By David Simmons
The family wanted to go to Sri Racha Tiger Zoo just southeast of Bangkok, and I'd heard it had kind of a bad reputation, so I had a quick look around the Internet before we piled into our niece's pickup for the journey.
The first thing I came across was a long, humourless sermon by someone claiming to have spent 30 years in the zoo industry (and therefore, we presume, an expert) but had a traumatic divorce and is now a "traveller" (therefore, we presume, a cool expert).
The gist of the piece is that people who still like zoos are unsophisticated, and that the Tiger Zoo "is one of the worst I have ever visited. Sadly just because it is a bad zoo does not make it unpopular."
Well, we all know, of course, that zoos aren't politically correct in the West, but this is Asia, which, as we also all know, is still far behind when it comes to acquiring Western values, other than consumerism and unsustainable growth, where many countries including Thailand have caught on pretty well. The Sermonizer goes on to note sternly: "The opportunity is there to have your photograph taken with a Tiger Cub. People do, too. Just about everyone in my party forked out the two hundred or so Thai Baht to feed a cub."
My eight-year-old daughter joined this unsophisticated throng, sitting on a bench hugging a tiger cub as her picture was taken. Years later, we are led to presume, she will look at those photos and shake her head in wonder that she could have ever been so uncool as to be thrilled at the privilege of playing with a baby tiger.
But The Sermonizer really starts foaming at the mouth when it comes to the crocodile and tiger shows.
"The Crocodile Show was as I would expect it to be. A couple of people poking and prodding and standing on poor crocodiles. An absolute waste of time. There was the inevitable put your head in a Crocs mouth. I don't doubt that I was not the only person in the audience that wished the Croc would wreak its revenge."
Revenge? For what? Basking in the sun all day being fed fish lacking the nutrients to be found in Southeast Asia's polluted rivers? But there's more: "No education here, it was not even clever. I actually thought it lacked professionalism too even for the crappy persecution it presented. I could have quadrupled their 'tips' with a couple of simple manouveres [sic]."
The Sermonizer didn't elaborate on what his "manoeuvres" might be, but given the tone of his tome, we can presume it would be "educational". Possibly he would stand on the stage with a blackboard and pointer lecturing on the life cycle of the Siamese crocodile, while the crocs themselves (and the audience) drifted off into slumber.
The tiger show is his next target: "The Tiger Show was just a circus with all those stupid ancient circussy [sic] tricks. Nothing clever, no imagination and certainly no education." It's true; there was no sign in the auditorium of a lecturer's blackboard, and the audience was wide awake, laughing and applauding as the great beasts did their "stupid ancient circusy tricks", including standing on their hind legs and wai-ing to the unsophisticated, largely non-Western and therefore so politically incorrect crowd.
Coming from one of the most sophisticated countries on the planet, Canada, I have always aspired to be as politically correct as The Sermonizer. Not much progress so far, I'm sorry to report. I still don't have any problem with zoos. (Actually the best one I've ever been to was in ultra-politically correct southern California, the San Diego Zoo.) Whining that it's cruel to hold wild animals in captivity doesn't really wash with me. In all the zoos I've been to, the animals look well fed and reasonably content. I'm not convinced they'd prefer to be fending for themselves in a jungle.
As for training them to do circus acts, again I don't see why this is so horrible, and here's why.
In the animal kingdom, there are three kinds of inter-species relationships: predator, prey and symbiont. Like many mammals, humans fit into all three categories: Most of us prey on other animals, and are also preyed upon by insects, parasitic micro-organisms and, occasionally, other carnivores such as sharks, crocodiles and tigers.
As for symbiosis, the most important example is our digestive system, which relies on bacteria living inside our bodies. If these bacteria suddenly all decided to stop "exploiting" us, or simply decided there was more to life than wallowing in a stinking soup of stomach acid and Quarter Pounders, and took a hike we'd be in serious trouble.
But to an extent seen in no other species, we have established a variety of other symbiotic relationships with higher animals. We have domesticated them to assist us in transportation or agriculture. We have made pets out of them to provide us companionship. And we have used them for entertainment. While it is true that there are too many cases of humans abusing animals, by and large the most successful of these relationships have been give and take: The animals do what we want, and in return are provided food, shelter and health care. An increasing number of humans wish they could get a similar deal.
I don't know anything about how tigers are trained to wai and jump through hoops; maybe some abuse is involved, but The Sermonizer provides no evidence that this is so (in fact, he doesn't even suggest it). Certainly there has been evidence in the past of cruelty to animals for entertainment, the most famous being the Roman spectacles in the Colosseum. But even in that extreme case there were payoffs for the animals such as a reliable supply of Christians to eat. Even today some suggest reviving this idea might not be such a bad thing, to help cull the world of televangelists, for example. I am opposed to this view, more or less.
