Let Them Suffer, They’re Just Animals!

Let them suffer, they’re just animals!

Today I got an email that portrayed mass killings of bottle-nosed dolphins; an event that was ‘celebrated’ once a year in a country and fast becoming a sort of ‘sport’. It supposedly marked the ‘passage’ of a boy into his ‘manhood’. The email was quite disturbing with graphic pictures of cruelty that these animals were subjected to. Being an animal lover to the core, it set me off to research some into it and I found, much to my chagrin, that such an event occurred in a few other countries as well. What is it about us humans that has made the very act of taking a life, into a sport of sorts?

A need for justification

I currently reside in a state where deer-hunting is a normal event that happens once or twice every year. As such, I have had the chance to talk to many people who hunt deer for their meat or sometimes just as a ‘sport’. While at first the ‘sporty’ side to it did not appeal to me, I learnt later that the local wildlife preserve allowed it, in accordance with regulations of the ecological conservation department of the state, because the population of deer in the area had grown to such an extent that it was creating an ‘ecological imbalance’ in the state. Not to mention, the rising complaints from the locals about their agricultural produce being ruined because of the deer and the increasing mountain lion population, also because of the deer. I realized then that there was a genuine need for such an action to be taken and so that was fine.

But certainly, killing an animal need not be turned into a sport, simply for the sake of sheer pleasure! Case and point is the annual bull fighting competitions that Spain is infamous for. I have heard some people say that in the end the bull’s meat is consumed and therefore it is not a ‘waste of life’. Agreed, point taken. But certainly that bull can be killed in a more appropriate manner. One gun shot or drug would do. But wait, we need some ‘entertainment value’ to it, don’t we! Let’s infuriate the bull and let it out into an arena surrounded by thousand screaming fans. Then it is taunted around with a piece of cloth, by a guy in tights, who wants to prove his courage to a crowd. When it begins to near exhaustion, he stabs it repeatedly with spears until it bleeds, suffocates and dies an agonizing death. And the matador is the town hero and the flowers are raining down from the stadium as he poses with his foot on the bloodied body of the bull. How about a suggestion here – if he really wanted to prove his courage, how about stepping into the closed pen with the bull without his spears and rodeos to protect him!?! That would be truly entertaining!