Category: Animal Rights

Invading their space – animal encounters.

Most of us do not like having what is called our ‘personal space’ invaded and some of us quite rightly get very agitated when this occurs. When it involves wild animal encounters we arrogantly believe that when invading their space, that they should tolerate our intrusions without any complaint or retaliation.

Wild animals usually instinctively slink away at our approach and only become dangerous when they are provoked…..

When we come face to face with a truly wild animal we do know our limits and that apart from putting ourselves in danger we are also putting the life of the animal in danger.  Those of us who live in countries which do not harbour potentially dangerous wild animals may be excused for this behaviour as we are not familiar with the threat, although even domesticated cows and bulls can react if approached in the wrong way as many people have found to their cost.

Our refusal to show common sense and be responsible for our own health and safety by allowing wild animals their personal space often results in the death of one or both participants and highlights our complete ignorance of the capabilities of wild animals and how we should act near them.  Our increasing detachment from nature and our insistence of seeking thrills and entering wild places is making this kind of incident more common. We have no perception of the danger we might be putting ourselves in as we have been lulled into viewing wild animals as placid creatures and an opportunity for a selfie through the advent of social media and petting attractions in foreign lands.

Wild animals usually instinctively slink away at our approach and only become dangerous when they are provoked in some way or feel threatened, particularly if protecting their offspring. In countries such as the USA, Canada and Africa, where residents should perhaps know better, many individuals often insist on putting themselves and the animals they encounter at risk by entering areas supposedly set aside as much for the animals as ourselves and best not frequented, often ignoring advice to the contrary.

We do not take warnings seriously

There are unfortunately many examples of fatal attacks which highlight this behaviour. Darshe Patel was hiking with four friends in a Reserve in New Jersey, U.S.A and were told to turn back because a bear was in the area, but they continued and came across the bear. He stopped to take a photograph and was attacked and killed by the black bear. His four friends ran for their lives and survived. The bear was tracked down and shot. A man named Brad Treat was mountain biking in a Montana forest reserve when he collided with a grizzly bear. The startled bear immediately attacked and killed him, but was not killed “because its behaviour was a natural response to a surprise encounter involving physical contact“.

In another incident in Yellowstone Park, a couple walked up to a bison and tried to take a selfie only to be trampled and in 2015, an American woman in a South African lion park ignored warnings to close the car window while taking photographs, allowing a male lion to get within a yard of her before jumping and mauling her to death.

Animal encounters can prove fatal for all those involved.

In August 2015, a medic named Lance Crosby, aged 63, who was working in Yellowstone Park, decided to ignore warning notices and take a hike into a restricted area, only to bump into a grizzly bear named Blaze and her two young cubs, who being extremely protective of them and feeling threatened promptly attacked and killed him.

Although she was popular in the park and had a ‘clean record for attacking’ people, she was immediately faced with the death sentence and during the seven days that her fate was in the balance the entire world pleaded for her to be reprieved. The investigation of the ‘murder site’, which included DNA sampling and footprint analysis, proved it was her that killed the unfortunate man and her big mistake, and what sealed her fate, was eating parts of him, so she was hunted down and shot for public safety reasons and her two poor cubs were shipped off to Toledo zoo to spend a lifetime in captivity, all because one misguided person decided to invade her space.

The Washington Post quoted the park superintendent as stating that ‘We can’t favour one individual bear over protecting the lives of humans’, a standard comment for all such human deaths by animals and ‘the decision was made based on sound science’.

Invading their space

Although we set aside large swathes of land in the name of conserving animals and habit and give them such impressive names as national parks, reserves and conservation areas, in reality they have just become giant adventure playgrounds for us humans and our families to mountain bike, hike, picnic, climb mountains, kayak in rivers and shoot the rapids with no consideration of the disturbance to the animals. Far from being safety zones for them we increasingly invade these spaces, trample over the habitat, disturb them and if they should dare to retaliate by attacking us, we dispose of them.

It hardly seems fair to me and if we are truly genuine in our declared aims to preserve wildlife for the future perhaps we should give some serious thought to whose benefit these areas are truly for and keep the ultimate predator humans out of them.

So, the moral of the story is when enjoying these wonderful wild spaces and encounters with animals keep your distance and please give them a little more respect. Our irresponsible and uninformed behaviour can cause their deaths.

