Tag Archives: Sea World

Animal Issues

2016 was a good year for animals

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Rose rescued Cece in 2016 …  pic: R.T.

The Worcester Animal Rescue League on Holden Street is where Rose got her Husky-Mountain Feist cross “Jett,” the late great Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever “Bailey” and beautiful brindle greyhound-lab cross “Grace.” All homeless dogs that needed to be rescued!

If you can’t adopt a homeless cat or dog – do the next best thing: VOLUNTEER on behalf of animals. There are infinite ways to help! A good place to start is  WARL (open to the public 7 days a week, noon to 4 p.m.)! To learn more and see their dogs and cats up for adoption, CLICK HERE!       – R.T.

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Lots happened in 2016 besides the election

By Jennifer O’Connor

Most Americans are still feeling a bit frayed by the divisiveness of the presidential election. It’s easy to feel jaded and worn out, and many commentators are happy to see the end of 2016.

But while it was easy to get caught up in the more lurid headlines, a ton of uplifting things happened in the past year, particularly for animals used in the entertainment industry.

Let’s begin with elephants. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which has been forcing elephants to travel and perform for more than a century, pulled the animals off the road in May. They will no longer be chained up and hauled around in fetid boxcars. When a circus as big as Ringling makes a decision like that, you know the days of performing elephants are numbered.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore also made a precedent-setting decision: It will send the eight dolphins currently in its possession to a coastal sanctuary. Animal advocates around the world have called on aquariums and theme parks to stop exhibiting marine mammals—and this is the first step. Protected sea pools afford dolphins and orcas room to move around and some degree of autonomy and self-determination. They’re able to see, sense and communicate with their wild cousins and other ocean animals — and they finally get to feel the tides and waves and have the opportunity to engage in the kinds of behavior that they’ve long been denied.

SeaWorld is starting to see the writing on the wall. In May, the corporation announced that it would stop breeding future generations of orcas, who would have to spend their lives in cramped tanks. But kind people everywhere are calling on the corporation to release all its animals into coastal sanctuaries. As the public’s condemnation of captive marine mammal displays continues to grow, there’s little doubt that protected sea pens are the wave of the future.

Travel giant TripAdvisor recognized the trend towards compassionate tourism and stopped selling tickets to most excursions using animals for entertainment, including cruel “swim with dolphins” programs, elephant rides and tiger photo ops. Since many facilities dupe visitors into believing that they’re helping animals, many vacationers unwittingly support cruelty by patronizing them. But by informing travelers about the dark underside of these excursions and refusing to offer them, TripAdvisor’s new policy will have a very real impact on animal exploitation in tourist traps.

Nearly a half-dozen roadside zoos — where animals suffered in filthy, ramshackle cages — closed their doors in 2016. Families are turning their backs on exhibits in which bears are confined to concrete pits and tigers pace in fetid pens.

But progress for animals hasn’t been limited to the U.S. In Argentina, a judge found that Cecilia, a chimpanzee languishing in a Mendoza zoo, isn’t a “thing” but rather a sentient being who is “subject to nonhuman rights” — and ordered that she be sent to a sanctuary. Countries as disparate as Norway and Iran banned exotic-animal acts.

Argentina passed a ban on greyhound racing, sparing countless dogs a short, grim life in the “sport.” India’s Supreme Court upheld a ban on a cruel pastime called jallikattu—in which bullocks are raced and often struck with whips and nail-studded sticks to make them run faster. And the annual Toro de la Vega “festival” — in which a young bull is chased through the streets of Tordesillas, Spain, and stabbed with darts and spears — was banned.

While 2016 was a good year for animals, there’s always more to be done. We all have the power to spare animals pain and suffering in the year ahead—and beyond—simply by making kind choices about what we do for entertainment.

Animal Issues

Are orcas at SeaWorld suffering from PTSD?

By Dr. Hope Ferdowsian and Dr. Carol Tavani
 
There is no longer any serious disagreement among scientists that humans aren’t the only animals who have the capacity to suffer physically and mentally. Elephants, great apes, orcas, dogs, cats and many others can experience depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and compulsive disorders.
 
We know that humans and other animals suffer in parallel ways because of similarities in brain structure, physiology, behavior and responses to comparable medical interventions. It’s likely that animals suffer even more than many humans generally, simply because it’s impossible for them to make sense of what is happening to them, escape from it or alter their conditions.
 
