Monday, September 21, 2009

Animals in enclosures - Did this ever cross our mind?

In the human society, all tend to respect and give hero / heroine treatment to someone who endures pain for others benefit. Showing gratitude like that is a great human quality. But attitude is quite discriminatory when it comes to animals that are imprisoned in small enclosures in public and private zoos, circuses and other scientific and entertainment ventures for humans comfort. For instance an African lion that would roam around a territory of 20-400 sq km is, in most cases, confined to a few square meters during its whole life for our joy. Did this ever cross our mind when we enjoy watching them - glossy coats, bright rainbow coloured feathers, piercing or sleepy eyes, feeding, social interactions etc?











1 comment:

Anonymous said...

These types of places are of no use whatsoever apart from providing 'pleasure/entertainment' for people. There is the hacknayed argument that zoos are useful for preserving endangered species &etc - this may hold true for a few large zoos that do have breeding programmes &etc. But when you understand that there are more caged/privately owned tigers in the US than there are in the wild in India it makes you wonder. Having caged animals does not encourage any sort of empathy towards them or protecting their habitat as can be seen from the number of species that are vanishing evry day. Pretty soon we will no other species to keep us company apart from a few caged tigers and monkeys and a lot of battery chickens.