious game? How many times have we entertained ourselves by watching cruel animal shows in zoos? And how many of us have wondered whether it is right to torture animals even in the name of scientific experiments?

　　Human beings need to learn the meaning of co-existence with animals even if we believe that mankind is a stronger species.

　　We're proud of being human and being a superior race in nature, but if we don't show concern for any creature other than ourselves, this is reason enough to disqualify human beings from living on this planet.