Love Is Not Only for Human Animals (and Circuses Aren't Sanctuaries)

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Animal Emotions, Animals in Entertainment, Videos

Published September 30, 2009 @ 05:31AM PT

A series of videos and stories at National Geographic's Web site, from a special titled Unlikely Animal Friends, came to my attention yesterday via Facebook, courtesy animal-loving, link-providing pals Chad Miller, co-founder of Food Fight! Vegan Grocery in Portland, Oregon, and Dallas Rising, program director of the Minneapolis-based Animal Rights Coalition. The video above, of Tara and Bella at the Elephant Sanctuary, whose heartwarming story many animal advocates and even the general public know by now, is one of these. There is much good to take away from the profiles, and even the videos many of us have seen before are worth watching again, but as tends to be the case with these sorts of mainstream animal programs, there are troubling aspects of what we're shown in a couple cases too (I'll get to that in the last half of this post).

This being a National Geographic series, it doesn't appear that any stories of farmed animals and the cross-species relationships they too sometimes form when allowed, in such settings as sanctuaries, made the cut (if someone saw the full special on TV, and I'm wrong, please correct me), and that's not surprising considering the medium, but it's still unfortunate too, given that these are the animals whose capacities people tend to doubt or disregard the most. But the stories and images that are included are indeed proof that the love, devotion, and, yes, even heartbreak that come with relationships are not human experiences. They are animal experiences. And these animal experiences are not unique to one category or class, not humans, not primates, not mammals: for example, one animal we see express clear, devoted, years-long affection for -- and distress upon separation from -- an unlikely companion is a crow. And after seeing videos such as these, I don't see how anyone could still maintain that our fellow animals don't feel what we feel, that they don't love and form the strongest of bonds.

All that said, although I appreciate what we can see and learn from these stories, I have to make this point as well: as an animal advocate, I don't support all of the circumstances or humans shown in the videos, in particular the trainer and "educational facility" where the story of the smitten orangutan and dog takes place. Pretty conservation-sounding names aren't proof that such operations are true sanctuaries with the animals' best interests at heart. The Elephant Sanctuary, for example, is a true sanctuary. T.I.G.E.R.S., on the other hand, is a zoo and a traveling circus, and its founder (featured in the video) is a trainer who has long made his money pimping these animals out for human entertainment, carting them around for his own live shows and events in addition to persistently, proactively contracting them out for commercials, movies, and television programs. T.I.G.E.R.S. proudly counts "animal rental companies" among its colleagues and boasts its ability to get you any animal you want for your entertainment purposes, whether it currently "owns" that type of animal or not, and that pretty well says it all. The business's self-important founder is not these animals' benevolent, selfless protector. He is their exploiter.

In any event, you can see the rest of the "Unlikely Animal Friends" videos, some of them both sweet and sad, here.

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Edit: I should note that T.I.G.E.R.S. does not refer to its traveling acts as a "circus" -- that was my language. It refers to these live performances as a "traveling zoo," but last I checked, training and schlepping around animals to provide entertainment for humans at fairs and on brightly lit stages is not zoo-like; the founder can call it whatever he wants, but that doesn't stop it from being grossly exploitative.