Here, to end the week on a high note, is a 24-minute video of animals who have been captive their whole lives but are now freed. It’s very heartening. The only reason to keep wild animals in captivity is to rehabilitate them for release or to grow an endangered species to the point when it can be released.
Have a great weekend! I got my seventh Covid shot yesterday and have no reaction save a sore arm. (I got it for traveling to South Africa.) I’m one of the few people I know that hasn’t caught the virus.
Dear Professor Coyne.
Nice video re the captive animals, a terrible reflection on humanity, all animal captivity especially the exotic species.
I am glad to hear that you have never suffered from Covid variants. I think I stated once before that I had influenza at the age of six years old when at boarding school in Scotland, 1952 and was quite poorly in the infirmary for around two weeks, however since then I have never suffered with influenza or even the common cold and now into my late seventh decade. I did participate in two Covid vaccination events but purely for the civil requirements, travel etc and my GP still asks me every year if I want a “ flu jab”
I hope you remain immune and enjoy South Africa where I was once very fortunate to visit Namibia, a lasting experience.
Great to know – good things in the world.
Thank you for a hopeful Friday afternoon video in the midst of so much stress and depressing news. I wonder where all the penguins came from in South Africa. It’s doubtful there were “thousands” of them, as the narrator contends, but there were certainly quite a few.
I also have been lucky not to have gotten covid, mostly due to my being extremely cautious, but also to my not being out in society very much, and never in crowds. Several of my friends got through the first couple of years unscathed, but then caught it last fall. It’s interesting to see some people wearing masks again, which I would do without hesitation if I were among more than a few people.
Pretty sure the South African penguins were collected as a result of a large oil spill. They were washed and rehabbed and then released away from the oil spill area.
Great video! Thanks.
Seven jabs! I thought I was up-to-date and I’ve only had four shots. I had a check-up not long ago and my doctor didn’t say a word about Covid (tho she did remind me about the shingles shot).
My wife and I have been jabbed 4 times.
To my knowledge we’ve never had covid. We live in a large elevator building and with doggie I’m in the elevator a lot so I’m surprised.
Almost everybody I know has though. I guess I’m some kind of superman!
Can’t wait for your trip to SA. Be careful there though, their crime rate is spectacular. Abide VERY closely to “Third world rules” street wise. We need you back.
D.A.
NYC, busy Manhattan!
About a decade ago, my son decided to spend 6 months backpacking around Africa, with most of that time spent in SA. Needless to say, I was anxious the entire time he was away.
He was the victim of one crime – a mugging by a couple of thugs who robbed him of his laptop. Fortunately, he was only bruised, and the laptop was a cheap one, so no lasting harm.
Nice video but note that some of those animals were just being released into larger but still captive situations (sanctuaries). I hope I am allowed to respectfully disagree and argue that I think there is still a place for good zoos and aquariums for a number of reasons in addition to the one Jerry mentioned.
While nature documentaries have become truly magnificent, there is still something different about seeing, hearing, smelling and sometimes touching live animals, probably especially for children. Most people will never have the time or resources to travel extensively to see a wide diversity of live animals in the wild. Many of us here are distinctly ‘privileged’ in that regard. If we want people to care about nature, animals, habitat & biodiversity sufficiently to support it in the face of so many competing demands on their time and money, we need them to have a personal relationship to it and I’m not sure that they really develop that through video. Zoos and aquariums are not the ideal, but they are a step closer.
Zoo and aquarium animals provide access for biology researchers to study them in ways that would be massively more expensive and invasive or impossible to do with the same animals in the wild. Simple blood samples during physical exams can lead to hosts of insights about genetics, biochemistry, physiology, disease, etc. We can study dietary needs, energetics, development, aging and many other things to better understand the needs of wild populations.
There are currently millions of animals living in zoos and aquariums and most probably cannot be trained sufficiently to be suitable for release. There are also transportation and disease transmission considerations. Should we euthanize them all? Many breed in captivity, so to phase out these facilities they would have to begin separating the sexes or neutering all their occupants (and some do).
There are many animals that are injured or ill that cannot be rehabilitated sufficiently for release. Their only choices are euthanasia (and many, many are) or life in a zoo or aquarium. These facilities used to be averse to taking such animals because they were worried that the public would think they caused the disability, but that is changing. I’ve been involved in placing two sea lions into permanent captivity, one epileptic needing daily medication and one orphaned the night it was born and subsequently imprinted on humans (not me). He ‘failed’ release.
We have come a long way in providing zoo and aquarium housing that fulfills most of the needs of the resident animals. I doubt that most of the animals at the San Diego Wild Animal Park are miserable and mostly gone are the days when you could smell your way to the large cat ‘house’ where they paced the bars endlessly (and made me want to cry). I do believe there are some animals that we cannot comfortably house or provide with normal social environments, such as whales, orca, etc., but for most animals we can provide good naturalistic habitats and social groupings, various enrichments, etc., to provide them with a decent life.
The behavior of some zoo and aquarium visitors is something that still needs work. No alcohol at these venues. No tapping or banging on glass or fencing, no throwing things, and could we please keep the volume down.
I’ve often wondered what animals in captivity feel about being constantly seen.