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| Flag of the animals in Animal Farm, by George Orwell |
A year ago
I published an article in which I showed with multiple arguments that man is
not just an animal, despite attempts by materialists to reduce us to that
level. In fact, many animalists seem to do exactly the opposite: they
inadvertently raise the animals to the human level. They do this even with
insects, as when they speak of the
horror suffered by a caterpillar being devoured by a hymenopter larva,
although they reserve their special compassion for the higher animals: birds
and mammals.
In their
campaign against animal acts in circuses, animalists use the following motto:
A circus is a prison
They
usually say the same of zoos, even though modern zoos have little resemblance to
those of the early twentieth century, the so-called menageries.
Is this so?
Do animals in circuses and zoos feel imprisoned? Or maybe animalists tend to put
themselves in the place of the animals, imagine how they would feel and
extrapolate their own feelings?
I’m going
to tell a story that I consider a pretty powerful proof for the assertion that
zoo animals do not feel imprisoned. To do this I will quote the experience of a
famous animal lover, Gerald Durrell, who at first collected animals for zoos;
then he founded his own zoo on the island of Jersey, which he dedicated to the
important task of forming colonies of endangered animals, so preserving a
remnant that may serve to keep the species alive; and finally he founded the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society, an organization dedicated to the
conservation of endangered species. His character should not be suspect for the
strictest animal lovers.
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| Gerald Durrell |
Brother of
the famous novelist Lawrence Durrell, the author of The
Alexandria Quartet, Gerald Durrell published 26 autobiographical
books about his childhood on the island of Corfu (My family
and other animals, his most famous work), or narrating his
travels in search of animals, his efforts to found the Jersey zoo, and his
expeditions to film animal documentaries in exotic places on Earth.
And now,
the promised story, taken from the book The drunken forest
(1956):
In 1954 Gerald Durrell organized an expedition
to Paraguay to collect animals for zoos. After several weeks in the forest of
Chaco, he had assembled a good collection, temporarily housed in small cages,
when suddenly took place the coup d’état by General Alfredo Stroessner, who was
dictator of Paraguay for 35 years. Durrell received notice that the situation
in the country made his urgent evacuation advisable, and was promised a small
plane to pick him up in the jungle, along with his team, and transfer them to
Argentina. Naturally, he could not take the animals he had gathered, except for
a handful, the most vulnerable, which would have
to travel on the laps of Durrell and his companions.
With great sorrow, because their efforts had
come to nothing, Durrell had to give back their freedom to
most of his animals. And then the unthinkable happened: the
reptiles, it is true, left the camp and entered the forest as fast as they
could. Birds and mammals, however, refused to leave. In those few
weeks they had become accustomed to the easy life of captivity, and for several
days they surrounded the camp and chased everyone who came out, expecting to
receive food. It took them several days to get convinced
that they would not be given anything, which forced them finally to disperse
through the forest in search of their livelihood.
Did Durrell’s
animals feel that they were in prison during their captivity, as a human being
would have felt in their place, and as the animalists claim? I doubt it.
Manuel Alfonseca
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