Please don't let love turn into harm! Why do we clearly oppose animal performances?

Animal shows are bad.

There have been several news reports recently of animals attacking their "keepers", and unsurprisingly, these news reports all happened during animal performances.

In mid-July, two consecutive news reports of animals causing injuries to trainers during performances occurred, one was a dolphin and the other was a bear｜Weibo: @罩新闻

Performance organizations may describe the incident as an accident, and some people may wonder why the animals, which are clearly well trained, accidentally lost their hands during the performance. Did they deliberately attack the keepers? But in fact, it is not new or unexpected for animals to injure people during performances.

It is the performance that goes against the nature of animals, and the accumulation of these factors leads to this tragedy.

Behind the performance is cruel training

Most of the animal performances we see are just animals performing certain actions according to human requirements. However, these actions are usually against the nature of animals. Lions don’t want to go through a ring of fire, monkeys don’t want to ride a bicycle, and even black bears standing up and killer whales opening their mouths to beg for food are not what they do in their natural state.

In order to make animals perform these unnatural movements, trainers will conduct quite cruel "training", the most common of which is to use hunger as a punishment - in this way, animals have to do the movements required by trainers in order to get food rewards. More often, trainers will also use whipping, stabbing and other methods , which not only cause pain and trauma to animals, but also make them live in fear.

The elephant trainer filmed the baby elephant in the circus: How to tame a baby elephant? With hooks and ropes | Sam Haddock

These animal performance organizations use animals as a tool for profit, and often do not take animal welfare into consideration. Therefore, the animals in these places are usually kept in relatively narrow performance backstages , without access to suitable living space. When animals become sick or are injured during performances, they are usually unable to receive proper medical treatment . It can be said that none of the five major welfare requirements for captive animals are met.

The five freedoms of animal welfare:

1) Freedom from lack of nutrition, hunger and thirst: There is an unfailing supply of clean drinking water and food necessary to maintain health and vitality.

2) Freedom from physical and mental discomfort: Providing appropriate shelter, as well as a comfortable place to rest, temperature and climate.

3) Freedom from disease and injury: Providing prevention, prompt diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

4) Freedom from fear and distress: ensuring that all circumstances and treatments do not cause mental distress.

5) Freedom to express natural behavior: provide sufficient space, appropriate facilities and companion animals of the same species.

Over time, animals are prone to various behavioral problems when they are constantly under pressure. Therefore, when they "suddenly" hurt people, it is not sudden. Some animals are unable to complete some "designated actions" because their injuries are not properly treated, which can cause accidental injuries to themselves or the performers.

To be frank, these "accidents" are the inevitable consequences of the accumulation of various negative effects of animal performances. It is true that "accidents are bound to happen without any surprises."

Tilikum, the famous killer whale at Orlando SeaWorld, has suffered mental problems due to long-term captivity and has attacked and killed people three times; his dorsal fin is drooping, which is also a common morbidity of captive killer whales｜David R. Tribble / Wikipedia

The field of popular science quietly occupied by "entertainment"

However, when I talked to people around me about why some people like to watch animal performances, I got a very simple answer: " I know that animals are miserable, but it's okay as long as I have fun watching them. " In other words, when we are talking about the science of boycotting animal performances, people who watch animal performances are thinking about fun and entertainment.

There are many very straightforward designs of animal performances that give people a "visual impact" or performances that break people's psychological expectations or conventional impressions. When these things are combined together, a strong sense of entertainment will be generated - and this kind of entertainment has no threshold.

But are animals that are locked in a small space and have to move to eat happy? | Pixabay

As for the animals in the zoo that do not need to perform, they need to make visitors feel happy - this not only requires the animals to be able to display rich and natural behaviors, but also requires visitors to be able to understand them , which is a difficult task.

This threshold is not only for viewers, but also places high demands on zoo management itself. First of all, if you want animals to show enough rich behaviors, it is far from enough to just provide them with suitable conditions such as food and shelter. You also need to spend a lot of time and effort to provide them with enough enrichment . Secondly, when animals show enough rich behaviors, it is difficult for the audience to understand what the animals are doing and what state they are in without professional explanations .

Take the example of a tiger peeing. If the audience has a certain amount of zoological knowledge, they can judge from the tiger's urination movements, position, time, frequency, etc. whether it is satisfying its physiological excretion needs or performing marking behavior. But in the eyes of tourists who do not have zoological knowledge, it just pees next to a stone, next to the grass, under a tree, and either pees a big bubble or a small bubble... Therefore, it is difficult for ordinary tourists to get a feeling of "interesting" or "fun" from the benign and natural behavior of animals .

Tigers in the wild are marking with urine | Youtube: @Smithsonian Channel

However, entertaining animal performances cannot help us truly understand an animal - would we tell our children that bears ride bicycles to chase prey in the forest? Or would we tell them that lions bravely jump into fire hoops as an entertainment when encountering forest fires?

