Atlanta-relevant; a good teaching & discussion prompt

The TNR Q&A

Of Dog Fights and Men

by Ben Crair
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 08.29.07

On Monday, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick plead guilty to federal charges of dog fighting, including charges that he personally endorsed the execution of underperforming dogs by hanging or drowning. For insight into the reaction to Vick's case, The New Republic spoke with ethicist Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His book Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, is considered the foundational text of the animal rights movement. He discussed the sorry lives of the American pig, the ethical difference between hunting and dog fighting, and why both of those are minor cruelties in the scale of things.

What do you make of the public reaction to Michael Vick's involvement in illegal dog fighting?

Well, I think in a sense it's quite fair. It seems from the allegation that Michael Vick did horrible things to dogs. If he did what's alleged, people should be disgusted and revolted by it. From my point of view, what is regrettable is that people only react so strongly to such things when they occur with dogs. If something similar had been done with pigs or chickens, the reaction probably would have been much milder. That seems to me to be wrong. I think pigs suffer just as much as dogs, and, in terms of what we do to pigs in this country in general, they suffer a lot more cruelty than dogs do because there are so many of them in factory farms in appalling conditions. That's the incongruity. It's not that there's an overreaction to the Vick business, it's rather that there's an underreaction to what's happening elsewhere.

Basketball player Stephon Marbury was widely criticized for telling reporters, "We don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dog fighting is a sport." Do you think his comparison was valid?

Well, the aim of a hunter is to kill the animal with as little pain as possible--or it should be. That's the ethic that you get in sport hunting, at least. I'm not condoning or supporting sport hunting but there is a distinction in that the good hunter will shoot the animal in a vital place where it will drop dead immediately. It won't suffer. It seems pretty clear that the dogs that didn't fight well that Michael Vick and his associates killed were not killed instantly at all. They were drowned, for example. Drowning is obviously a much more distressing death than being shot with a bullet through the brain or in the heart.

Has the reaction to the Vick case exposed a schizophrenia in the way the public judges offenses against animals?

That comparison that you just asked me to make between dog fighting and sport-hunting is interesting in itself because these are both really very minor cruelties in the terms of the scale of things. The big thing that is going undiscussed here is the industrial raising of animals for food. Just in terms of the numbers, it's so vastly greater than sport-hunting, which in turn is a lot bigger than dog fighting. We're talking literally about billions of animals each year being reared in conditions that don't enable them to have a minimally decent life and then being killed in mass-production factory ways that again often are not painless. So that's the schizophrenia, that all of this hidden suffering that's engaged in by supposedly respectable corporations and that people then buy in their supermarkets is the thing that is unspoken. It's not the recreational activities that we should be focusing on.

Has there been an increase of interest in animal cruelty recently?

I think so. At the 2006 elections there were a number of animal anti-cruelty initiatives passed. There's been a bit of an upsurge in it and I would say that the response to Vick is consistent with that. People are starting to realize that this is an issue that a lot of people are taking quite seriously now. Perhaps that is going to have some larger political ramifications as well.

Ben Crair is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.

Zoos Reconsidered

Newsweek's commentator Rabbi Marc Gellman has weighed in on the problem of zoos with his piece "Tiger, Tiger: Why it’s time to reconsider the whole notion of putting wild animals in zoos" (Aug. 1, 2007).
Here are a few excerpts:
Do zoos increase environmental consciousness and thus help to protect the habitats of other wild animals? I don't think so. As far as I can tell, the people deforesting the Amazon or killing elephants in Africa for their ivory have not been deterred by outraged kids and their families who just visited the zoo.

I just finished watching the Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth” in all its high-definition spectacularness. It does more to show animals in their natural environment, behaving as they really behave in the wild than any zoo ever could. True, you cannot smell them, and true, there is an unforgettable size and savor to elephant dung, but in these new breathtaking images, we humans can see animals without imprisoning them.

