HelpfulGardener.com

This may or may not be a good idea. I don’t want to start an animal rights / cruelty discussion. Those of you who know me by know probably realize that I could never believe intentional cruelty is acceptable, and would not condone it.

I’ve lived through the period of awareness here in the US during which vast number of cruel practices have been exposed and public awareness has been shifted — hopefully in meaningful ways, with more corrective actions to follow.

I’m old enough to have seen both sides of animal performances — as a child Enchanted by the experience, and as adult shamed by the lies and horrific exposure of bad actors in the industry.

That being said, my pandemic stay at home, social distancing entertainment has included watching YouTube videos of some of these animal performances — One specific trend that is obvious in the shows I have been watching is the ...what you might call “modern”... animal training foundation of rewarding when animals perform a target behavior — it’s heaping praises for doing something right, and having the animal realize “I get lots of lovin’s when I do THIS” so that they WANT to do it.

There are other aspects when animals are displayed at a zoo or habitat setting, and the animals are necessarily trained to be obedient to the keepers and trainers — some obvious reasons for that are for everyone’s safety, and for the animals to accept veterinary handling — but I’m thinking there is a conundrum when they are trained to perform in shows.

Orca performances are particularly controversial in the USA after the earlier tragedies and popularized cinematic productions. Before all of that happened, we took our older daughter to one in Florida — she was only 18 months old at the time, so she doesn’t really remember though. Whether same condemnation should be directed to the one below, I‘m not ready to say.

On the other hand, orca shows like this one I’ve been watching is one way to increase awareness and foster a sense of emotional closeness/connection of the younger generation (as well as adults) to other large marine life like whales and to become actively concerned and involved in their conservation. I have been enjoying this YouTube in particular — he seems to be a big fan of Komatsu Trainer, and you can see how she is particularly demonstrative, with expansive body language and gestures. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

バックビート　きた〜！！【2020年8月4日10:00　
鴨川シーワールド　シャチパフォーマンス】

Here comes the Back Beat!! [2020/8/4 10:00]
Kamogawa Sea World Orca Performance


(Lovey was born in captivity, and Lala and Ran (Lan?) are her younger sisters ... and Luna is her daughter. )

...I’ll give up on this topic if videos like this disturb other members. I was genuinely curious...

Well, as for my two cents; I am totally against the capture of wild animals to be held in captivity, even if the animals do live longer in captivity than in the wild. If the animals have been born into captivity I suppose that might be different, but a lot of wild animals simply do not belong in captivity, especially big animals and/or animals that require a lot of running or swimming space. Orca shows might be fun to watch, but big whales like that just don't belong in tanks. I guess I could not say that if the orcas we're treated kindly and seemed to actually enjoy performing that it was animal cruelty. Sometimes I think dolphins enjoy doing tricks. But since animals cannot tell us how they're currently feeling, we never know when even a highly trained wild animal could simply turn on it's trainer because it became upset or scared. It's happened before.

I don't know if anyone else watch the talking horse show "Mr. Ed", but I have heard that the horse that played Mr. Ed wasn't treated in the right way. Because he was always standing in a stable, he got arthritis. And because of his lack of exercise, he became overweight. I think movie star animals are treated better than that these days I think, but I'm wondering if more movie companies are starting to use CGI animals instead. The new movie Call of the Wild: people fussed a lot about it because all the animals were fake. Computer made. Probably because they didn't want any animal rights people on their backs if an animal got hurt. And besides, when you use computer animals, more dangerous stunts and fights can be performed in the movie.

I know one thing that needs to stop and that is baby chick hatcheries. If you knew what they did to the baby roosters picked out of the "pullets only" section, it would break your heart, turn your stomach, make you want to cry and burn down chick hatcheries.

I used to love seeing those orca and dolphin shows. I think how I feel about those shows changed after watching that documentary called The Cove.

When my daughter was younger it was one of our favorite things to do on a Sunday afternoon was to go to the shows and play the carnival games. We also have many fond memories of going to the circus. And of course there's the Monterey Bay Aquarium (no shows) and the Mystic Aquarium (belugas and penguins).

She is a teen now and has her own opinions about the sea shows although I think she misses the circus.

I'm kind of thinking that institutions like zoos, aquariums and sea shows will decline in popularity in the future. Cultures change I guess.

I think I’m thinking along the same thoughts @webmaster. Nostalgia mixed with the harsh realities.

Do you think there is no room for preservation of endangered species if only in these artificial habitats? Is there a point to exploring how much communication and mutual respect can be achieved with the more intelligent species?

In the above video, I believe the affection Komatsu Trainer displays is genuine. None of the other junior trainers exhibit as much/persistently constant attention and interaction, especially in the beginning and then they seem to develop more as time goes on.

This YouTuber (Aloha-no-ojisan loosely translates Man-in-Aloha) focuses on her interactions with Lovey, including between performances — how she plays games during feeding or just casually playfully inviting games while practicing, including fake-tossing fish for her to catch (when she normally might toss fish one by one) until Lovey splashes her, or showing her a fish or agar block to choose from, using fish scales or oil from around her mouth to doodle her name and hearts on top of her head — these were at the sun-pool and not particularly within audience view....

Another glimpse. For the past year, this pair have been practicing combination signals.

Simple fetch and wait but signals given as a combo like wait, and go, etc. — my kitties aren’t this smart or well trained, although my first cat used to play fetch better than a dog I had as a teenager….


https://youtu.be/Ia_OG-S_SYo