In humans, PTSD and mood disorders, such as major depressive disorder, are commonly diagnosed after acute, repeated or chronic trauma. These types of stressors can sometimes overwhelm normal responses, which can cause persistent physiological and structural changes in the brain.
 
Brain structures and neuroendocrine mechanisms associated with mood and anxiety disorders are shared across a wide range of vertebrates. The hippocampus, found in all mammals, is a brain structure involved in memory storage and retrieval. In humans, PTSD has been associated with reductions in hippocampal volume or activity, perhaps because of recurrent and chronically elevated levels of cortisol, followed by changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which helps regulate stress.
 
Abnormalities of this axis have been observed and documented in animals subjected to confinement, restraint, isolation or surgical procedures—all of which are routinely faced by orcas in SeaWorld’s tanks. Like humans with PTSD, throughout their lives, captive orcas suffer from threats to their physical health and families as well as exhibiting persistent fear, distress, avoidant behaviors and increased aggression.
 
Intelligent, sensitive orcas are waiting for a reprieve from their daily suffering. As is the case with humans, the best way to alleviate their distress is by removing the conditions that contribute to it—including imprisonment, social isolation and painful procedures—and by giving them the opportunity to live as nature intended.
 
Ultimately, we must ask ourselves, as a society, how we will allow those who are the most vulnerable to us — both human and nonhuman — to be treated.
 
As we’ve seen with SeaWorld, an impassioned public response can make all the difference. It’s time to acknowledge that justice for animals is the great social movement of our time and that the time for making it a reality is now.

InCity Voices

Why 2014 was a good year for animals

 

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Jett supports PETA!

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President’s message – PETA 

By Ingrid Newkirk

Dear Friends,

2014 was another banner year for PETA and the animals we defend.

As described by The Saratogian’s horse-racing columnist, PETA’s first-of-its kind eyewitness investigation of horse drugging at Saratoga Race Course and Churchill Downs “exploded like a nuclear bomb in the racing community.”

In February, our mobile veterinary clinics division celebrated its 100,000th surgery.

In a major victory for baby seals—won with PETA’s help—the World Trade Organization upheld the European Union’s ban on seal fur imports, a landmark step toward protecting animals under international trade law.

The shocking footage from our wool industry exposé has been viewed 3.8 million times, and more than 65 apparel companies have begun displaying our new “PETA-Approved Vegan” logo in response to consumer demand for animal-friendly clothing!

We managed to get 18 bears who had been imprisoned in concrete pits or cells moved to beautiful sanctuaries, where they now enjoy fresh air and grass beneath their feet.

Thousands of people on three continents heard PETA’s message of compassion in person as a result of my “Naked Truth” wake-up tour. Following a speech at Harvard Law School by the PETA Foundation’s director of animal law about the cruelty of SeaWorld, the Harvard Law Record—the oldest law school newspaper in the nation—wrote: “Orca captivity is barbaric, inhuman and a gross violation of the rights of a highly intelligent and deeply feeling creature. The work of people like [the PETA Foundation’s director of animal law] makes apparent that generations to come will one day look upon such practices with eyes filled with shame and disgust.”

PETA’s strong outreach efforts among the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S.—the Latino community—reached millions. PETA Latino’s website was visited by more than 10 million people, our Spanish-language “Glass Walls” agribusiness exposé was viewed by more than 1.3 million people …

CLICK HERE to read more!

InCity Voices

Free Tilly!

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By Ingrid E. Newkirk

First, there was the jaw-dropping story of a British woman who was caught on camera tossing an affectionate cat into an outdoor trash bin. Then, it was an Eastern European girl slinging crying puppies into a fast-moving stream. Now, right here in America, some people have imprisoned a dog inside a box barely bigger than his own body. The box has solid sides, and the dog can only see out if he jumps up and peers over them. He has been locked in the box for months. To add to the mental torture, the dog has worn his teeth down to the nubs from biting at his prison, so his owners occasionally take him out of the box to drill painful holes vertically into his teeth in order to irrigate them. And right there by the side of the box, the dog’s keepers also manually extract sperm from him and use it to breed other dogs to sell. There’s more, but the abuse I’ve already described is enough to make any decent person sick.

Take a look at Google Maps and you can look down into the container and see the dog lying there. Continue reading Free Tilly! →