broke in nyc

Sky ☁⛅

Alright, it’s time for me to talk about a mistake I made and use it as an opportunity to educate others. I hope that through educating others, I can prevent people from making the same mistake. In the picture below, you’ll see me swimming in a pool with a tiger cub. Her name is Petra. A little under 3 years ago, I paid this place in Florida to let me meet Petra. It turns out tigers are good swimmers. Pretty cool, right?

Here’s the thing though: I wish I hadn’t done it. This was before I was vegan, and in the years since this picture was taken, I have become aware of a form of animal abuse known as entertainment abuse. In entertainment abuse, an animal is put into an unnatural environment and/or forced to perform certain acts for the sake of entertaining the humans who pay for it. This is often done with wild animals, and it generates a nice sum of money for those keeping the animals captive. I didn’t know it at the time, but Petra was likely taken from her mother at a very young age so people could come pay money to swim with her. Though she seemed happy to swim when we visited, she was likely forced to swim with groups of visitors several times each day, whether or not she wanted to. Beyond this, Petra has spent and will likely spend her entire life in an enclosure much to small for tigers, who can have a territory ranging in size from 7 to 60 square miles in the wild. This is problematic because keeping an animal suited to such a large territory in this tiny enclosure can lead to a lack of stimulation, frustration, and mental and physical health problems for the animal, including a form of behavior known as a stereotypy. A stereotypy is a repetitive, maladaptive behavior in a captive animal resulting from a lack of mental stimulation. Here is an elephant exhibiting stereotypic behavior: 

Animals are often captured or bred into existence solely for these types of businesses and activities, and are rarely “rescues” who can’t survive in the wild. Paying for this type of activity deprives the animal of the natural life they deserve. It may mean half an hour of fun for us, but for the animal it means an entire lifetime of cruel deprivation and unnatural treatment.

This picture shows an elephant being trained for the circus. Does it look like good, clean family fun? It isn’t.

Other forms of entertainment abuse include animal fights (like dog fighting or bullfighting), riding elephants, rodeos, using wild animals in circuses, and keeping wild animals in zoos or aquariums. These businesses will claim to be for educational or conservation purposes, but the same education can be had from a documentary, they are rarely helpful in conservation, and at they end of the day their purpose is just to make people money. In some of these instances, the animals are beaten and cruelly treated for training, but all instances involve depriving the animal of their natural lives.

If you’re interested, you can read more at any of these links:

Stereotypy

Circus Cruelty

11 Facts about Circus animal abuse 10 Facts about zoos you should know Animal Abuse: The Show Can’t Go On

Please don’t support these business practices. Animals have interests and needs that are independent of our own. They are here with us, not for us.

I am sorry, Petra.

Really sad!! Good to know though.