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.