Abuse of animals Essay

Most of us, grew up taking family trips to the circus, zoo, marine park or rodeo. Seeing animals held captive for human amusement was part of life. We never questioned it. While it is assumed that all humans, unless they have committed crimes against society, deserve freedom, we are not used to making that assumption for members of other species. We should ask ourselves why not. What have the animals in a zoo or marine park done to deserve their jail sentences, or the elephants in a circus done to deserve lives spent mostly in chains? For thousands of years, animals have been used to entertain humans in sporting events, rodeos, hunting and in circuses. They have been hurt and many have even died. Using animals in sports raises concerns for animals rights.1 Therefore, the use of animals for entertainment or sport should be banned. Now days there are many things other than animals to entertain humans such as computers, phones, games and so on. So why do we need animals? When animals are used in circus’ they have to travel in some sort of truck where they will be kept in a cage. The circus might be poor or unpopular. So the poorer the less the animals will be fed and the less they’re paid attention to. For some entertainment animals are killed, this is wrong. We need more wild life not less. Animals should not be treated like this it is wrong and really not at all necessary! To take part in circuses, animals have to be taken away from their families and their natural habitats, put inside dark trucks and put inside cages. We then take them to the circus or the rodeo to fight and many often do not care if the animal dies, It is just for their satisfaction. We need to stop this and save our wildlife, not destroy it. Why should animals be caged in the first place? They are wild and uncivilized creatures. They have very narrow aims; eat, sleep, breed , die. The most dominant reason for caging animals or birds is for personal entertainment, whether it is a lion in a circus forced to jump through loops or if it is a macaw kept in a cage as a pet or â€Å"companion†. They are kept in inadequate spaces, wild animals have ranges that stretch for miles on end. They need space to run and act out there instincts. With wild animals just like pets when they are restricted in space, exercise and stimulation they get frustrated. This leads to physiological problems, such as pacing in cages and gnawing at bars. This can also lead to violent attacks on the trainer and/or the audience. Most people, seeing tigers jumps through hoops of fire, or elephants stand on their heads, never think about what is behind those unnatural acts. The circus would like us to believe that the animals are trained with positive reinforcement. If that were true then we would see trainers in the ring with bags of treats. Instead they carry whips and bullhooks? Even Ric O’Barry, who once made his living capturing and training the dolphins who played Flipper, now works against dolphin captivity. He is now the marine mammal specialist for the leading French animal protection group, â€Å"One Voice.† That group has shared a horrifying account of the annual dolphin slaughter in Japan, as thousands of dolphins are rounded into a bay and hacked up with machetes. Representatives of marine theme parks from around the world watch the carnage and pay the killers for the best looking dolphins for the tourist industry.2 Animals are harmed when used as objects of entertainment, no matter how innocent that entertainment is. The circus is another arena in which human beings abuse other animals. Animals are trained to perform tricks using whips, electronic goads, sticks, food-deprivation etc. Wild animals such as lions, tigers, and elephants are kept in shamefully inadequate conditions in tiny spaces. The necessity of regular transportation means that the circus can never provide an appropriate home for wild animals. These animals are forced to travel thousands of miles in cramped and squalid conditions and frequently end up physically and mentally ill. And what for? Purely for the entertainment of we arrogant exploitative humans. What sort of lesson does it teach our children about non-human animals to take them to the circus and see these great creatures demeaned and controlled by force to perform silly tricks? The history of animal cruelty has been traced back as far as the 12th Century, for example fighting dogs for sports. Dogs are use in pit fights against larger animals like wild boar and bulls. Cockfighting in some countries may still be legal and part of the cultural norm.3In most counties the act of two or more animals fighting each other, such as cockfighting, is seen as cruel and is therefore illegal such as cow fighting and camel fighting. There are also some legal forms of sport where humans fight animals, such as bullfighting which has a long history in Spanish and Portuguese tradition.4 There are several other blood sports in history that were intended as entertainment. The use of animals in sport demeans humans as Peter Singer arguments that other animals may not have the same level of sapience as humans, but they feel fear, stress, exhaustion and pain just as we do. It is immoral to derive pleasure either from the suffering or forced performance of another living being, especially when that being is under one’s power and control. It would of course be absurd to suggest that animals should have equality with humans on the level of having the right to vote or of criminal responsibility, but they should