Did you hear? Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, as well as a vast variety of other forms of animal entertainment, are either shut down or in the midst of doing so. This is due to the events that have happened in the past few decades involving these types of recreation, from the death of competitive swimmer Keltie Byrne that the past away in 1991 after being submerged under water and dragged around a tank by three orcas, all the way to 2016 wherein a Cincinnati zoo a gorilla name Harambe was ultimately shot and killed due to a baby falling into its enclosure.
Whether it is an animal dying or a person these events are changing the minds of the populous that go and attend the zoos, circuses, or any gathering that will mainly be focused on using animals for entertainment. If this movement continues on, the animal entertainment business as a whole will come to a screeching halt and utterly become nonexistent, unless these corporations find a way to change the negative connotation that they have received over the past couple of decades in order to get people excited to visit as they once did.
Essentially, there are two sides to every controversy as there are too many other problems in the world and that is the benefits to not having these events vanish from the face of the earth as if they never happened. To begin, these are places in which people meet and interact with each other. Yes, people can meet and interact with people pretty much anywhere but places like this especially circuses are a magical place in itself as brought up in Local Couple with Ties to Ringling Bros.
Sad about the End by Leader-Telegram express that while in preparation for being a part of the circus many relationships had formed, just the same, when it was time for people to leave it was the same as losing a loved one (The Leader-Telegram, 2). Even though this is not about the animals and how they are treated it is important to understand what it means to be a part of the circus and what is lost when the circus is taken away. Alongside this, is the knowledge in which people gain while attending these events, mostly zoos.
Many people will not leave the stated that they were born and raised in and this restricts them from being able to see these majestic creatures up front and personal. As stated by Green Garage they not only allow people of all ages to come and visit and inspect these animals but on top of that it allows research teams to study these animals at a safe distance and get info on them to better their health and teach us what we can do to their increase survival rates in the wild (Par. ). This is important because not only is it beneficial to us but also to the animals, we learn and start to understand behaviors and traits while we also can help them survive. While the topic of survival is on the table let us talk about the extinction rates across the animal kingdom.
Explained in “The Extinction Crisis” by Center for Biological Diversity the extinction rates are drastically higher than we thought to bring to the forefront that the extinction rate is one to ten thousand times higher than previously thought, that is equal to handfuls of animals leaving the planet every day (Par. 1). This is absolutely terrible to hear and if this continues sooner rather than later the animal population will be depleted for good and then where does that leave us.
Luckily though having animals in zoos or reservations will allow them to live longer not only due to them not being out in the wild alone putting them at higher risk of death but being able to have the medical staff on hand when something is wrong with the animals is definitely an added benefit. Furthermore, without having these places to keep animals healthy and well for sure the number of animals in the wild yet it is still not great but, it would pale in comparison to what it is now.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. (Par. 2)” This is a verse from a poem entitled The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke describing the life of a panther that is locked within a cage for the use of entertainment. We will now be discussing the negative aspects of animals being used for entertainment purposes and why this will be the downfall of this wide span of businesses.
To begin, stated in Green Garage’s blog about pros and cons of having zoo animals, when they are enclosed in these containers they will start to develop mental and physical health conditions, the natural born behaviors in which specific animals have will become altered due to not being able to execute a normal day as if they were in the wild, even though zoos can be used as educational means not only do many people ignore that fact but critics find it somewhat of a jokes that that still try to pawn that off to consumers as a reason to go and visit zoos.
On top of that many zoos are not able to keep their place clean and not only does that affect the pull of visitors coming in which will lead to them not being able to pay for the right equipment to care for the animals. As well if they can not keep the park clean then how are the cells of the animal being up kept? (Par. 7).
These points that were touched upon are very crucial in realising that the main purpose of zoos are not being used the way they were intended to, as well as revealing the harm that happens to the animals, yet not purposeful physical abuse harm is still being done to the animals nonetheless and this is a huge reason why people are starting act out upon having animals in enclosures. Described by Mr.
Issat in his piece Counterpoint: Confinement of Wild Animals… contrary to domesticated animals such as cats or dogs wild animals are not meant to be born in the small confinements that they are placed in while being in zoos which as Green Garage similarly touched on, this will affect the animal’s mental state causing them to do things that they would normally not do like the incident that happened in Cologne, Germany where a tiger escaped out of its cage and was shot prior to getting to the visitor area in protection of the visitors (Par. ).
This is upsetting because not only is it wrong that these animals are affected from birth but they can lose their life because of a deficiency that they gained but because of choices but for the entertainment of another species. Did you hear? Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, as well as a vast variety of other forms of animal entertainment, are either shut down or in the midst of doing so.
The issues pointed out throughout this piece are what they the animal entertainment business have to fix whether it be starting from scratch and rebuild from the ground up or revising their ideals in order to gain the visitors trust back otherwise there demise is evident. Much work has to be done in order for this to be successful but if us as a society come together it can be done. Last but not least if this plan works will you attend zoos again?
