Posted by: Emma
Date: 2018/9/8
Recently in our class presentation, our classmates sharing the topic of “Animal rights”. Based on the documentary which is called the blackfish, they discussed about the harsh living conditions of orcas in Sea World and appealed the audience to pay attention to the living standards of the whales, hopefully to provide a free, wild and primary circumstances for them. Among all the presenters, I am really interested in the context which was presented by ZhangYu since she not only paraphrased the movie but also connected to another animal which has the same dilemma whose name is “sloth bears”. She told us that how these sloth bears were inhumanly trained to dance by showing us the picture that they were pulled the captured cubs teeth out, and people use an extremely hot iron needle to pierce their nose and tie a long rope on that, which evoked our sympathy for these animals. Also, she showed us the statistics that 30 percent of cubs died since they could not undertake such a pain, which means that the population of these bears has plummeted in a fast speed. By appealing to logic, she made us understand that we must protect sloth bears from being endangered.
In Zhangyu’s position, she suggested us to let the animals be free. However, a question pops into my mind: Do animals which live in zoo really want to be sent back to the nature? In fact, in both the presentation and the movie, it never tells you how animals actually tend to choose to stay in smaller pools or captivities when given choices of the larger ones, and how the animals we tried to put back to wild returned to the captivity and wished to come back. In wild, spices face many competitors and struggle for surviving. In contrast, in zoo they are save and they are taken care by the zookeepers. For example, last summer holiday I saw a documentary which showed the whole life of a tiger in wild and finally he died from being starved. I imagined if he was captured and lived in the zoo he would never had the same ending. I did not say that we should crucially treated animals, but all I want to say is that we are not sure whether the animals prefer to staying in the zoo, so there is no excuse for us to blindly blame for those who just “own” the animals and it is inappropriate to just send the animals back to the nature without consideration.
Also, instead of sending them back to the nature, I stand for still taking control of animals. One reason is that we can make profits. We can open a zoo and earn money without hurting the animals. We do not need to train them but to keep them in a safe place and allow visitors to watch them, which could be an excellent entertainment. In particularly, we cannot argue that human are the most intelligent animals so we have the power to dominate things in this world. Furthermore, since most of the animals in zoo have already lost their survived skills, if we suddenly send them back to the nature suddenly they will be even more endangered for they are unable to compete with other predators.
In conclusion, I think that in the premise of not hurting animals, people should control them or even to keep them in cages. All these things are benefit for the whole ecosystem. Do you have any different opinions? Or do you have other thoughts? Please send to my blog!
