Written by Michela Aquilina

Our primitive ancestors made use of a variety of animals in order to suit their day-to-day needs. As times evolved, humans developed the ability to dedicate more time for themselves.

They needed to fill up their time with alternate means. And thus, the concept of entertainment was born. This was all well and good, until we started to involve animals in our need for entertainment.

“Animals that Amaze!”

Back in 1831, Henri Martin in Germany entered a cage with a tiger and changed the entertainment industry forever. Wild animals became a prop for amusement. An American trainer, Isaac Van Amburgh followed in his footsteps by introducing trained animals including tigers, leopards, lambs, and lions to the stage.

More light has been shed on the welfare of these animals in recent years. We now know how they are being treated behind the curtains, as well as during their own acts. For instance, animals such as tigers naturally fear fire, but they are still forced to jump through fire hoops in some circuses. They regularly suffer from burns while doing so. Moreover, trainers still use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bull hooks and other painful tools of the trade to force animals to perform.

Travelling Amusements

Behind closed doors, the situation obviously worsens. Animals starring in circuses are housed in small traveling crates. Such confinement has harmful psychological effects on them. You can notices these effects by unnatural behaviour such as repeated swaying, and pacing. The lack of exercise and long hours standing on hard surfaces are major contributors to foot infections and arthritis; a leading causes of death among captive elephants.

The introduction of animal-free circuses became a growing public demand, which promote the thrills, chills, and excitement of the circus minus the exploitation of wildlife. There is an animal-free circus to suit every taste, which consist of acts done by professional, talented humans. You can catch a show in old-fashioned big tops, in parks, and thoroughly modern productions in large venues.

“Conservation not Deprivation”

According to the National Geographic Society, zoos are places where wild animals are kept for public display. Zoos claim to save and conserve wildlife and they are often referred to as sophisticated breeding centres, where endangered species may be protected and studied. However, despite this, according to an article written by Zoe Rosenberger back in 2019 for Sentiment Media, animals which are held in captivity – in zoos in particular – have reduced commodities and are found in inadequate conditions.

Zoos engage in animal exploitation by earning off the attention and conservation donations they receive from visitors while providing a low quality of life for the caged animals. Due to these stressful conditions, animals even die prematurely in zoos, rather than being left running free in their natural environment. It was even estimated that African elephants in the wild live more than three times as long as those kept in zoos. Moreover, 40% of lion cubs die before one month of age in zoos, while in the wild, only 30% of cubs are thought to die before they are six months old and at least a third of those deaths are due to factors which are absent in zoos, like predation.

“Happy Fish, Happy People”

Like zoos, aquaria and marine parks are also a growing concern for the wellbeing of captive marine animals. Places like SeaWorld are part of a growing entertainment industry which feeds off the maltreatment of intelligent and extraordinary animals. They are living in ponds of water, when they were made to live in the open sea, making up more than 70% of the Earth’s surface. Orcas and other dolphins in the wild live in enormous, complicated social groupings and travel vast miles in the open ocean every day. They are only allowed to swim in endless loops inside tanks that are the equivalent of bathtubs in captivity, depriving them of almost any natural behaviour. What happens then?

This forced change of habitat and natural instincts can result in serious physiological problems such as attacking other orcas or dolphins, or even humans. When trainers impose learning and performance of meaningless tricks to entertain a clueless crowd, there’s bound to be a reaction! It stems from a lack of understanding of the pain and suffering these animals go through on a daily basis.

A Call for Action

A famous orca, named Tilikum, was experiencing physiological problems that developed during its time in captivity. Tilikum lashed out and killed SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau and two other people. The death of Tilikum made a significant impact on the world of animal captivity, with organisations like PETA urging SeaWorld to ban breeding and in turn send animals to wildlife sanctuaries.

As the poet and author, Alice Walker once said; “The animals of this world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans.” Animals were not put on this earth to live in a cage, suffer, and be torn from their families and habitat. Whether they be in movies, zoos, circuses, or bullfighting rings, we continue to use animals as sources of entertainment. Through appropriate management and care provided by NGOs and governments all over the world, this urgent problem can be addressed to give these animals the life they were meant to have, a life which is wild and free.

Is there place for zoos in Malta? Read here to find out.