Gellman's essay is in the Newsweek issue focusing on trapping of gorillas.

A Talk by Lori Marino

Time to apply the Golden Rule to other species

July 5, 2007 : 10:04 AM ET
Best Friends News

What if an elephant believed humans were created to live in a small cubicle for life specifically to entertain all their elephant friends?

What if a pod of dolphins thought it would be fun to trap a couple of kids and forced them to perform tricks for their dolphin families and buddies for the rest of their natural lives?

And what if a couple of chimpanzees decided the couple of humans standing nearby would make great subjects for medical experiments?

That would be wrong, wouldn’t it? So why is it OK for humans to trap elephants, capture dolphins and force them into captivity and deem apes perfect fodder for medical experiments?

According to Dr. Lori Marino, the answer is simple: Because we don’t think of other species as our equals. As a result, we are in danger of looking at the extinction of nearly 16,000 species.

So what’s the solution? That’s simple, too: Think differently.

“We have to step outside ourselves to get a better view of what we’re doing,” she said. “Otherwise, we’re effectively going to continue killing off the planet.”

Lori is a senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University. She teaches animal welfare, brain imaging and comparative neuroanatomy – the study of the similarities and differences between species.

She recently gave a presentation at Best Friends on trans-species psychology, an emerging discipline developed by Lori’s colleague Gay Bradshaw. TSP recognizes that all species undergo the same dynamics, emotional pain and joy, and social experiences most people currently understand as uniquely human.

“We have to change the way we think of other species,” Lori said. “It shouldn’t be, ‘What are they?’ but ‘Who are they?’ The more we connect ourselves, the less likely we are to do them harm.”

Lori focused on cetaceans, elephants and chimpanzees: how their lives would play out naturally and how humans intervene to alter – actually damage – their natural life course. She noted that on a general level we share complexity, individuality and higher order continuity with the other species. We have large complex brains, self-awareness, long childhoods and individual roles to play in society. So do dolphins, whales and elephants. We have the capacity to love, play, help each other, baby-sit each other’s children and learn from our elders. Ditto the dolphins, whales and elephants.

If we’re so similar, who are we, as humans, to decide how they live their lives? How would we respond if we were the ones held in captivity, relocated without reason or poached for entertainment?

“This is where we must begin,” Lori said. “These creatures are our equals. We need to start treating them the way we would treat our fellow human beings, and it all begins with changing the way we think.”

If we thought differently, maybe we wouldn’t engage in drive hunts for dolphins. We wouldn’t force them into shallow waters, throw nets over them, kill some and save some for trainers because we’d know we wouldn’t want that done to us.

“Dolphins are very social creatures. They form families and social groups. They hold fins to express affection the way we hold hands,” Lori said.

She explained that dolphins engage in cultural traditions – activities handed down by elders like strand-feeding and sponge-carrying. How different is that from a mother teaching her child how to use a spoon and fork? Male dolphins get together to engage in synchronized swimming and diving, much in the same way young boys get together to play sports. And if a baby dolphin is taken from his mom too early, he likely won’t survive because he needs her to learn how to be a dolphin. Just like baby boys and girls couldn’t survive without their moms.

If we thought differently, maybe we wouldn’t treat chimpanzees as medical experiments.
“We share over 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees; they are our closest living relative,” Lori said.

Just like us, chimpanzees live in groups that sometimes stay together, sometimes break apart. The “head honcho” chimps enjoy being groomed by their peers, the ultimate expression of respect. They like a comfortable bed of leaves to sleep on every night. They fight, wage war and make love.

And then the humans come in, take them from their families and friends, and put them in cages with concrete slabs for our own purposes because we don’t think we’re pulling them from a social fabric, from love, from comfort.

If we thought differently about other species, maybe we’d think twice about moving elephants from one place to another. And this point is particularly interesting because we often move them because we think it’s in their best interest, in the interest of conservation.

