I’ve spoken many times on this blog of my love of animals and my opinions on ”pets.” But lately I’ve started to think about a trend that is happening in our society.
When I was young, I went to countless zoos, and circuses, and animal parks, and aquariums, and marine mammal shows. Much of what I knew and learned about animals, I learned from those experiences: sometimes directly, sometimes because I was inspired to seek out knowledge after seeing some animal or other in person. I would never trade away those memories.
However, it’s completely fair to point out that many of the animals I took such pleasure in watching and learning about were miserable. Today, the circuses are completely gone,* thanks to numerous articles; marine mammal shows will soon disappear for good, thanks to documentaries such as Blackfish; and societal changes mean that even zoos are on the decline, according to many sources. And I’m not saying any of these things are bad. Certainly the terrible treatment of animals in circuses and marine mammals in parks such as SeaWorld makes me believe that such places do more harm than good. I’m sure all those marshmallows we fed the hippo in Homosassa Springs weren’t very good for his digestion (although, miraculously, he appears to still be alive as I write this). As for zoos ...
When I was young, there was a book at my grandparents’ house called How the Animals Get to the Zoo. Published a few years before I was born, I assume it was bought for me, though I can’t remember specifically being given it as a gift. I do remember that, even as a child, I was more horrified than fascinated at the examples given in this book, which ranged from throwing nets on zebras from a helicopter to taking ostriches down with bolas. Also plenty of spring traps and tranquilizer darts and other very disturbing imagery. So I am not insensitive to the idea that zoos are not always good for animals.
Still ...
My youngest child has never seen a circus, and she almost certainly never will. She’s never seen a marine mammal show, and, while it’s possible that she might one day, it’s pretty unlikely (certainly it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever take her to one). She’s been to a few zoos and aquariums, and maybe an animal park or two (or maybe not; I can’t think of a specific visit), but there’s no doubt that she has far less real-life experience of animals than I did. Of course, there’s more instantly availble video of animals than I could have ever dreamed of as a child; YouTube alone allows me to show her any animal I happen to mention within minutes, if not seconds; if we ever idly wonder “what sounds does a <fill in animal here> make?” then it’s a simple Google search to turn up a soundfile or video that will settle the question. But is it the same? I can’t help but wonder.
PETA in particular is very much opposed to any sort of system where animals are kept for the entertainment of humans. But, if humans never experience animals in any other context than as images on a screen, will they care about preserving them? Sometimes I think that PETA is going to end up causing the eventual extinction of many species just because people won’t recognize them well enough to give a shit when they’re endangered. There are always unintended consequences.
In fact, studying the Wikipedia page for “unintended consequnces” is quite instructive. In China in the late 50s, sparrows were identified as pests who ate 4kg of rice grains per yea
Then there’s the Great Plague of London. “The means of transmission of the disease were not known but thinking they might be linked to the animals, the City Corporation ordered a cull of dogs and cats. This decision may have affected the length of the epidemic since those animals could have helped keep in check the rat population carrying the fleas which transmitted the disease.” And then of course there are the classic biocontrol-gone-awry stories, such as the Australian cane toad, which was supposed to control the grey-backed cane beetle, and ended up killing countless pets and endangering anywhere from 70 to 100 other species.
I miss some of these methods of exhibiting animals, even as I feel glad that fewer animals are suffering because of their decline. But those unintended consequences are always impossible to identify, except in hindsight. Will my children even have the chance to fall in love with animals in the way I did? I can’t say. I do what I ca
* Unless you count things like Cirque du Soleil. Which, you know, I don’t.