Worse still, once animal performances are allowed to exist, displays of natural behavior that require more from the audience and from zoos may find it more difficult to survive in the market .

Therefore, we must firmly boycott animal performances.

How to distinguish between animal performances and behavioral displays

As more and more people began to boycott animal performances, these organizations also became smarter. They would do things like animal performances in the name of "animal behavior displays", as if changing the name would make the nature of these performances acceptable. But in fact - there is an essential difference between animal performances and animal behavior displays.

Killer whales stranded on the shore to greet the audience? No, in the wild, killer whales stranded to catch prey on the shallows and shore｜Pixabay

In simple terms, animal behavior display is to let the animals in the zoo express certain behaviors on their own through the efforts of keepers and venue designers. The core of the display is to let the animals do what they want to do and what they can do . And, most importantly, in the process of the animals performing these behaviors, human intervention should be minimized .

For example, to get the black bear to stand up, we can hang objects with food or other animal smells high up in the black bear cage to arouse its interest in foraging or exploring, and make it stand up and explore upwards. Throughout the whole process, the black bear is always interacting with the "environment" or "enrichment" in the cage, without human participation - this is a good way to display behavior.

The skeletal structure of black bears is not suitable for bipedal standing or bipedal walking. In the above picture, they are actually just sitting upright. In the wild, black bears only use their hind legs to support their bodies for a short time in order to obtain food from high places, fight, mark trees, etc.｜Joydeep / Wikimedia Commons

On the contrary, if you use methods such as throwing food, shouting commands, etc., and constantly use human movements and behaviors to "guide" or even "force" animals to perform certain actions - this so-called "behavioral display" is a very typical case of selling dog meat under the guise of selling mutton, and its essence is still animal performance.

Moreover, compared with traditional animal performances, this kind of animal performance under the name of "behavioral display" should be resisted more. This will mislead the public and make people mistakenly believe that these performance-like behaviors that animals are forced to perform are their "real intentions."

Black bears' standing begging for food is not a natural phenomenon, but something they learn in an environment where humans feed them; if this artificially induced behavior is called "behavioral display," then everyone's understanding of black bears will be misled｜www.tokyo.taipei

Don’t Ignore the Impact of the Network

At this point, we have to mention that with the increasing development of social media and streaming media, "online animal performances" are also very worthy of attention . Many people use photos or videos to show the situation of raising wild animals, such as owl restaurants, domestic otters, red pandas in hotels, etc.

In order to attract viewers, the creators and disseminators of these videos usually misinterpret the real behavior or intentions of the animals and add a lot of anthropomorphic or cute explanations. For example, the threatening stance of a red panda is described as "asking for a hug", and the owl's stressed glare is described as "big eyes flashing for cuteness". The widespread dissemination of these videos and articles has blurred the boundary between wild animals and domestic pets, and indirectly encouraged people to buy and raise wild animals , which will only make their survival more difficult.

An owl cafe in Tokyo, Japan. Owls are severely stressed in this environment, and close contact can make people mistakenly think that they can play with wild animals at will｜Toukou Sousui 淙穂鶫箜/ flickr

Fortunately, there are still many lovely people who insist on popularizing science to the public on how to correctly display animal behavior - by redesigning the cages and venues of the zoo, making the living conditions of animals closer to their natural habitats; making a variety of enrichment props to enrich the feeding, exploration and other behaviors of animals. At the same time, with more professional explanations, more easy-to-understand and scientific popular science exhibition boards and interactive devices, not only can tourists understand animal behavior, but also increase the fun of behavior display, and even enable people to change from passively accepting the indoctrination of knowledge to actively participating in and exploring animal behavior.

Many excellent zoos have also started shooting short videos to show the public animals outside the field of vision of tourists. This can break the limitations of time and space, making it easier for people to find unexpected surprises in the normal behavior of animals. And with the help of the Internet, these correct animal behavior displays can also be passed on to more people.

Fun and accurate popular science makes visiting the zoo more interesting! Slide to view:

The red panda display board designed by Teacher Yilang (with Teacher Tianyi appearing in the photo);

What hairstyle can Guangzhou Zoo's popular lion Ah Hang have? Children can participate in the design | Design: Wing Wolf; Photo: Red Panda

Finally, let’s make a summary.

In fact, many people like to watch animal performances, probably because they think "seeing cute animals doing cute things makes me happy." However, those who run animal performances and those who shoot and upload videos of domesticated wild animals are taking advantage of this mentality and are harming the animals we love, and are even driving their wild relatives to extinction step by step.

So, if you, your friends, or the children in your family truly love animals, please join us in boycotting animal performances!

Don't let animal shows turn our love for animals into harm!

Author: Wing Wolf Elang

Editor: Mai Mai

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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