But to return to the main point, if the Sri Racha tigers are properly compensated for their work, there is no more reason that it should be condemned than "non-educational" human-based entertainment such as acting, professional sports or ballet.
To argue that it is "against nature" is nonsense. Humans are a natural species, one of the most successful, and our ability to exploit other species is a natural part of that success. At the same time, our brains have evolved pleasure centres to an extent that is probably unique in the animal kingdom, and our development of vast varieties of entertainment is therefore also perfectly natural.
These developments, especially the ability to alter our own environment (deliberately or inadvertently), could of course also lead to our extinction. Our failure to control our own procreation along with our almost universal adoption of a self-destructive economic system are putting unsustainable stresses on our planet, and on the other species with which we share it. But before we destroy the world, I for one am pleased that my daughter and I occasionally have the opportunity to encounter some of the most remarkable of those other species, such as tigers, up close.
As for the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo itself, in my opinion, in Thailand, the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok is a better value and much easier for most foreign tourists to get to. Admission to the Tiger Zoo is an eye-watering 450 baht (about C$15) for foreigners, and even the Thai rate of 150 baht is pretty steep. I could think of several ways to have a lot of fun in Thailand for 450 baht – not all of which my wife would approve of, however.
Still, this is her country, not mine, so the final verdict on the Tiger Zoo should go to her: "I very like tiger, mawden cockodie. Cockodie make me very afraid!"
Monday, November 28, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
The More Things Change
By David Simmons
In the autumn of 1980, I spent several happy weeks in Greece. It was a very different country than it is today; indeed, it was a different era.
Often called the "cradle of democracy", Greece had up to that point actually enjoyed modern democracy for only about five years. It had just rejoined NATO, and there were protests in the streets of Athens – for or against the alliance I didn't know. It could have been either; one of the poorest countries in Europe, Greece had been spending huge amounts of money on its military machine, apparently in fear of nearby Turkey, which was also a NATO member. So maybe the idea was that after rejoining the alliance, Greece could spend badly needed funds bringing its social services up to European standards.
On the other hand, NATO did not have a good reputation in those days. It was the middle of the Cold War, and the United States, having largely screwed up the struggle against communism in Asia, was supporting brutal dictatorships and death squads all over Latin America in the name of crushing the Red Menace. And in the eyes of many, NATO and the US military-industrial complex were one and the same. It was, as noted above, a different era.
So I wasn't sure what the protesters wanted. I wasn't very politically aware back then, just emerging from the intellectual wasteland of Protestant fundamentalism. Still, specific grievances aside, there was a broad sense that having finally rid themselves of their monarchy and military dictators and embraced the form of government whose name they had coined millennia before, democracy was here to stay. It was a time of hope, especially for the young.
I settled into a flophouse on the south coast of Crete populated largely by young Brits. Maggie Thatcher had been in power for about a year, and the miracles of monetarism were already having their effect. British youth were flocking to the Mediterranean for working holidays – mostly picking olives by day and enjoying cheap moussaka and ouzo by night. Still, everyone knew the UK's economic woes would soon be over. After the pain of Thatcherism would come the gain of European-style stability. It was a time of hope, and a good time to be young.
That November, another disciple of Milton Friedman came to power, the B-movie actor Ronald Reagan. One wag in the flophouse quipped, "I see a fiery glow over Tehran." The weak, incompetent president Jimmy Carter had crashed and burned, just like the helicopters he had sent into the Iranian desert. Soon, it was thought, the Khomeini theocracy would do the same, renewing hope for modernization of the Middle East.
Eventually, as autumn began transiting into winter and the Mediterranean surf became less inviting, I abandoned Crete and moved on to a kibbutz in the northern Negev, just east of the Gaza Strip. Founded in 1949, it was a large primarily agricultural kibbutz with a secular socialist philosophy. Kibbutzim of that persuasion had not been having an easy ride since the election of the right-wing former Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin, but the hopes of young Israelis, for the full embracement of human rights and for peace with the Palestinians, remained strong.
The literal voice of that hope was anchored not far offshore on a former Dutch cargo ship renamed MV Peace, the home of a radio station partly funded by John Lennon and called Kol HaShalom, the Voice of Peace. Days after my arrival at the kibbutz, Lennon was shot and killed in New York City. Like much of the world, everyone on the kibbutz – Zionists, socialists, industrialists, Bedouin orchard workers, foreign volunteers – mourned this loss, as Kol HaShalom and the Armed Forces Radio played Lennon's songs for 24 hours.
