I mentioned in my last blog that I am an animal care
volunteer at The NY Aquarium. I enjoy the work I do and I love the time I get
with all the animals, so the subject of animal rights hits very close to home.
It’s no surprise to see how much animals bring to the
consumer table. People will spend their money and their free time going to zoos
just to see a tiger, bear, or lion. Now don’t worry, I’m not dismissing or
judging zoos or aquariums. I happen to find most facilities a good thing and
argue against the negative backlash that has shown up in recent years. I am
aware however to the notions of animal cruelty in certain places and the rights
of these animals, and no, I’m not talking about SeaWorld.
We learned about advertising and one of the biggest selling
advertisements is of course one that features animals. I’m not going to lie,
seeing any type of animal plays on my emotions and affects the animal-lover
side of me, as it does for almost everyone else. It’s why circuses featuring
animals, or zoos and aquariums gain as much popularity as they do. It engages
children as well as plays on the childlike emotions of the adults. That’s why
watching the documentary How I Became an Elephant was very responsive
to me.
This film documents Juliette West’s trip to Thailand where
she got to see firsthand the abuse elephant’s face being in the entertainment
industry. It’s hard to watch the graphic nature of some of the footage but it
demonstrates the impression of what these animals, that display emotions, feel
just to give us, the people, satisfaction. You think it’s cool to hitch a ride
on the back of an elephant but fail to recognize the pain it’s enduring. It’s a
real eye-opener and the graphic content of the whippings and displays of
stereotypies in elephants does keep you engaged unfortunately. It’s difficult
to imagine this sort of thing happening, but it’s great to see the
contributions Lek (the elephant lady featured) does to help save these massive
and beautiful creatures. I must not have been the only one affected by this because
as of recently, Ringling Bros. Circus has decided to phase out their elephant
acts in their shows. You can read more about it in this New York Times Article,
“A Bittersweet Bow for the Elephant” by Janet Davis.
While the news of elephant acts lessening throughout the
entertainment industry is a good thing, I can’t help but notice the title.
“Bittersweet” is not the word I would use because it’s not bittersweet for the
elephants performing tricks that wouldn’t benefit them in the wild. There’s a short story called I Am Blue? by Alice Walker and in this piece, Walker writes
about a lone horse she sees in the field by her home. She begins to develop
this routine with feeding apples to Blue (the horse) and this is when she
starts to understand to her full extent that animals have emotions just like
us. Now I know that might sound ridiculous. Some of you are probably saying, “Well
of course animals have emotions and feelings.” But this correlates back to what
Davis was saying. It’s only bittersweet for us to see the elephants go, not the
other way around. So if we can acknowledge that these animals display emotions
like us, why do we choose to ignore it for our own amusement? But the way
Walker portrays this is beautifully written. She writes in a clear way, that
almost puts you in her shoes, or rather more importantly, Blue’s hooves. “He
looked always and always toward the road down which his partner had gone. And
then, occasionally, when he came for apples, or I took apples to him, he looked
at me. It was a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human, I almost laughed.” You follow Blue’s emotions and it packs
a punch because it allows you as the reader to understand what it’s like to
live this mundane routine of life.
Linda Hogan (not Hulk Hogan’s wife) takes a different
approach. In her book Dwellings
there’s a short story called “Deify the Wolf,” where Hogan talks about the
lives of wild Timber wolves and what they mean to nature and how the rest of
the world views them. There was one instance in which, Hogan and a group of
other individuals come across dead wolves and someone wants to take a picture
with one as if they hunted and killed it themselves. I couldn’t believe it and
frankly I was disgusted. These are wild animals and while Hogan didn’t put you
in “the shoes” of these wolves, she showed you how others see wolves and
animals in general. If anything it made it known, we are the problem. “More than
any other animal, they mirror back to us the predators we pretend not to be.”
This is where I might stray from the ideals of my fellow peers
as well as these advocates. Zoos and aquariums are not the problem and this can
be demonstrated through the documentary The Cove, though Ric O’Barry would be against the statement I just made.
Being a marine science major and my focus being on marine mammals this film was
difficult for me to watch. 23,000 dolphins are being trapped and slaughtered in
this one location for their meat. I couldn’t stand to watch the injured baby dolphin
bleed out as it tries to swim to safety before going down under and not
surfacing back up. Sadly though it’s a reality that needs to be faced. Unlike How I Became an Elephant, this
documentary compared what they were doing to Ocean’s 11. They needed to sneak cameras into “The Cove” just to
film the footage of the Taiji dolphin slaughter, because of the measures the
Japanese dolphin hunters have gone in order to protect the images of the
slaughter from leaking to the public. For those of those you wondering if this
is anything like Blackfish, I can assure you it’s not. While there are subtle hints
against captivity, the main focus is on this cove in Taiji, Japan, where this
despicable act taking place. Animals and animal rights need to be protected.
They aren’t here to serve as our amusement, they are more than that.
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