See the majestic animal. Can anyone imagine such an animal to die for the negligence of humans. A harrowing tragedy took place in Cincinnati Zoo a few days back when this magnificent creature was shot, six bullets pumped into his back. He was there only because human beings captured him from the rain forests of Africa, shipped him to America where he spent 17 years of his life behind the bars of a Zoo. No fault of his. Just to entertain gawking crowds of men, women and children. Zoo were set up to entertain humans and are symbols of the enslavement of animals to the will of man and in this the incident in Cincinnati Zoo is not different from the horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade. In a similar incident in Chile two African lions were killed because a demented man bent on committing suicide entered their cage and the lions seem to have attacked him. The fact is that the Zoo used unreasonable force to kill the animals when the lions could very easily have been tranquilized and even if that was not possible, who are we to determine that the life of a demented man is more valuable than
that of animals. The fact is that lions are an endangered species while human beings are not. So when the choice is between a mad man and endangered animals I think we should choose the side of animals. The two lions, like the Gorilla called Hambare who was killed did not do any harm and it was the wilful negligence of the parents which resulted in the 3 year old boy falling into the moat. There have been credible reports that the gorilla did not harm the boy at all and was only attempting to rescue the child from the water. Gorillas are fairly good swimmers. In order to justify the wanton act of killing the magnificent animal the Zoo put out a false statement
that the boy/child was seriously injured. The fact is thta the child was sent home immediately after a routine examination.
The two incidents need to be probed more deeply in order to highlight certain disturbing features in human interactions with animals. Norway and Japan violate International Law by hunting whales and Japan even has made a national entertainment of trapping and clubbing dolphins to death. A cruel sport that deserves to be condemned. China has the barbaric Yulin festival when animals are trapped and cruelly clubbed to death. Robert Darnton describes the scene in his Great Cat Massacre.Reading cultural meaning in such horrendous acts of inhuman barbarity is wrong.
The most tragic part of the Cincinnati episode is that fact that the publci seems to support the putting down of the large harmless animal
