Its been a great week for the Great Cats in the news. I won’t pursue my personal beef with Sigfried and Roy and their obsession with albinistic tigers, nor the stupidity of keeping a Bengal/Amur cross in an apartment building as a pet. . .but two quotes from an article in todays paper deserve to be passed on. . .one is now part of my signature, the other:
You know that whole thing about how we all have, in our hearts, a God-shaped hole, a vacuum that longs to be filled? My God-shaped hole looks a lot like tigers.
Colin McEnro
HOWEVER
Please please please contact your representatives and argue VEHEMENTLY that allowing importation of endangered and threatened species for the pet trade is a VERY VERY BAD IDEA. The money that supposedly will go to animal habitat preservation will not end up where naive US citizens imagine, and the floodgates will open to killing breeding populations in order to get babies for a hideous pet trade. Exotic birds… anything you want…are being bred and raised here in the US. They are disease free, sweet, hand-fed babies. Exotic mammals will be trapped and killed and pushed toward extinction to feed the American taste for the ultrahip pet. It is an abomination that the Bush administration is condoning this!
I am a wicked bitch. When I heard what had happened to that evil tiger abusing circus freak I cheered - it looked a lot like this.
Of course, it doesn’t help the poor abused tiger, who has probably been killed by now - even if he hasn’t he still has a life time to endure in captivity. There are now more tigers in private hands in America than left in the wild. Whether or not they become extinct, a whole species has had its freedom of movement, its right to live life on its own terms taken from it, purely because we think they look cool.
In related news, the last wild born rare crested ibis has killed himself in Japan. The creature became insane during his captivity in the zoo, and bashed his brains out against the door of its cage. The only surviving members of the species have all been born in captivity, and cannot be returned to the wild, for they have no survival skills, and their natural habitat is almost entirely destroyed. The same process is occuring all over the world. Please resist this process. Don’t visit zoos, and do what you can to help preserve the wilds in the world, before there are none left at all.
On this subject, the Discovery channel aired a show called “Living With Tigers” not too long ago, about the long process of training captive tigers to live in the wild. They used a male and female sibling and it was a success. At the end of the show there was a little blurb about how the Discovery channel will be continuing to follow this group’s and the tigers’ efforts, so keep yer eyes open. I’m sure it will also be rerun.
Soin - I saw that program as well. It was a very interesting project. I don’t know how well it would work on a large scale though, particularly considering how different the habitat in India, China, etc is from that reserve they used in Africa. I suspect there would be some problems for transported tigers to adapt to a dense forest environment after living in savannah and scrub their whole lives…
Interestingly, there have been numberous studies done relating circus tigers to zoo tigers… I read about some of the summaries in a book called “tribe of Tigers” (which is about cats, not just tigers…)
Anyway, essentially, it was found that tigers in a circus (as long as it is a reputable circus ie following good regulations about animal care) lived very good and happy lives. (At least compared to Zoos) Also that some of them were much better off than tigers in the wild… More food, no hunting etc.
I think they’re going to be mainly using tigers that have been born and raised in captivity, so they wouldn’t have experience with any habitat besides a cage or whatever. But it would be interesting to see the same thing tried with transported animals.
It depends on how you define “good and happy”, I guess. Personally, I don’t think any animal that is meant to be wild can lead a truly happy life in captivity. Sure, it’s all they know, but tigers are so intelligent and have such a complex social pattern–they can never duplicate the life tigers are meant to live, no matter how good the circus or zoo is. And I think that the tigers can at least sense that. I dunno.. if I was a tiger, I think I’d prefer the wild, even if there maybe wasn’t enough food sometimes, and with the threat of poachers. The wild is where they’re supposed to be.
Unfortunately, because of hunters and our effect on the environment, their natural habitat is almost as unsafe and unhealthy as a zoo. Still at least they would be living free. Just my two cents.
I have a seven year old son who would be much safer if he was never allowed out of my sight. No cars that might knock him down, no evil people who might kidnap him, less of a risk of childhood diseases - he’s stop falling out of trees or banging his knees playing football.
I could make up for this by keeping him in a habitat rich environment for the rest of his life - his bedroom, and to stop him from being bored I could teach him cute little party tricks. Come to that I could invite the public in to gawp at him while he plays whistle or whatever, and they could pay for his bed and board.
No, hang on, that completely destroys his life, doesn’t it?
How are tigers (or any other captive animal) different?
dogs are very faithful, that’s why i don’t think we’ll cause them harm, or any domestic animal that won’t run away.
tigers are very dominating and independent, that’s why i think captivity will harm their spirit, and so everything about the tiger.
i believe a zoo and a circus are very cruel and completely unnecessary.
