A Entomology student who was blasted by animal lovers after he joked on Facebook that he had killed a cat to use its skeleton for a class assignment now claims he didn’t actually kill the cat, and that it had died from a car accident.
The Kasetsart University senior student, Thitipong Kosonchantarayon, apologized in a press conference yesterday after his horrific Facebook posts, which featured a photo of him washing a cat’s corpse and bragging to his friends about how he killed it, drew criticism from animal activists and netizens.
Thitipong told reporters yesterday that it was actually a jokey setup between him and a few friends to scare other friends on Facebook.
“The unofficial way to explain it is that ‘it was only a joke’. We talked in private that we were gonna trick other people on Facebook,” Thitipong said, referring to his group of friends.
But how did he obtain the dead cat? Prof. Dr. Supa Narnnongbua, head of the Faculty of Science, told the reporters that the student said he came home to find someone had left a dead cat’s body with his mom.
“The student came home to find that his neighbors had given his mom a cat’s corpse because they thought the cat belonged to his family,” Dr Supa said.
“As his mother was waiting for someone to help bury it, the student asked if he could use the corpse for his project and informed the class’s lecturer that the cat died in a car accident.”
The cat’s skeleton is now displayed at the Zoological Museum at the university.
Thitipong reportedly took the Museum Collection class two years ago when groups of students were given a mouse’s corpse to work on for a project, but Thitipong’s group damaged their mouse and had to find a new animal’s corpse.
Thitipong was the one who prepared the cat’s corpse and brought it to his group to use in the class — which would explain the dead-cat-washing photo.
The university also discussed another photo of six dead rabbits on Thitipong’s Facebook page, which he originally claimed he had killed by ripping their heads off.
But the university said there was another explanation.
“His neighbor’s rabbits were bitten by a dog, so the student asked them if he could have the dead rabbits for his project,” said Dr Supa.
Thitipong did not receive punishment over the postings, but Dr Supa said the professors will keep a close watch on him.
“This happened because I was reckless and thought it wasn’t going to be a big issue,” Thitipong said. “This has caused trouble to many people and animal lovers as well as Kasetsart University. I’d like to apologize for that.”
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Activists enraged by student who claims he killed neighbor’s cat to collect skeleton
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