animal fled into the streets of Warsaw. A circus veterinarian tried to stop him and they tussled. Police opened fire and killed both man and tiger.
Also, we have not even begun to address the activities of other big cats: lions, jaguars, cougars and cheetahs. The latter, for instance, seems to be particularly adept at the art of escape. Olivia the cheetah climbed a fence, bounced off a tree, and cleared a wall to get out her San Antonio Zoo enclosure. She roamed the visitor-filled park for twenty minutes. Halala scrambled over a twelve-foot wide moat and a twelve-foot high wall at the St. Louis Zoo. Keepers had no idea how she did it. At the Nashville Zoo, an unidentified male cheetah would spend ten hours on the loose before being captured. And who could forget what happened in October of 2008. Two cheetahs, while being transferred to the Memphis Zoo, escaped from their cages and strolled about the cargo hold of their Boeing 757 passenger flight. Indeed, such incidences occur far more often than the zoos and circuses would lead us to believe.
Step Two in the standard operating procedure is to deny agency. The key words to remember are “accident,” “wild,” and “instinct.” The tiger injured her trainer by accident. She is, after all, a wild animal. She was just following her instinct. Repeat these lines enough and people will believe you. Yet, when we begin to explore these incidents more deeply, we discover that the zoos and circuses are deceiving us once again. Tatiana targeted a group of teasers. She could have escaped the enclosure anytime, but she needed motivation. She could have attacked others, but she wanted revenge. A frequent visitor to the zoo told a reporter of witnessing a similar attempt by another tiger in 1997. The unnamed female had just missed scaling over the wall. Evidently, she wanted at the nearby keeper. As the man would explain to those around him, “She always does that. She hates my guts.” The veterinarian at Lowry Park admitted to the same thing after Enshala was killed. “This cat hates me.” Remember the case of Fatima, the leopard who jumped onto the back of a San Francisco trainer. Schoolchildren told a newspaper reporter that only seconds before the attack the man washing out her cage had sprayed Fatima with water. Or how about Montecore. She had been performing for over six years at a clip of eight shows a week. The night of the attack she refused to obey a command and the trainer threatened her. She bit the man’s arm. When the trainer hit her in the head with a microphone, she grabbed him by the throat. In each of these scenarios, the actions were neither accidental nor instinctual. These cats attacked for a reason.
Consider the case of captive elephants. These animals have the capability of inflicting large-scale fatalities. They are big, strong, and fast. Yet, when given the opportunity to plow through a crowd of visitors or stomp a row of spectators, they almost never do. Instead, they target specific individuals. There is the case of Janet, a Great American Circus elephant. During her rampage in 1992, she had a group of children riding on her back. She could have easily thrown them off and killed them. But she didn’t. Janet, in point of fact, paused midway through the melee, let someone remove the children, and then continued her assault on circus employees. As to her primary motivation, that was revealed when Janet picked up a fallen object off the ground and smashed it repeatedly against a wall. The object turned out to be a bullhook.
The bullhook, or ankus, is a nasty device that the many zoos and circuses use to train their elephants. It looks like a crowbar but with a sharpened point on the curled end. Think of a large inverted fishhook and you would be on the right track. Trainers use the device as a weapon to strike, stab, and cause pain and fear. Ringling Brothers trainers were videotaped in 2009 viciously beating their elephants with these instruments of torture. The philosophy behind the bullhook is straightforward: violence equals discipline. It is with no understatement to say that the methods of training in this industry can be brutal.
Circuses, for example, have long preferred the use of the whip as their means to direct tigers and lions. The whip allows the trainer to maintain a safe distance and still deliver a good deal of pain and fear. Some circuses have updated to more modern devices: electrical prods and stun guns. Others have chosen to stick with the blunt instruments. Hawthorn’s trainers, for example, like to use baseball bats. But no matter the instrument, the purpose of these weapons is control. The trainer wants the tiger to jump through a hoop of fire. The tiger does not want to. The trainer whips, shocks, or beats the animal until he or she performs the action. This is a learned response, and all captive animals have had to endure this violent education. Some of them have been taught with negative reinforcements. Others have been fortunate enough to train with positive reinforcements. In either case, here is where things can take an interesting turn.
Every captive animal knows, through learned response and direct experience, which behaviors are rewarded and which ones are punished. These animals understand that there will be consequences for incorrect actions. If they refuse to perform, if they attack a trainer, or if they escape their cage, they know that they will be beaten, have their food rations reduced, and be placed in solidarity confinement. Captive animals know all of this and yet they still carry out such actions—often with a profound sense of determination. This is why these behaviors can be understood as a true form of resistance. These animals, as will be shown throughout the book, are rebelling with knowledge and purpose. They have a conception of freedom and a desire for it. They have agency.
We have now officially reached dangerous ground, as the above claims will always be met with the accusation of anthropomorphism. According to many, only humans can be endowed with emotions, culture, intellect, and the ability to resist. But there is a retort. The main thing to understand about the idea of anthropomorphism is that, historically, it has no empiricism behind it. Rather, it is a loaded term: loaded with political, economic, social, and cultural meanings. The Catholic Church, in ancient times, used it to destroy paganism and thus increase the church’s power and influence. Today, it is science and industry that wields the sword. Their methodology, though, is opposite to that of the church. Instead of uniting various sectors, they seek to divide and draw wide chasms between humans and other animals. This distance, they hope, will create a general public who neither knows nor cares about the lives and labors of tigers, elephants, or monkeys. It is a human centered and human dominated world, which science and industry seeks. This narrow perspective allows them to continue their exploitation of other animals in a completely unquestioned and unmolested fashion. The ultimate goal, of course, is to make the largest degree of profit possible.
As for those individuals who dare go against the idea, they will automatically be called out and publicly censured: “You are being anthropomorphic!” Sadly, this kind of reaction and labeling has led to self-censorship. There are lines of inquiry that a great many people are afraid to cross, as to do so can mean ridicule, castigation, and, yes, unemployment. The smart person will simply internalize the term. Nowhere has this behavior gained a stronger hold than within the university—home of the status quo. Yet, it should be remembered that it was not so long ago when, in universities across the country, the ideas of eugenics and racism were also considered to be true, essential, and scientific categories of analysis. Professors loved them to no end. Today, the situation has changed, and the university is embarrassed, even to the point of denial, of its iniquitous past. Anthropomorphism awaits the same graveyard.
Step Three in the standard operating procedure is a public pledge to prevent such incidences from ever happening again. If it was an escape that occurred, then the zoo or circus will make design modifications. San Francisco, for its part, extended the concrete wall and constructed a glass partition, which raised the overall height of the tiger exhibition to nineteen feet. Electrified hot wires were strung along the moat. The zoo put up signs that forbid the harassment of animals. If it was an attack that occurred then these institutions will change their protocol. The training of employees will be made more extensive and intensive. Handlers may no longer be allowed direct contact with the animals. Also, the animal perpetrators themselves could undergo retraining or be placed under an entirely new system of management. But, if the animal is a repeat offender, then the zoo or circus might get rid of him or her altogether. In the past, summary executions were used. Some of the more popular methods included firing squads, poisonings, and hangings. These have since become a political liability, so the industry has instead turned to animal dealers for help.
This
