Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Assignment16 - Sarah Palmer


Animals in Captivity 

Imagine it’s spring break and this year your parents said that you all were going to SeaWorld. Or even that you all are just going to the zoo. Personally, I would be thrilled! I would get to see beautiful orcas and dolphins and elephants and tigers. I would learn all about them and see how they behave and live in real life.

          But in all actuality, this is not how these animals live in nature and they are suffering. The workers are inflicting violence on them and in turn the animals on the workers. Their enclosures are nothing like their natural environment and it’s affecting their psychological and physical health.

          Before we get ahead of ourselves we will discuss why we keep them in captivity. Some people argue that it is for educational purposes and this is the only way to fully learn about wild animals. That would make sense, there are plaques all over zoos and aquariums that tell information about the exhibits. For example, when SeaWorld had their “Believe” show featuring the orcas they would have a slide going in the back with information about them. The slides would tell you about how their average life span is 20 years and how in the wild they all have different shaped dorsal fins like the ones in their show have. And the life span is 20 years for orcas in captivity. It is 30 to 50 years for orcas in the wild. In the wild less than 20% of orcas have a collapse dorsal fin, meaning that instead of standing straight up it flops over on one side. However, in the 100% of the males in captivity have collapsed dorsal fins. And I’m not discounting all the facts they say, some of them are true, but for it to be completely educational it would have to be completely true.

So why else would we keep them? According to ElephantVoice Elephants began being captured in the Indus Valley more than 4000 years ago. They were used in war until they were replaced with machines in the industrial revolution. After they weren’t used for the war anymore people began using them for entertainment.  And we still do.  Whether that be at the zoo or the circus

There are many ideas about why we keep them and perhaps we are both learning and being entertained, but the focus is simply more on entertainment. And you might say that it’s not a bad thing because no one is getting harmed in the situation, but what you don’t see is how they are trained for shows. Elephants are trained using a bullhook, a “guiding” tool or if we are being honest a disciplinary tool that elephants are moved with or hit with if they do not do as they are told. Trainers purposely put the hook on sensitive spots on the elephant, for example behind their ears or around their face where their skin in thinner so it will cause more pain and therefore be more effective.

Not only are the trainers inflicting pain on the animals, but the animals, especially orcas, have returned the favor. Tilikum is widely-known for his appearance in the SeaWorld show “Believe” and for the fact that he has killed 3 trainers in the water. He first killed a woman at the Sealand of the Pacific, then a man trespassing in SeaWorld Orlando, and most recently his trainer Dawn Branchea in SeaWorld Orlando. And you could say that he was just violent, but there were many accounts in which Tilikum worked with Dawn and nothing happened. As explained in Blackfish, the day she died they had a show and Tilikum was supposed to do a trick at the end and he did it twice because he didn’t hear the whistle to go back to the trainer, so he was expecting to get food as a reward, but dawn withheld it because he had not come back immediately, which most likely frustrated him. Then, Tilikum also probably would’ve heard the ice starting to hit the bottom of the bucket when she was pulling out fish to feed him which meant that the show is about to end and he would have to go back to his pool alone. So, after the show he dragged her into the water. The other trainers did everything they could but couldn’t make him let go of her. They eventually had to pry open his jaw to get her out. And this makes Tilikum seem violent and harsh and maybe he was in that moment, but he was also just trying to find a way to show his frustration. There has not been any report of violence from a whale in the wild. And Tilikum has been featured because of his violence, but it’s also possible that other animals in captivity would do the same thing if they could. Elephants can’t because they would be hit or chained up and tigers can’t because they are also scared of getting hit or whipped when they are trained, but orcas are in such proximity to their trainers they have the access to the trainers physically. It is an unsafe environment for both the trainers and the animals.

Now we will talk about the physical environment they the animals are put in. Elephants are sometimes used at temples for worship. They are honored there; however, they are also chained up there. Literally. They will take chains are wrap them around their torso or just above their feet, so they cannot escape. They are sometime stuck in the sun all day or as you can see in the picture they get no sun.

In the circus tigers must be transported in tiny crates like household cats going to the vet. And in case you hadn’t realized tigers are not like household cats.

The orcas have pools nothing like the area they would cover in the wild. They travel 200 km a day in the wild. They swim in circles in their pools.

Tigers can’t run, elephants can’t cover themselves in water, orcas can’t swim as much as they should. Their enclosures are not big enough. We struggle to stay in school for 6 hours a day. They must stay in a box the rest of their lives with no bell at 3:15 to let them out.

This affects them physically and psychologically. In captivity large animals can develop stereotypic behavior. According to Dr. Ingris Visser, a marine biologist, stereotypic behavior is an abnormal repetitive behavior with no outward function. This includes things such as swaying, moving in patterns, head bobbing, chewing on concrete, or self-mutilation. The reason: boredom. They have nothing to do or look at or play with. They have no stimulation in their habitats.

It is also hard for animals psychologically because if they typically stay in family groups in the wild. For example, elephants stay in a family and orcas in their pod. Then when they are alone in a pool for hours on end with nothing to do is the equivalent to solitary confinement. In the US we use solitary confinement as punishment. According to the New York Times, of the prisoners in solitary confinement 73 percent reported chronic depression and 78 percent said they felt emotionally flat. It has the same effect on animals. They are in the same exact situation. In the whole grand scheme of everything are not that different from us! Yet, we are treating them worse than we treat people in solitary confinement. And these animals are innocent.

          Some people suggest larger pens or more real enclosures and although that would significantly help they would still be  in captivity. We can’t release them because most of them have lost their natural instincts and would not be able to survive. They only way we can stop this issue is to stop putting animals in this situation. We need to stop breeding animals in zoos or aquariums. This would still give the zoo and aquariums another 40 years of business with the animals already in captivity. And after those 40 years we can keep animals in nature, in the wild, where they belong.



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