But mere bullets can't destroy hope. Soon it was Christmas, and our Jewish hosts turned over the kitchen facilities to the foreign volunteers and brought in special supplies so we could feast together. On New Year's Eve, we tried to stay awake as everyone's home time zone ushered in 1981. Because of the 10-hour time difference, we didn't make it to mine.
But it's the thought that counts, and good thoughts – for prosperity and democracy in Greece, for peace in the Middle East, for the success of the European experiment of human rights and economic equality, for a global end to poverty, war, racism and injustice – prevailed.
It was an era that belonged not to Thatcher, Reagan, Begin or Khomeini, and certainly not to Mark David Chapman. It belonged to youth, and the power of hope.
In the autumn of 1980, I spent several happy weeks in Greece. It was a very different country than it is today; indeed, it was a different era.
Often called the "cradle of democracy", Greece had up to that point actually enjoyed modern democracy for only about five years. It had just rejoined NATO, and there were protests in the streets of Athens – for or against the alliance I didn't know. It could have been either; one of the poorest countries in Europe, Greece had been spending huge amounts of money on its military machine, apparently in fear of nearby Turkey, which was also a NATO member. So maybe the idea was that after rejoining the alliance, Greece could spend badly needed funds bringing its social services up to European standards.
On the other hand, NATO did not have a good reputation in those days. It was the middle of the Cold War, and the United States, having largely screwed up the struggle against communism in Asia, was supporting brutal dictatorships and death squads all over Latin America in the name of crushing the Red Menace. And in the eyes of many, NATO and the US military-industrial complex were one and the same. It was, as noted above, a different era.
So I wasn't sure what the protesters wanted. I wasn't very politically aware back then, just emerging from the intellectual wasteland of Protestant fundamentalism. Still, specific grievances aside, there was a broad sense that having finally rid themselves of their monarchy and military dictators and embraced the form of government whose name they had coined millennia before, democracy was here to stay. It was a time of hope, especially for the young.
I settled into a flophouse on the south coast of Crete populated largely by young Brits. Maggie Thatcher had been in power for about a year, and the miracles of monetarism were already having their effect. British youth were flocking to the Mediterranean for working holidays – mostly picking olives by day and enjoying cheap moussaka and ouzo by night. Still, everyone knew the UK's economic woes would soon be over. After the pain of Thatcherism would come the gain of European-style stability. It was a time of hope, and a good time to be young.
That November, another disciple of Milton Friedman came to power, the B-movie actor Ronald Reagan. One wag in the flophouse quipped, "I see a fiery glow over Tehran." The weak, incompetent president Jimmy Carter had crashed and burned, just like the helicopters he had sent into the Iranian desert. Soon, it was thought, the Khomeini theocracy would do the same, renewing hope for modernization of the Middle East.
Eventually, as autumn began transiting into winter and the Mediterranean surf became less inviting, I abandoned Crete and moved on to a kibbutz in the northern Negev, just east of the Gaza Strip. Founded in 1949, it was a large primarily agricultural kibbutz with a secular socialist philosophy. Kibbutzim of that persuasion had not been having an easy ride since the election of the right-wing former Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin, but the hopes of young Israelis, for the full embracement of human rights and for peace with the Palestinians, remained strong.
The literal voice of that hope was anchored not far offshore on a former Dutch cargo ship renamed MV Peace, the home of a radio station partly funded by John Lennon and called Kol HaShalom, the Voice of Peace. Days after my arrival at the kibbutz, Lennon was shot and killed in New York City. Like much of the world, everyone on the kibbutz – Zionists, socialists, industrialists, Bedouin orchard workers, foreign volunteers – mourned this loss, as Kol HaShalom and the Armed Forces Radio played Lennon's songs for 24 hours.
But mere bullets can't destroy hope. Soon it was Christmas, and our Jewish hosts turned over the kitchen facilities to the foreign volunteers and brought in special supplies so we could feast together. On New Year's Eve, we tried to stay awake as everyone's home time zone ushered in 1981. Because of the 10-hour time difference, we didn't make it to mine.
But it's the thought that counts, and good thoughts – for prosperity and democracy in Greece, for peace in the Middle East, for the success of the European experiment of human rights and economic equality, for a global end to poverty, war, racism and injustice – prevailed.
It was an era that belonged not to Thatcher, Reagan, Begin or Khomeini, and certainly not to Mark David Chapman. It belonged to youth, and the power of hope.
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