Zoos, Circuses, Safaris: A Gallery of Captivity

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(11-06-2020, 08:14 AM)scilover Wrote: Is it a good thing to put animals in a circus, aren't they being tortured? tortured here means forced to perform to satisfy the audience ??? or the circus is not as I described ??

You are talking about this matter in a bit odd way. Performing to audience torturing just like that? Forcing to do something? If this idea came from those tigers which are lifting weights posted by @Betty it´s good to notice first, that those are not real weights. Just some wood or plastic there, so not too heavy and easy to lift. It can be seen easily when looking at photos. So teaching a tiger to do acts like in photos isn´t demanding anything painful, they need to lift there maybe 10 kg and hold it up a moment as trained. No pain involved to such performance alone.

Then again is captivity mental torture to animals is another issue, which can be discussed. There are some zoos which are bad and same without a doubt with circuses, some offer better and some worse environments. 

And then training. My dog can do some tricks and he does those eagerly and is very satisfied when then praised and getting some treat afterwards time to time. I wouldn´t force him to do things by beating him and I wouldn´t force him to do things which would make him feel pain or getting scared, so I like to think that he is quite happy dog and not tortured. Circus animals nowadays tend to be born in captivity and training isn´t based to beating them in submission , but giving treats and other positive ways to reward animals when they do as hoped (there are for sure sad exceptions too, which can be called torturing without any doubt).

Many times it can be seen, that there is a bond betweenthe  trainer and animal. In such cases it´s difficult to say, imo, that there would be torturing so, that trainer would want to make his animals to suffer. Still it´s a good question if wild animals should be tamed to be performing circus acts. I don´t like to see big predators as circus animals. A lot of travelling in small cages etc. While you can put horses to some simple enclosures outdoors, you can´t take tigers or lions out of cage and let them go to some area surrounded by fences just like that. 

There can be many kind of points of views, but captivity alone, if in good conditions, isn´t torturing in my opinion. But it can be it in places where there are wrong people with animals and not just can, as everyone sadly know.

All in all, I see torture there, where animals clearly suffer, not in every place because there are a lot of good places with people who care and do their best to treat animals properly. Reply