Let's remember the animals, too!

I just finished reading an article in the Hong Kong Post Magazine about animal cruelty in mainland China. Hong Kong tends to disassociate itself from the ‘barbaric’ mainland, and in turn actually has decent animal rights laws (and human rights laws). The article made me sick to my stomach, I was just so horrified to hear about these things happening just to the north of me.

The article was an expose particularly about ‘safari theme parks’ in the mainland. Purely for entertainment for tourists, they will do things like throw a live goat, head first, onto the concrete and have lions rip it apart while it’s still alive and screaming. You can even, as a tourist, pay more money to watch the same thing happen to a cow, or for less money to chickens and other smaller animals. And it’s not like people are well away from the action – often there is only a thin fence protecting them from the animals. Sometimes people are even given fishing rods with meat on the ends and encouraged to tease the animals.

And people do get attacked. One girl got her head bitten off by a tiger when she was sitting on it for a photo and another boy got eaten alive by alligators he was teasing.

To bears and even to their treasured pandas, they will file their teeth down to nubs and either starve them or heavily sedate them so people can sit on them to take photos. They even lure tigers in front of a bus load of people, then feed the tigers a live animal to be ripped apart in front of the people. The animal is usually mauled but not dead, so those working at the parks will run it over with a car to finish it off when the tigers don’t.

And this is all done to the applause and joy of people watching, and paying money to keep it happening. The keepers at the parks think it’s a great way to demonstrate man’s dominion over the animals, and they also seem to somehow think they are helping educate children about how wild animals act.

I can’t help but think, if you can do this to poor animals then how do you treat human beings?? I know animals aren’t the same as people, but being taught that it’s acceptable to torture them can’t be a good thing to learn. The article was just so disgusting and I was beyond horrified. The pictures made it even worse. I wanted to stop reading, but I just couldn’t. Those of you who know me well know how much I love animals, so this was particularly awful for me to read.

So, while we should certainly remember people in need around the world, let’s also remember the poor animals who are being tortured as well. They need our love, too!