I worked in an animal rescue, and you wouldn’t believe the harm humans cause dogs. And besides, if you remember that dogs are descended from the wolf, and then look at a chihuahua (is that how you spell it?) it is hard to say that we don’t harm them. Most pedigrees have got health problems that we bred into them, because they look cool. (The British Bulldog has difficulty breathing, and eye problems, as they can’t produce tears properly. Big dogs like alsatians and mastiffs suffer extensively from hip dysplacia, etc etc etc).
I’m glad though that people are increasingly growing out of zoos. It gives me hope that we are not a completely and utterly stupid species.
Now, guys , you know that we humans know all there is to know about what we were put on this earth to do - to overcome and exploit every resource and species we can… c’mon! People just want to have fun - dominate - own - and otherwise control everything for their own pleasure. Surely you are not implying that other things have any rights, certainly not feelings, and gracious! They don’t have needs! Why should we even care about what happens to them, let alone respect them? Please!
i must agree with you here callybeg, i was completely ignorant about this. maybe sheepdogs are o.k. native peoples had dogs for a long time, i suppose them dogs where to lazy to hunt . they lived on left overs, and where half wild but faithful, and gave warning signals of approaching danger.
any people living close to nature believed what colin Mc Enro said. we all carry and represent some animal spirit. animals are capable of much more then we can see or proof. besides, anyone who thinks humans are the strongest, let him take of all his clothes and walk through the florida swamps, the mosquitos wiil be ready
animals must think we’re a very funy looking animal. all animals live in harmony with nature, except for us, we destroy everything. we must be like aliens to them
i don’t think we’ll have to live in caves again, but we’ll destroy everything, including ourselves, if we don’t care for nature, stop pulluting her, use the energy of wind and water,…change are whole lifestyle.
Sometimes I think we are a plague set upon the earth. Sad thing.
Honestly, those of us who care have to stand up and be counted, repeatedly (sometimes beligerantly).
The problem sometimes is that there are just so many causes we have to stand up and be counted about that we often tend to throw up our hands and just live our own lives for a while.
Why… ''fI were king… it’d probably still be a screwed up world, but at least it would differently screwd up! LOL!
Dogs are pack animals. They like to live in a group and I don’t belive they care whether it’s a group of humans or a group of dogs…just happy to be part of the gang. That, and the fact that humans have been selectively breeding them for tens of thousands of years to be nice is what makes them good companions for us.
Tigers on the other hand are cats, which is to say they are by nature solitary, territorial and like to play with their food… food being defined as anyone smaller than they.
Perhaps letting people have tigers for pets is the best way to eliminate such folks from the gene pool…natural selection you know…almost worked for Roy. :roll:
I’ve never understood people’s need to have tigers, wolves, wolf/dog hybrids, snakes, or any kind of reptile for pets. You’re just asking for trouble, especially if you have children in the house. There are some animals that aren’t meant to be pets. They’re just best respected and left alone IMHO.
i think most of those people are ignorant in a way that they feel something in common with the spirit of a certain animal.
if they like horses, they like power (horses represent power).
if they search for loyalty, they like dogs (dogs are loyal), etc…
but there’s another way too. if you like horses, just wear a hair or any part of the horses body, and it’s possible to make contact with his spirit through meditation. we don’t carry more than one or sometimes two of these spirit animals, and we can’t choose them either, so it doesn’t work all the time
Am I the only witch in the world who doesn’t think it is respectful to “carry parts of an animals body” so that you can contact its spirit through meditation? You don’t need props to meditate, and you don’t need gadgets to help you access your spirit animal. I see so many witches and pagans walking around wearing bits of corpses on their bodies, saying that it helps them to channel energy. (IE, wearing crystals and pendants on a leather thong - or some poor victims tooth.) Ask the cow, or whatever else was killed to produce the artefact, how spiritually aligned they feel.
If you can get a bit of horse hair from a horse you happen to know, then fine. Not necessary but it does no harm. But if you buy something with horse hair in it, remember that it is probably a by product from a slaughterhouse floor.
those animals are found dead and not killed for this. or they find a bit of fur of this animal, or a feather. they respect these animals more than we do.
i suppose you’re a vegetarian witch, plants have spirit too
I’m with lixnaw, I think you can like the animal and/or its spirit from afar, without having to carry body parts or risk having them snack on you since they are by nature predators.
, you know that we humans know all there is to know about what we were put on this earth to do 
- to overcome and exploit every resource and species we can… c’mon! 
People just want to have fun - dominate - own - and otherwise control everything for their own pleasure. Surely you are not implying that other things have any rights, certainly not feelings, and gracious! 
They don’t have needs! Why should we even care about what happens to them, let alone respect them? Please! 
native peoples had dogs for a long time, i suppose them dogs where to lazy to hunt 
. they lived on left overs, and where half wild but faithful, and gave warning signals of approaching danger.
