Cruelty towards animals is a widespread issue. It has anything to do with beating them, starving them, deserting them, killing them, and things like that. It provides reason for society to believe that euthanizing vicious animals is humanely right and just. Animals act various ways sometimes due to how they were raised or treated. If an animal is left alone to solitude or raised to fight for money, how would you expect that animal will react when it is out of that situation? Is it the animal we should point the blame at or the caregiver? So why should it be right to take an animal and end its life without attempting to figure out why it may act how it does?
Exotic animals are often kept in captivity. These animal’s natures are more often than not aggressive and dangerous. That is a well known fact to almost anyone, especially the people who are handling them or working with them. All the same, we still keep them in shows, circuses, and as pets. And even knowing these animal’s natures, we still cause a huge fuss when something happens and those animals revert to their natural instincts and someone gets hurt. Too often, cases like this end up with the animals losing its life because it did what it thought it was supposed to do. After all, if you threaten an animal, make it think it needs to attack to defend itself, what else is it supposed to do? Why do we punish these animals for that? I don’t believe that animals that attack or kill should be euthanized. It isn’t fair .
Have you ever heard of Siegfried and Roy? They had a show in Las Vegas. One of the main things in their act was the tiger, Montecore. He was a six hundred pound male white tiger that Roy Horn handled at their shows. One night at one of their shows, Horn brought Montecore on stage, leashed, and told the cat to lie down. The tiger grabbed Horn’s arm. He “struck the animal in the head with a microphone, which apparently caused the tiger to lunge at Horn's neck. Montecore then carried Horn off the stage by the throat” (The Humane Society of the United States). The only thing that got the tiger off of him was a man sprayed down the cat with a fire extinguisher. They rushed him to the hospital, and the only thing he said was “Don’t shoot the cat.” Roy knew better than anyone how exotic animals, especially tigers, could act, how they could revert to their natural instincts and snap at any point, because he’d been handling tigers for years for his shows. He understood how these animals thought, acted. That is why he said for them not to shoot the cat. He knew that, if Montecore had intended him harm when he grabbed Roy’s neck, he would have shook his head, snapping Horn’s neck instantly. Because Roy Horn insisted that the animals hadn’t meant him harm, only to protect him, Montecore was not killed.
Montecore’s is not the only well-known situation like this. Much more recently was the attack of Tillikum, a male orca at Sea World in Orlando, Florida. He was associated with two deaths previously, but the one that made headlines was his attack on Dawn Brancheau. She was Tillikum’s trainer. In the middle of one of their shows, Tilly grabbed Brancheau’s ponytail and dragged her underwater, and she drowned. Dawn Brancheau knew well the dangers of working with orcas, because they can be extremely aggressive. Tilly was an exceptional case. The staff at Sea World considered him especially dangerous, and only allowed a handful of select trainers to handle him, and none of them were allowed to swim with him. Experts on killer whales say that Tillikum was a transient whale. “Transients travel the world, eating dolphins, fish, other whales, basically anything that gets in their way” (Russ Rector). Obviously, this animal probably shouldn’t have been kept in captivity, but all the same, he was, and his handlers knew the risks of that. Tillikum still resides at Sea World in Orlando, Florida.
Another well known example is chimps. As chimps age, their brains become unstable, causing them to snap at the slightest things, and for lack of better wording, go crazy. Travis the chimp was no exception to this. He had been used in commercials and shows, and was basically a privately owned animal. One day, he appeared extremely agitated, and his owner did everything to calm him down, including giving him drugs she shouldn’t have, to no avail. The chimp got out of the kitchen, and started banging on car doors. His owner had her friend, Charla Nash, come to help her get the monkey back in the house. When Nash arrived, Travis went on the attack. He mauled Nash, breaking most of the bones in her face and ripped off her nose, face, eyes and hands. When police arrived, he cornered one of them in his car. “When Travis managed to open a door, the officer shot him in the chest. Travis made his way back into the house and died in his cage” (Associated Content). While I don’t like the fact that this animal died because of this, I understand that the officer had no other choice, and in all reality, if the officer hadn’t shot him, because of the instability of his brain, he would have been shot later.
In short, with all these animals, it is their nature to do what they did. They are exotic animals, and it is bred into their instincts to do what they do. They are used to having to fend for themselves, hunt and fight to survive. You can keep them in captivity all you want. No matter what you do, you aren’t going to breed, or force, their natural instincts out of them. They are always going to have the natural instinct to chase, to hunt, to kill. The people who insist on keeping them should know the dangers and be able to deal with the consequences, or not have them at all. Look at tigers and lions. Their instincts are to hunt anything they see as prey, and I’m pretty sure they see most living animals as prey. The same thing goes with killer whales. Not all of them are resident. Many of them are transients. They are born to wander the sea, hunting everything that swims, like seals, fish, smaller (less aggressive) sharks. It is their nature to be dangerous. That is how they have to survive in the wild. If they aren’t fighting to keep alive, they are as good as dead. Many monkeys, not just chimps, grow unstable with age. It isn’t their fault. But their owners should be aware of things like that before the make the commitment of owning a two hundred pound animal.
Exotic animals are not the only animals that are affected by this. A good example of a domesticated animal is pit bulls. It is known that their nature can be aggressive, but it is also known that a lot of how they act has to do with how they are treated. If they are abused, they’re going to snap. If you beat the living hell out of them, they may attack you to protect themselves. Is it fair of us to kill them when they are doing what they think they need to to defend themselves from harm when they think they are going to get hurt or are being provoked? No, it isn’t fair at all.
Another good example of domesticated animals is Rottweilers. They are notoriously known to be rather aggressive, and you often hear bad things about them, about them attacking people, and things of that sort. But again, while some of that might be their nature, not all of it is. A lot of it is nurture, not nature. In every animal’s nature, there is a wilder instinct, an instinct from before they were domesticated, where they had to fight to survive. This instinct remains with them forever, and in some may be provoked when in a situation that they feel threatened for their life.
Animals, especially exotic animals, are often kept in captivity. These animal’s natures are more often than not aggressive and dangerous. That is a well known fact to almost anyone, especially the people who are handling them or working with them. All the same, we still keep them in shows, circuses, and as pets. And even knowing these animal’s natures, we still cause a huge fuss when something happens and those animals revert to their natural instincts and someone gets hurt. Too often, cases like this end up with the animals losing its life because it did what it thought it was supposed to do. After all, if you threaten an animal, make it think it needs to attack to defend itself, what else is it supposed to do? Why do we punish these animals for that? I don’t believe that animals that attack or kill should be euthanized. It isn’t fair.
Works Cited
"Why Did Tilikum the Killer Whale Attack a SeaWorld Trainer? - TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1968249,00.html.
"Siegfried & Roy Incident Underscores the Dangers of Exotic Pets The Humane Society of the United States." The Humane Society of the United States : The Humane Society of the United States. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/wildlife_news/siegfried_roy_incident_underscores_the_dangers_of_exotic_pets.html.
Relative, Saul. "What Caused the Chimp Attack on Charla Nash?, Page 3 of 3." Associated Content - Associatedcontent.com. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1490308/what_caused_the_chimp_attack_on_charla_pg3.html?cat=9.
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