Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
I looked for a local report on this but didn't find one yet. This is big news in my area because this is the home of the Circus. The elephants will be missed.
Comments
The animal rights activist have been after the circus for the last 15 years about the use of bullhooks that are used to train and control the elephants. It looks brutal when they hit them with the long rods but it don't hurt them because of their tough hide. Several animal rights groups filed a court suit over bull hooks but lost the case. The groups actually ended up paying the circus 25 million in a counter suit that was settled in 2014. Also the groups convinced some of the cities to ban the circus and elephant acts. It has taken the groups 10 years to get enough large markets to do this.
Ringling bros has a Center for Elephant Conservation in Polk City, Florida. This is were the elephants stay on a 200 acre preserve. Fourteen Asian elephants have been born there since 2000. It is the largest herd of Asian elephants outside of Asia. Asian elephants have been used domestically for thousands of years. The techniques that are used to train them have a long history and are still used in India today in rural areas. Their elephants that are used in the circus and live on the preserve actually live longer then the elephants at zoos.
by trkingmomoe on Thu, 03/05/2015 - 5:00pm
Bullhook featured prominently in the book "Water for Elephants" (2006), and fairly good film of the same name. (spoiler - they were especially brutal with the bullhook because the "stupid" elephant spoke Polish, not English - & the other trainers only spoke English. Oops - "Dzien dobry", as Borat would say)
Of course a bit romanticized, but probably zoo animals in the Depression not treated too well. I remember a kid leading an elephant around the Arab quarter in Bangkok begging for him - felt quite saddened for the beast. Don't think the life for elephants or tigers in human entertainment is very enlightened. Remember people trying to get a beautiful white Bengal tiger to growl - I badly wanted some boltcutters to cut the fence.
But there was a BBC documentary not long ago on South Pacific dolphins then used for shows in Dubai. The viewer was supposed to feel horrified about this, but then the pristine native close-to-the-earth blessed-by-God peoples would annually drive a school of dolphins into the beach and bludgeon a few hundred/thousand of them to death - kids stepping into the bloody water to pull out their favorite bits.... The "exploiters" saved them from that end to put them in a pool doing acrobatics & swimming with people, which at least felt like the animals could move, unlike elephants & tigers - okay, the best thing is probably leave them alone so they can be a$$holes on their own. (yeah, elephant behavior in the wild ain't always the best mannered either)
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 03/06/2015 - 5:17am