The use of animals for entertainment is something that runs through human history and is seen in the eyes of Mark Twain to make our species “detestable”, as we are the only species who inflict pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
Rodeos are places of great despair for bulls where they receive such great levels of abuse and torture in order to behaviour in a manner that should entertain and please those in attendance. The racing of animals for the purposes of gambling, profit, as well as a crowd entertainment leads to animal suffering and death to satisfy such twisted forms of human gratification.
Hunting is the next form of exploitation examined. The threat to those animal species targeted is indescribable and the glee that many hunters operate with is stomach churning. We also learn the degree to which fish are sentient organisms like our species, Yet the pain and terror they go through at our hands doesn’t even register in our consciousness.
We are also shown footage of the way in which animal handlers have often been found to behave towards the animals they exploit in their Circuses for profit. It won’t come as any surprise to learn that the quality of life for those animals unfortunate enough to find themselves captured into a circus operation is no life at all.
The training the animals are put through is where we see a comparison between the propaganda purported by circus owners, but the reality caught behind the curtain is one of cruelty, brutality and sheer nastiness in the truest sense of the word. The examples of elephants retaliating against those who have put them through such a demeaning and deplorable experience is something we can perhaps look at empathetically. In many ways, our species dissolves and rips out the very spirit of life from animals, leaving them soulless and in such acute despair as to no longer want to be conscious.
Zoos are places that are portrayed as contributing some benefit to the animals that are first trapped in their natural environment before being imprisoned in a totally unfamiliar and claustrophobic setting, and then displayed to our species, so we can have a day out with the kids. The mystique of zoos as being educational is juxtaposed by the realities of what we’re actually looking at. Trapped for the rest of their lives to perform for humans.
The next blood sport we take a look at is that of Bullfighting, though if we honest, it is neither a sport nor involves any real level of fighting, as that would require there to be two sides. Unfortunately, the bulls are essentially helpless at the hands of our species, which involves practices in the build up to “fights” that make the stomach churn. The “fight” itself is a savage act and a vicious, visocious end.
All taken together, the inevitable conclusion we have to come to is that the human species is “the most callous species of them all”.