One of the world's few remaining pageants of objectification and commoditization.
How's the animal rights movement doing? If you rate it by the simple question "How many animals have rights?" you'd have to say "Not very well." Call it the animal rights paradox.
Premiered at Sundance, the movie follows attorney Steven M. Wise as he argues to a high court judges that chimpanzee Tommy has the capacity for legal rights and should be set free…
Winston Churchill famously said: “A dog looks up to you; a cat looks down on you; only a pig treats you as an equal.” But that, of course, is hardly how we treat them…
In a sane world, it would be headline news. Everything else would immediately come to a screeching halt to make way for a massive, worldwide attempt to turn things around. (Of…
The Whale Who Took Down SeaWorld
Egg Industry Concession Is No ‘Victory’
For Chimps, the End of Vivisection, Almost
Cecil Is the Least of It
Is it OK to keep dolphins (including belugas and killer whales) in captivity as long as you follow certain approved standards of care from the zoo or research industries? Or do dolphins have the inherent right not to be held captive by humans in the first place?
It’s a question that hovered in the background of last weekend’s conference of the American Cetacean Society in San Diego. And at one session, it exploded to the surface.
In the wake of shocking revelations about the care of the animals at Marineland, Niagara Falls, the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA) has given…
It’s a tactic that’s typical of corporations whose employees start blowing the whistle: Threaten a giant lawsuit. Marineland, the Canadian zoo that’s been the subject of…
A new study of a herd of elephants in Africa has begun the process of classifying their personalities. The scientists looked at four dimensions of personality: Leadership, Gentleness, Playfulness and Reliability.
One thing they found is that among elephants, leadership is established not by dominance but by the respect gained in showing intelligence and solving problems.
There’s lots of talk this week about a “talking” beluga whale who died five years ago at a U.S. Navy facility. And it’s all grist to…
An eight-year-old girl, dressed in a skunk costume for a Halloween party, was in critical condition at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh after being shot by her cousin, who thought she was a skunk.
Wandering behind the scenes at a Japanese marine zoo, Chinese photographer Huang-Ju came across this scene.
“I saw the workers scrubbing this tank,” he says, “but then I suddenly realized there were dolphins lying in the drained pool. I was shocked at how the staff ignored the dolphin and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to refill the pool.”
The photo won Huan-Ju a special commendation in this year’s photo contest for the Veolia Environnement The World in Our Hands Award.
Sounds like something out of a bad James Bond movie. The Ukrainian navy is training captive dolphins to attack enemy swimmers. According to RIA Novosti: The…
Orca experts visit Puget Sound, off the coast of Seattle, and compare the life of a killer whale in the wild (the real sea world) with…
Here’s a video from Sunday’s massive demonstration at Marineland, Niagara Falls. Some of the 500 people at this peaceful but vociferous event gained access to the…
As a crowd of 500 protesters gathered outside of Marineland at Niagara Falls on Sunday afternoon, 100 of them broke from the main demonstration and charged into the zoo itself shouting “Shut it down, Shut it down!” This followed the release, earlier in the week, of two official reports about conditions at Marineland.
More of the story and how you can help wild dolphins here.
Why is Nakai, one of the orcas at SeaWorld San Diego, swimming around the tank with half his chin missing? Whatever the exact cause of his wound, one thing is for sure: things like this don’t happen to orcas in the wild. It’s just the latest in an endless series of injuries at deaths at marine circuses.
Last week, PBS presented Death and the Civil War – a Ken Burns movie about how the Civil War changed the way we relate to death and how we treat dead people. The war drove Americans to find new ways to bury people, to transport dead people, to record and account for them. But one figure, one report, one reference is entirely missing. That would be the number of horses who died.
When killer whale Tilikum killed his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, two and a half years ago, David Kirby started work on a book, “Death at SeaWorld.” He…
When his person died in 2006, Capitan, a German shepherd ran away from home. A few days later, he was found at the cemetery next to his person’s grave. He’s still there. Here’s the story of Capitan – and of some of the other dogs who stayed by their people and wouldn’t leave them.
The following extensive notes are from Naomi Rose at Humane Society International, who will be testifying at the permit hearings. A complete pdf of these notes, along with queries for the aquarium and the National Marine and Fisheries Service, which authorizes permits, can be downloaded here, along with information for obtaining complete source materials.
These are questions that can be posed to the Georgia Aquarium about their capture of 18 beluga whales for import into the United States:
All the permit application materials regarding the Georgia Aquarium’s beluga import permit application are available at the website of the federal NOAA/NMFS agency. You can submit comments there. And you can contact the the Georgia Aquarium as follows:
(Part Seven of this series.) Gaining a permit to bring dolphins and whales into captivity involves negotiating a thicket of legal, moral and public relations issues. The captivity hasn’t tried this for almost 20 years. If the Georgia Aquarium succeeds with the belugas they’ve captured in Russia, it will open the door to a flood of new imports for the marine zoos and circuses. At a public hearing, Naomi Rose of Humane Society International will be arguing the case for returning those belugas to their homes and families.