“My colleagues have shown that male elephants look to older males to learn how to be successful adult males in their society,” Lori said. “Without an adult male around, the younger elephants experience abnormal development and hyper-aggression.”

If an adult male is relocated and leaves young males behind, there’s no way for the youngsters to learn how to behave. The orphans form gangs and grow into angry, aggressive and dangerous adults. Much like young boys who don’t have a father figure to look up to.

Lori then quoted some frightening statistics. Last year, the Chinese River Dolphin became extinct due to human activities in its habitat. Currently, there are nearly 16,000 species of plants and animals running a very high risk of extinction. In the 1900s, 10 million elephants roamed the plains of Africa. Now there are less than 500,000. The worldwide population of all the remaining great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans) could fit into a football stadium. And a great deal of this decline can be directly traced to the behavior of humans.
So where do we begin to change this ominous trend?

“Let’s start with the children,” Lori said. “Let’s teach them to understand our place in the universe is the same place as all living creatures. Let’s teach them not to make the mistakes we made.

“And it’s not too late for us. We need to make the changes within ourselves. There’s no time like the present.”

More information may be found at the following websites:

International Association for Animal Trauma and Recovery http://iaatr.org/

Kerulos Centre for Animal Psychology and Trauma Recovery http://www.kerulos.org/

Act For Dolphins – Stop the Dolphin Slaughter in Japan http://green-alien.com/ACT/

Project R&R-Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. Laboratories http://www.releasechimps.org/

Written by Amy Abern

AJC Opinion

Aquarium should admit captivity hurts these fish

By RANDY MALAMUD and LORI MARINO
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Published on: 06/15/07

We are saddened and disturbed by the untimely death of Norton, the second whale shark to succumb while in the custody of the Georgia Aquarium.

The aquarium justifies holding whale sharks for the purpose of educating the public, preserving endangered animals and conducting research. None of these points holds water.

The aquarium has produced no credible evidence that visits to their whale shark exhibit (or any other exhibit, for that matter) translate into better understanding of whale sharks (or any other species).

Looking at these animals in downtown Atlanta may seem educational, or at least, harmless, but in fact it teaches us exactly the wrong ecological lessons.

Instead of cultivating our understanding of the importance of an animal's habitat (and thus, the need to stop desecrating the oceans with the runoff from our industrial and commercial activities), aquarium displays suggest that habitats are irrelevant to the animal's well-being. Perhaps the most important fact about whale sharks is that they are classified as a vulnerable species (only one step better than endangered) by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

The Georgia Aquarium has done nothing to "educate" the public about the fact that by purchasing these animals from Taiwanese fishermen, they financially support the very industry that has led to their threatened status.

Whale sharks are so wonderfully mysterious to us: There's so much we don't know about them (how long they live, where they travel, how they feed, how they reproduce, how far they swim, even how many of them there are).

Can't we leave these mysteries unknown and leave the sharks in peace?

Every animal has an innate dignity, and keeping them captive in these tanks is a transgression of that dignity. We aren't meant to see whale sharks in this way: It isn't natural. The whole enterprise of spectatorship, as it takes place at the aquarium, is fundamentally and inherently flawed. If we aspire to honor and understand nature and ecological harmony, then we cannot continue to displace and degrade animals as we have done in the past.

The Georgia Aquarium should step up and do the right thing by admitting that they made a mistake in taking these animals into captivity and stop hiding behind the empty promises of education, conservation and research. They can set an ethical example for the rest of the captivity industry.

It is their choice as to whether they will rise to the occasion.

• Randy Malamud is professor and associate chair of modern literature, ecocriticism, and cultural studies at Georgia State University. Lori Marino is senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University. Contributing to this column were Ron Broglio, assistant professor of literature, communication, and culture at Georgia Tech, and Nathan Nobis, assistant professor of philosophy and religion at Morehouse College.

The Google Group

http://groups.google.com/group/atlanta-animal-interested-scholars