Auckland, New Zealand SPCA teaching dogs to drive cars. Really.

From the "Are You Sure This Isn't A Hoax?" department (and it seems to be real): the SPCA of Auckland, New Zealand is teaching dogs to drive a specially modified Mini Cooper Countryman.

AOL News quotes the SPCA's CEO:

"Sometimes people think because they're getting an animal that's been abandoned, that somehow it's a second-class animal," SPCA Auckland CEO Christine Kalin told the New Zealand Herald. "Driving a car actively demonstrates to potential rescue dog adopters that you can teach an old dog new tricks."

Kalin added that the canines' achievements behind the wheel shows "just how much potential all dogs from the SPCA have as family pets."

All the new drivers are shelter dogs: Monty, an 18-month Giant Schnauzer, was given to the SPCA when he became too much for his owner to handle. Ginny, a 1-year-old whippets cross, was rescued from an abusive home. Porter, a 10-month old Beardie cross, was abandoned on the streets.

The BBC has video.

Great, right? What a great illustration of canine intelligence. Anyone who's lived with a dog knows how smart they can be.

Now, here's the thing: pigs are about as intelligent, if not more so, than dogs. I have no doubt that a pig could be trained to do this also. Yet most of the people who will ooh and aah over the cute video of driving dogs, will then go and pay to have pigs raised in horrid and cruel conditions, brutally slaughtered, and the corpses dismembered.

We are very good, as human beings, at drawing arbitrary lines, and treating one side of the line very differently than the other side -- whether it be by race, religion, gender, economic class, species, or whatever.