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July 14, 2007
Please Feed the Animals
Lions and tigers at the Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo have discovered that lifelong incarceration sometimes comes with a downside. It seems the animals are being deliberately underfed, in order to make them more responsive when given food by visitors. As everyone knows, it’s boring when animals don’t react in entertaining ways at the specific time we choose to go and look at them. That’s why we invented things like tapping on aquarium glass, tying a cat’s tail to a saucepan, and CGI. But just because it’s hilarious to tip over a sleeping cow, does that actually make it right? Many people would argue ‘no’.
Yet it seems that the big cats of Dubbo are no longer receiving their weekly feed of carcasses (Homer voice: Mmm, carcasses) because instead management is charging tourists $50 to hand-feed them. The cats need regularly to consume whole animals, including bones, intestines and organs – yet the food given by visitors is palatable looking cubes of red meat, falling quite short of a lion’s complete breakfast. So not only are the animals being underfed, they’re being underfed the wrong thing. Imagine that in human terms: if you never got a proper meal, but rather someone came past every hour to toss you half a banana and cheese sandwich. It would get annoying.
Surely there must be a compromise between commercialism and proper care. I don’t know why it’s got to be one extreme or another, money or neglect. I mean surely, if you want to feed the animals correctly AND you also want to make some money from it, just give visitors proper lion food. Get some intestines into people’s hands! You want to feed the lions buddy? Fine, that’ll be fifty bucks, here’s a bucket of stomachs. You can use this crooked zebra bone to stir them with, then chuck it in too! Simple!
Mealtime might not be pretty, but at least the experience would be authentic. The zoo could even raise the price, as people will pay MORE for an authentic experience, as has been shown by prostitution and Irish Pubs.
And if being fed right make the lions less responsive to visitors, well ... you could always find an extra big saucepan to tie to their tails. It may be demeaning, but it’s kinder than starvation.
*Originally published on www.rovedaily.com*
Posted by Sam Bowring at July 14, 2007 04:54 PM