The death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau last week at the fins of a killer whale reminds us that no matter how neat and professionally-displayed they are in their man-made confines, whales, gorillas, elephants, tigers, et al., are, truly, wild animals.
Those who know me know I am no fan of animal rights whackos. I don’t equate animals with humans, nor have any patience for those who do. I eat meat, I don’t sweat those who wear fur, and my objection to hunting stems more from a dislike of rising at an obscene hour than anything else.
That said, the responsibility for deaths like the one that unfortunately befell Brancheau rests squarely on the shoulders of the handlers, captors, trainers, researchers, etc., who go to extraordinary measures to extract these beasts in the first place from their natural habitats, move them to habitats that, for them, are quite unnatural, and then make a career of poking, prodding, and playing with them.
(By the way, I’m aware that many wild animals are now bred in captivity, but the process obviously doesn’t/didn’t begin there; additionally, being bred in captivity seems to do little in the way of altering the instinctual nature of a wild animal).
There is no comparison to dogs, for instance, to which some are pointing as an example of how we should deal with animals…any animals…that kill a human. When a dog kills, we are aghast, and are so largely because we expect dogs to always demonstrate the temperament representative of the thousands of years they’ve been intrinsic parts of human society. Accordingly, at a gut level, we blame dogs when they kill. When a wild animal kills, our reaction is, and should be, quite different. We recognize that it is not inherently in the nature of such animals to behave in the fashion of the domesticated animal, and so blame those responsible for procuring the animal and/or those who choose to put themselves in close proximity to the animal. A domesticated animal that has the capacity and inclination to viciously attack you as you’re peaceably walking down the street probably should be euthanized. Except for instances so rare they are essentially zero in number, the only time wild animals kill humans is when humans seek them out and endeavor, for one reason or another, to get dangerously close to them.
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Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor-At-Large www.ChristianMoney.com
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