PETA Ad Launched With Message "Even the Most Exotic Animals Don't Belong Behind Bars"
For Immediate Release:
19th July 2000
Contact:
Jason Baker 98201 22561, JasonB@peta-online.org
MUMBAI –– People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are launching an anti-zoo message across India after the tragic deaths of 13 Bengal tigers at the Nandankanan Zoo in Bhubaneshwar. The ad features actress Sheryl Lee (of Twin Peaks, LA Doctors, and John Carpenter's Vampires), who was painted for eight hours by five women to resemble a tiger in captivity. In the ad, Lee is wearing nothing but paint and is stretched out in a cage above the message: "Even the Most Exotic Animals Don?t Belong Behind Bars."
The key to saving exotic animals lies in saving their habitat, not removing them from it only to place them in an unnatural environment. Captivity drives many animals insane, causing them to bar-bite, self-mutilate, pace and overgroom themselves. This behaviour, referred to as zoochosis, is unheard of among animals in the wild but all too common among zoo inmates. In their real homes, these animals would be free to walk and run, choose lifetime companions and raise families.
"Zoo's are nothing more than animal prisons maintained for human amusement", says PETA India's campaign coordinator Jason Baker. "If you love tigers, let them live with their families in the wild where they belong".
Despite their professional concern for animals, zoos remain more "collections" of interesting "items" than actual havens of simulated habitats. Zoos teach people that it is acceptable to keep animals in captivity—bored, cramped, lonely and far from their natural homes.
Says Virginia McKenna, star of the classic movie Born Free and now an active campaigner on behalf of captive animals: "It is the sadness of zoos which haunts me. The purposeless existence of the animals. For the four hours we spend in a zoo, the animals spend four years, or fourteen years, perhaps even longer — if not in the same zoo then in others — day and night; summer and winter . . . This is not conservation, and surely it is not education. No, it is 'entertainment.' Not comedy, however, but tragedy".
Zoos claim to educate people and preserve species, but they frequently fall short on both counts. Most zoo enclosures are quite small, and labels provide little more information than the species' name, diet and natural range. The animals' normal behaviour is seldom discussed, much less observed, because their natural needs are seldom met. Birds' wings may be clipped to prevent them from flying; aquatic animals often have little water; and the many animals who would naturally live in large herds or family groups are often left alone or, at most, are kept in pairs. Natural hunting and mating behaviours are virtually eliminated by regulated feeding and breeding regimens. The animals are closely confined, lack privacy and have little opportunity for mental stimulation or physical exercise, resulting in abnormal and self-destructive behaviour.
A worldwide study of zoos conducted by The Born Free Foundation revealed that zoochosis is rampant in confined animals around the globe. Another study found that elephants spend 22 percent of their time engaging in abnormal behaviours, such as repeated head-bobbing or biting cage bars; and bears spend about 30 percent of their time pacing, a sign of distress.
One sanctuary that is home to rescued zoo animals reports seeing frequent signs of zoochosis in animals brought to the sanctuary from zoos. Of chimpanzees, who bite their own limbs from captivity-induced stress, the manager says: "Their hands were unrecognisable from all the scar tissue".
For more information about PETA India, visit our Web site at www.petaindia.com.