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Written by Francesca Grillo, reviewed by ESA [Earth Systems Association]

I don’t think I’ll ever manage to sustain a lengthy conversation without mentioning Gerald Durrell! His contribution to the natural world is worth its weight in gold, having written a myriad of rip-roaring chronicles to prove it. He has completely changed my life as now I am set on following his footsteps and becoming a conservationist myself!

Gerald Durrell was born in India in 1925 but then moved to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935 where he was immediately engrossed in the island’s natural history. From early on he always knew that he wanted to own a zoo, he even managed to start his own menagerie in Corfu with the help of Theodore Stephanides, a well-respected scientist and naturalist. The Corfu Trilogy is a brilliant autobiographical narration of his early childhood years in Corfu. In this chronicle, we meet Gerry’s widowed mother and his siblings; Larry who was inordinately fond of writing, gun-obsessed Leslie and Margo who was hell-bent on beauty and fashion. We also meet countless tutors who fell by the wayside when they tried to educate the young naturalist as he never deemed formal education as necessary.

At the outbreak of World War II, they moved to England where he worked as a helper at an aquarium and pet store. After the war, he joined Whipsnade Zoo as a junior keeper, where he was marvelled by the bona fide natural habitat that was created for the animals. Having no previous experience caring for sizable beasts, he was now responsible for the explicit care of several creatures including the polar bears, tigers and lions. Beasts in My Belfry chronicles his experience at Whipsnade Zoo and highlights the importance of zoos as places for scientific advancement, rather than places of entertainment.

He went on many wildlife collecting expeditions in all corners of the Earth, starting from the British Cameroons and further on to Guyana. Others included Argentina, Paraguay, New Zealand, Mexico, and Sierra Leone. In one of my favourites, Catch me a Colobus, he recounts the ordeals which occurred in the first years of his zoo in Jersey, whilst also narrating his expedition to Sierra Leone to collect the scarce Colobus monkeys. The Drunken Forest is another gem, recounting Durrell’s expedition to the Chaco territory of Paraguay and the Argentine pampas. Kicking it off by describing his thwarted plans due to holidaymakers and a pressing political coup, he then goes on to describe the critters he collected as well as the various episodes of locals bringing him ‘bichos’ as they would call them, once even presenting him with a three-banded orange armadillo!

In Menagerie Manor he writes about how he finally fulfilled his childhood dream and founded the Jersey Zoological Park in 1959. One of their main aims at the Jersey Zoo is that by 2020, 90% of the zoo’s inhabitants will either be contributing to conservation, training and research or education. They were one of the first conservation organisations to have a ‘key performance indicator’ for its mission, known as the ‘Durrell Red List Index of Species Survival’. This tracks how the target species are faring and also reveals some major challenges in the sphere. Currently one of the most troubling worriments would be the devastating decline in two of the target species; the Orange-tailed skink and the Mountain Chicken, as the natives call it, which is not really a chicken but actually a frog! This indicator also shows that they have up to date saved at least 6 species from extinction. Another uplifting piece of information is that eight of the species Durrell had taken particular note of having moved into lower Red List categories since 1988; these include the Mallorcan Midwife Toad, the Golden Lion Tamarin and 6 species of Mauritian birds.

Another of Durrell’s achievements was the Mauritian Wildlife Appeal Fund that was mainly established to raise funds for the conservation of threatened endemic local flora and fauna. They set up several breeding and conservation programs, even managing to save the Pink Pigeon from extinction, with the help of other organisations. For a while, the Pink Pigeon was destined to face the same fate as the Dodo, in 1990 the wild population stood at a piffling 9 individuals, the future of the species did indeed look bleak. The wild population now consists of over 400 individuals. These explorations in Mauritius were recorded in Golden Bats & Pink Pigeons.

Gerry undertook many other endeavours such as founding Wildlife Preservation Canada, helping to launch the World Land Trust and even establish a conservation program in Madagascar. He has worked relentlessly to preserve the world’s natural wonders and I think it is of great importance that unsung heroes like him are perpetually pushed into the limelight. No words of praise will ever do him justice, he was not only hard-working and zealous but also incredibly inspiring and although he died in 1995, his stories continue to resonate and spur something very special within anyone lucky enough to have read or followed his compelling journey! 

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