have equality with us on terms of equal consideration of interests, that is, pain and suffering should be equally significant whether it is a human or an animal that feels it.5nHorses and dogs are among the principle victims of exploitation in human sporting activities. The main purpose of horse- and dog-racing is for human beings to indulge their penchant for gambling. The welfare of the animals involved is at best a secondary concern. The Riverside (Washington)Suicide Race67, where horse often die from the nearly 400 foot steep grade of the suicide hill, the riders trying to make it down and through a river. As for the conditions the animals are kept in, these may be good for the top dogs and horses, but in the main conditions are poor, and once the animals cease to win races they are likely to be neglected, abandoned, or slaughtered. Horses are also forced to take part in the dangerous contact sport of polo in which collisions and a hard, fast-moving puck pose serious danger to the animals who, unlike their riders, have no choice in whether they take part. Pet owners can argue that they love the pets they keep as a part of their family, they provide them with food and shelter, something far better than that which they could have ever seen in the wild. Medical attention is provided and ample enjoyment to accompany that â€Å"perfect† life, The pet technically lives like a king. research also accounts to animals being caged along with education of the youth through zoos, what education could a zoo provide if the animal is far from its natural habitat?, the only knowledge a child could squeeze out of a zoo is that monkeys like to throw things and they also like shout an awful lot at observers. Why should the animals be allowed to live in the wild? without a cage and unsupervised? Simply put, animals are also living creatures with souls, they also feel pain therefore they also deserve to have rights of their own. They may lack wisdom or intellectual resources which allow them to discover at a rate comparable to humans however it is logical to say that animals only attack when they are threatened. They don’t search for human flesh. P.T. Barnum created a form of staged Wild West show as early as 1843s, when he presented a mock â€Å"Grand Buffalo Hunt† in Hoboken, New Jersey. The show was not a great success. The 15 buffalo calves used in the show broke through the barriers and escaped from thes with what they believe is â€Å"better† for them? would a human live as a pet or prefer to be free ? A sane answer would be to protest and a human would probably kill the entire race of ali arena, causing panic among the crowd because they feels threatened.8 Consider the following anomaly for the sake of argument, If there was to be an alien invasion and those aliens were more intelligent and sophisticated than humans, do they have the right to capture humans and keep them as pets in their home planet? by feeding humanens if given the opportunity. Fighting bulls have a better quality of life than meat-producing bulls. If animal welfare is the primary concern then consistency requires that if one accepts the raising and slaughter of animals for meat then one should also accept the raising and slaughter of animals for entertainment. Some thinks that thorough bred animal which lives to a minimum age of four, roaming wild, feasting on Spain’s finest pasture, never even seeing a man on foot, is far superior to that of the many thousands of British bulls whose far shorter lives are spent entirely in factory conditions and killed in grim abattoirs so that we can eat beefburgers.† 9 To condemn bull fighting is to fail to be sensitive to cultural differences and to the true nature of the sport such as the traditional Spanish culture that should therefore be respected in the same way that any other minority activity such as the slaughtering of animals according to certain Jewish or Muslim ritual laws would be. Secondly, the bull fight is a symbolic enactment of the battle between man and beast; the matador is a highly trained and highly skilled artist and fighter and takes his life in his hands when he enters the ring – it is a match between man and animal. Finally, since the bull would be killed anyway, it is of little consequence how it is kill. But it is consistent to oppose both uses of the animal. Moreover, Bull fighting is probably the most barbaric exploitation of animals that is still legally practised (in Spain, Portugal, parts of France, Mexico, and, illegally, in the United States). The idea that there is a fair match between the bull and the matador is laughable. The bull dies at the end of every single bullfight (it is either killed by the matador or slaughtered afterwards if it survives); for a matador to be seriously injured is rare and it is very rare indeed for a matador to die as the result of a bull fight. During bull fights the animals are taunted and goaded, and have sharp spears stuck into their bodies until eventually they collapse from their injuries and exhaustion. Matadors are not heroes or artists, they are cruel cowards. If humans are so desperate for companions, We have other humans for that purpose. Hence i conclude that animals are not to be kept caged, if the expansion of human settlement is a necessity then animal sanctuaries are also a necessity. The balance of nature is something which should not be offset by simple ignorant behavior. In conclusion, the use of animals for entertainment or sport should be banned as there are other alternatives for entertainment and sport.