Animal Collecting liked to autism

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A study shows that the vast majority of cat and dog collectors have autism. In Miami, an Asperger's woman was arrested and charged for animal cruelty when authorities discovered that she had over 50 cats and 24 dogs and 12 animal corpses. She refused to give up any of her animals and became combatant with authorities.

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We have a bird a cat and a dog and I am still wishing for just one more. I am attached to animals. I love animals. Take em to a zoo and I am happy. However I think I wills tick to my over abundance fo stuffed animals. Which mom has me go through for good will every once and a while or I throw them to the dog.

I can see how that might work. I don't have any real life animals, but I like to collect the dragons on the dragon cave website. I keep collecting them long after others get bored of them. I can easily imagine the temptation to do the same with real life animals.

I tend to hord stuffed animals. They aren't messy, don't require much food. Aside from the ocasional loose seam or change of batteries, they seldom require medical attention. My mom refuses to let me buy a new stuffed animal unless it is a meerkat I don't have or a Lion King I don't have or something super unusual you don't usualy see stuffed animals of like a clouded leopard or something. She never makes me try to get rid of any and when they do tend to take over my bedroom she helps me put up a shelf. I love my mom. I can see how people with Autism could tend to be horders of live animals but I am not aware of any sort of study.

Very interesting topic here. I loved dogs, but I was allergic to them. I did have an outdoor dog I loved. I collected stuffed animals.

Here is an interesting thought. I was watching a documentary on the 3 Stooges. The part on Curly was most fascinating. Away from his stooge character, he was known to be very withdrawn. They said he liked to keep to himself. As soon as a short film was finished and the director said, "cut," he was gone. Curly collected dogs---he bought a dog in every city that he performed in. As I watched this show, I couldn't help but wonder about AS traits in Curly.

Believe I have animal collecting-tendencies. Have had huge numbers of animals in the past. Birds, rodents, cats, dogs etc. Ended up giving them away because it became to much and wasn't able to care for them properly. I no longer allow myself more than 2 cats at once because I want my animals to have the best care possible.

Have an uncle with undiagnosed HFA/AS that owns over 20 cats and he has lost control over the situation. I do understand how that can happen.

What it's linked to most of all is hoarding-type OCD... a condition which often leads to social isolation. I'd be willing to bet that the proportion of autism is higher among animal hoarders; but I doubt it's the "vast majority". Unless they gauged autism on more than just "is this person eccentric and socially isolated?" (there's more to it than that), "vast majority" is probably a vast overstatement!

Animal hoarding usually develops in someone who can't resist the impulse to adopt an animal... generally they consider themselves as "rescuing" the animal (some start out as animal rescues and become overwhelmed), believing that the animal would be dead without them (sometimes true, often not). Eventually they have so many that it's impossible to take care of them properly; but their belief system doesn't allow for the concept that they would ever be unable to care for their animals, so they're unable to ask for help. What makes it worse is that if they did ask for help, and did it at the point that many animals were sick or feral, some of those animals would end up being put to sleep; and if that weren't bad enough, a hoarder's physical health often starts to decline, and criminal charges--up to and including jail time and the loss of their home--complicate things even further.

Many animal hoarders also hoard objects. It's thought that hoarders are a distinct--and treatment-resistant--class of OCD. Animal-hoarding has one of the highest relapse rates of any psychological disorder; and if a relapse occurs, things are often even worse, because now the hoarder knows exactly what happens to the animals once someone finds out you have a hundred and fifty of them in a two-bedroom house.

The best treatment for hoarding seems to be community involvement. Animal lover friends can help the hoarder take care of the animals, get them neutered, and adopt them out. The ex-hoarder needs real friends who are willing to help keep him grounded, keep the number of animals down, and prevent things from getting out of hand again. The problem is that such things are extremely hard to arrange--and a visit with a psychotherapist once a week just won't cut it. In a time when run-of-the-mill mental illnesses don't get much community support, cases where the support needs to be relatively intensive will fall through the cracks even more often than usual.

The typical end of a hoarding case is when the family commits the elderly hoarder to a nursing home. The animals are generally turned over to Animal Control, and the house is often condemned.

I was a hoarder, I hoarded stuff, I once had an 8x12 (feet) shed stacked to the rafters with stuff. Luvox helped me tremendously-once I got the right dose, I sold, gave away, or trashed all but a tiny amount of stuff. I always worry about having some of my meds interrupted. I think that some people who lived through the Depression developed situational OCD, because they hoarded money or broken appliances or canned food. I also think that OCD is a common autism comorbid.

I had hundreds of animals of all different types, but then again I was living on a ranch in a rural area. I wouldn't call it hoarding exactly. We did have over 20 cats at one point though. Thing is most of them were good at hunting small prey so they didn't eat as much cat food.

Of all people, the people who participate in this board should be alarmed about the idea of criminalizing mental illness. Labeling hoarders as "mentally ill" actually seems to provoke the legal system to damage these people. Police and so-called animal control officers actually like to mess with the mentally ill because who will believe them?

Can relate to Callista's post. Come from a family of hoarders, and many have strong OCD traits. Have some OCD traits myself and hoard just about anything.

Have tried reading about OCD to find out if I have that but can't seem to relate to the typical OCD symptoms (worrying about germs, repeatedly checking the stove and stuff like that). Does OCD present itself differently when it occurs together with autism?

Hoarding-type OCD runs in my family. My parents hoard stuff and animals. My great uncle was a classic case of an animal and other stuff hoarder...his case was pretty extreme...he lived a life of complete social isolation and had to be forcibly removed from his house. He was placed in another house and hoarded stuff there too...even if he hadn't hoarded, he would have been seen as eccentric.
His brother, my paternal grandfather was also a hoarder of stuff..and both of them, all hoarding aside...were most likely were on the autistic spectrum...though I guess I could be wrong...They were certainly eccentric anyhow....

Please don't tell me that OCD-hoarding is not at least somewhat related to the spectrum....
It is one of the main reasons I believe that AS runs in my family (of architects and engineers)
I will understand though, if the record needs to be set straight.

I hoard stuff, but I do not hoard animals. Growing up in an animal hoarding household...mostly cats...kinda gave me an aversion to animal hoarding...