Urgent need to redifine relationship with animals
VIVE la France!
In a sign of the times, the French government has announced it will ban the use of wild animals in circuses, end dolphin and orca captivity and shut down all mink fur farms. And it makes perfect sense.
Our understanding of wild animals such as elephants, tigers and dolphins is far greater than when archaic circuses and aquaria first opened.
Today, we know that a cramped cage or concrete tank can never come close to meeting their complex needs.
Orcas and other dolphins belong in the ocean with their families, whom they cherish just as we do ours, and elephants thrive when they have vast distances to roam and the company of other members of their species.
Minks, who are semi-aquatic, unsurprisingly go mad when forced to spend their entire lives in cramped cages, all so that humans can drape themselves in their fur, a look better suited to the Neolithic era than the 21st century.
Animals do not belong to us. France’s decision reflects the urgent need for us to redefine our relationship with them – away from domination and towards respect.
As Henry Beston so beautifully put it: “For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”