Some very sad news from Germany this week, where Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla in the Muenster Zoo, has been raising her baby boy, Claudio. However, the world is now in mourning as Claudio suddenly died, possibly from a heart defect.
Heartbroken, Gana kept carrying her dead baby on her back as she had when he was alive, and kept looking back again in the hope of finding him recovered. She held her little child up, desperately searching for signs of movement in his limp body, and sat cradling him. But of course, nothing could bring poor Claudio back to life.
Zoo visitors were visibly moved and many cried upon seeing Gana’s grief. But no one should really be surprised by the depth of emotion that Gana showed in her mourning. Animals feel pain, fear, anger, love, and grief. Mother cows bellow for their calves, who are taken away so that humans can drink the milk that they make solely to nourish their babies. Dogs, beavers, and monkeys take pity on orphaned animals and adopt them as their own. Animals – from pigs to porpoises – show concern for humans, too, by going to great lengths to rescue us from peril. (And look how we repay them!)
Yet people often look away from this glaring evidence of sentience. By convincing themselves that animals “aren’t like us”, humans have justified inflicting all kinds of horrors on animals. But if people torturing primates in laboratories or slaughtering gorillas in the Congo could look into Gana’s shattered heart, they might wake up to the true cost of their actions.
Image: kdrv / CC
Tags: animal intelligence, gorilla, zoo
Well, the Summer holiday is finally here. ‘Yay!’ say the school and college kids. ‘Argh!’ scream the parents as they try to figure out what to do with their offspring for six weeks. There are dozens, even hundreds, of great places to visit and events to take part in, and none of them need to involve the incarceration or humiliation of animals. Yet every year, animal prisons posing as education and entertainment lure in thousands of tourists, and thousands of pounds.
To make it easy for you to figure out where to avoid, we’ve dutifully put together a list of the top ‘Europe’s Cruellest Destinations’, packed with zoos, aquaria, donkey rides, bloodsports and more. Get the lowdown here.
Tags: Europe, hoilday, travel, zoo
You may remember me telling you that Morrissey was a bit miffed at Edinburgh Zoo over their upcoming chimp enclosure plans. Well, PETA are pretty peeved too. So once again we joined forces with other animal protection groups (12 of them to be precise) and let the zoo’s CEO know how we feel.
Tags: captivity, chimps, zoo
In some sad news, a female dolphin called Sharky (I kid you not) has died whilst performing a stunt at an aquatic theme park in Florida. The 30-year-old bottlenose collided with another dolphin as they both jumped through the air at the same time in a ‘trick’ for spectators. Unfortunately they hit each other and Sharky died of head injuries.
A spokesman at the park has said, “This is an unfortunate, random incident”, but animals in captivity, forced to perform tricks day-in, day-out do not die accidentally. These dolphins belong in the big, blue ocean where they know best how to play their own games, rather than having some demeaning routine etched into their memories by profit-seeking ‘conservationists’. The park in question is allegedly now reviewing their training techniques but is that really good enough? No, it’s not. Take the dolphins out of the park for good and then we’ll give you some credit.
Tags: captivity, dolphin, zoo
What a legend. Our man Morrissey is unstoppable - he’s now taking on Edinburgh Zoo for their up-coming chimp enclosure, the Budongo Trail. He recommends instead that parents should take their children to the abattoir “for a lesson that no kid would ever forget”, stating in no uncertain terms, “If the Budongo Trail at Edinburgh Zoo is such a stimulating highlight, then why don’t the zoo staff live in it instead?” The full story is at The Times today, where you can read Morrissey’s damning view on keeping animals in captivity.
Image: TimeOut / CC
Tags: captivity, Morrissey, zoo
Alexia here! I’m back after a weekend of relaxation and now I’m raring to go. Watch this space over the next hour or so, as I’m about to bring you something very exciting… In the meantime, amuse yourselves with this news story from Nuremburg, where animal rights protestors dressed in fuzzy white suits are picketing Nuremburg zoo in Germany over the commercialisation of Snowflake, the polar bear cub. Polar bears don’t belong in an artificial cave full of bright lights, cameras and excited human beings. They belong in the wild, it’s not rocket science.
Tags: PETA Germany, polar bear, zoo
