We’re all animals, treat us equally
Isaw something last year in Singapore that turned my heart upside down: a captive dolphin, going round and round in circles in a pool. It was waiting in a holding tank before a show.
Repetitive behaviour is a sign of distress, but nobody seemed to care about anything other than when the show would start.
We humans are barbaric. How can we take something from the wild and sentence it to a life of captivity, all in the name of making money and entertainment?
Imagine for a second that animals ruled the world. That they captured humans and paraded us around in torrid conditions for fun.
They rode us, they taught us to do tricks, they abused us. Cruel and unfair, right? Well, what gives us the power to decide we can do that to them?
A recent survey by World Animal Protection found
90 per cent of Kiwis would avoid an activity if they knew wild animals were being mistreated.
Yet, the same survey found almost 40 per cent of us have done things such as ride an elephant. Yes, I’m one of them and, like others, I had no idea the hidden cruelty involved – such as abusing baby elephants, blinding them to make them easier to control, and routinely using sharp objects to pierce their skin and make them submissive.
I’m also ashamed to say I’ve been to a dolphin show. Some people argue they’re just animals – why should we care? Research has found dolphins aren’t too far behind humans in intelligence, and they have a lot of human-like skills, such as emotional thinking.
Just because a dolphin can’t speak our language and tell us it’s distressed seems to be a perfect excuse for us to ignore how it feels.
It’s horrifying that in 2018, in places such as Japan, dolphins are still hunted and butchered for meat or sold to amusement parks.
I recently went swimming with Hector’s dolphins in Akaroa, but this time in their territory – on their terms. It’s how a wildlife experience should be. Read about it on pages 14-15.