Tiger - A Follow-up

So, here’s another side to the previous post (http://www.aapukuruvi.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/tiger.html). Injured tigers in the wild often turn man-eaters since men are typically easier prey. This brings these tigers into villages. In one such village in south India, a man-eater had killed a woman and was spotted by villagers who promptly called the officials. After a tense chase and some drama, the tiger was hunted down and shot – but not to kill, he was shot with a tranquiliser dart and taken to the local zoo. A stark, stark difference in attitude with the tiger in Cologne. This tiger had killed a woman – not in any attempt to escape – and killing it would therefore have been justified. But the villagers and the officials chose to tranquilise it and send it to a zoo. The headline for this article? “Man-eater tiger of HD Kote caught.” (http://www.deccanherald.com/content/274416/man-eater-tiger-hd-kote.html). It could just as easily have been “Village rid of murdering tiger” but thank goodness it wasn’t!

The other issue here is on my stand with zoos. I have had a lot of discussions with friends (and family!) since the previous post on whether zoos should be abolished. The main arguments for zoos are a)they protect endangered animals that human beings would otherwise kill in the wild and b) they raise awareness amongst the public. I shall answer the second argument first. Raising awareness I think is not as strong an argument nowadays as before – we have excellent cinematic and other visual media that provide us with a wonderful sense of the world these animals live in. In fact, I think it is rather demeaning to see predators being fed, and rather than raising awareness actually diminishes their majesty. This episode presents strong support for the first argument. What happens when a tiger is injured in the wild, by natural causes – is it then alright to ship it to a zoo? In such a case, I accept a zoo can serve as a nursing home – we cannot afford to let an injured tiger die since we have so few of them left, so our only option is to nurse them in a zoo – with a view to releasing them back in the wild if and as soon as possible (this may not be feasible in case of a man-eater since once they taste man-flesh they find that the preferable option!) . Do I still think zoos should be abolished? Yes – as zoos, as tourist attractions that cage healthy animals, they should. Their existence as tourist attractions lets us escape having to make the choice between having animals in the wild and letting them die out. However, I concede they could serve a good purpose as temporary nursing pens - or in this particular case as an old age home, for injured wild animals.

Would love your comments on the fascinating debate this is turning out to be!

Tiger

A tiger recently escaped from Cologne Zoo, in Germany, after killing a keeper, but was shot dead before it could reach the visitor’s enclosure (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10407911). Quick stats from Wiki tell that at a conservative guess there are 4,000 tigers on this planet and 7 point something billion people. That’s 1.75 million people to every tiger on this planet. A kidnapped man’s attempts to escape after shooting his gaolers would be praised as bravery. A man’s fundamental right to freedom. The only situation where this man would have stones flung at him, would be if the rest of the human population were kidnappers. All the headlines for this news article about the tiger read “Tiger escapes, kills keeper.” The headlines could equally have read, “Tiger shot dead while attempting to escape from zoo.” And therein lies my point. Are we a world of kidnappers? Do I have a stand in this? Yes – abolish zoos. The argument that a zoo keeps an animal safe is weak and pathetic. We have laws to keep our animals safe in the wild, we just don’t have the will to do so. Or the guts to say out loud that we don’t need tigers, we don’t need wildlife, we don’t need jungles. In my opinion, humans will survive as a race even if every tree on this planet were cut down. But that is not what I want.