It is killing whatever term you choose to call it.

Our complex attitudes to killing animals

Deep down in our consciences those of us with any empathy to animals are obviously uncomfortable about the act of killing them which manifests itself in our confused use of expressions to describe it. Whether a professional or layman, we seem to have a subconscious hang-up about discussing or contemplating what we mostly view as a taboo subject. For those with little empathy and who enjoy killing animals for fun and entertainment there is no issue

If we kill a fellow human without justification, we call it murder, and it is viewed a heinous crime unless legitimised by war, when we tend to use the word kill. When we deliberately and brutally kill a large group of humans, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group, we use the terms genocide or massacre and when we legally terminate the life of a condemned person, we execute them. We almost exclusively reserve these words to describe human on human killing, but when it involves animals, for some inexplicable reason we refrain from using such terms as they appear to offend our sensibilities and prick our consciences if used in this context.

Instead we prefer to use more agreeable phraseology that we feel befits the occasion and the type of animal involved, such is our idiosyncratic approach to killing millions of them each day. In order to appease our sensibilities, we even manage to categorise certain animal groups as being more worthy of our compassion.

hunting, shooting, country pursuit

The act of euthanasia for companion animals has become almost a ritual”

The most popular generic term for the act of killing an animal is euthanasia, which derives from the Greek words Eu and thanotos meaning ‘well killing’ or ‘good killing’ and has been used since the 1600’s to describe mercy killing of both humans and animals. We tend to reserve its usage for companion animals, particularly dogs and cats, which we hold in more reverence because we view them as almost human family members and our friends.

The act of euthanasia for companion animals has become almost a ritual, carried out with extreme compassion, sensitivity and veneration as suits such a situation, and it is usually performed by a qualified veterinarian in calm circumstances by injection, and with a familiar face present, often in the owners’ home, and is as humane as possible, so different to the way we treat other animals in their final moment.

Some people though, still find this term too severe and so we use more assuaging phrases such as ‘putting to sleep’ or ‘putting out of its misery’, to make it appear less callous when we are discussing it, as though in some irrational way it makes it a more pleasant experience for both the animal and ourselves.

When it concerns farmed food animals our sympathies change, and we go out of our way to distance ourselves from any emotion or guilt. For a start we call them livestock instead of animals, ‘live’ because we have to accept they are living creatures but also ‘stock’ because we need the assurance that they are also a commodity for us to utilise. We then employ the somewhat ruthless word of ‘slaughter’, the definition of which, in the context of humans, is brutal killing, but with animals just means killing for meat. Slaughter is of course an apt description as it is a rather brutal and ruthless death no matter how humanely done. We are also happy to use the same term for the place where the carnage takes place, so we call it a slaughterhouse in preference to a ‘euthanasia-house’ which we obviously find strangely unsettling because of its inference to pet animals.

We find using the word ‘harvesting’ more agreeable for the act of wholesale slaughter of animals.

When it involves wildlife our compassion unaccountably changes again, and we choose to ‘cull’ them and the heartlessness of this term is borne out by the word’s definition which is ‘removing an inferior person or thing from a group’ and ‘something regarded as worthless, especially an unwanted or inferior animal removed from a herd’. Culling can involve just an individual, a certain species or millions of individuals.

Conservationists appear to find the word culling a little harsh in certain instances, so they find the term ‘harvesting’ more agreeable for the act of wholesale slaughter, usually with the tag that it is implemented in their long-term interest. But it doesn’t end there as different professions where killing animals is intrinsic also try to ease their sensibilities by using other phrases such as humane killing, hunting, management euthanasia and zoonasia.

We are psychologically uneasy about the killing of animals.

It is obvious that as a society we are uneasy with our various deeds of ending their lives and prefer to distance ourselves from any thoughts of their demise, but it doesn’t stop us from committing animal genocide the world over. The bottom line is that whichever term we choose to use they all mean the same thing – the intentional and premature ending of the life of a living creature.

As already mentioned, when it is time to put companion animals ‘to sleep‘ the procedure is treated with great compassion, sensitivity and veneration as it should be, but it does seem a pity that we cannot extend the same deference to all animals by at least giving them the courtesy of using the same terminology.

Related articles:

What is Zoonasia?

Big Game trophy hunting always in the headlines.

The Shooting of Harambe the gorilla

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