Cruel

When I was in elementary school, trips to the zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, weren’t uncommon. The zoo was only about 1.5 hours away by bus, and a trip over on big yellow (complete with sack lunches) was an exciting escape from didactic learning. In particular, I remember what a great experience I had at “zoo camp,” a spend-the-night experience in fourth grade with guided tours and behind-the-scenes access to the tiger cages, among other perks. (I was crestfallen when an early-morning giraffe feeding was canceled.) This trip occurred shortly after we completed our unit on rainforest ecology, and seeing animals face-to-face was an exciting and formative experience.

Fast forward to yesterday, when I went to the zoo here in Harbin, China. Without the eagerness of a fourth-grader, I found myself less excited about the exoticism of wild animals. Instead, camera in hand, I tried to capture the profound beauty of nature. I often found this goal a fool’s errand, as my camera auto-focused not on the animals themselves but instead on the bars that confined them. And for the first time in my life, the creatures were not the most inscrutable things in the zoo. Rather, the type of enjoyment that some people found in the animals completely baffled me.

In particular, a circus-like animal “performance” was downright cruel. The show included strange sights such as a dress-wearing, bike-riding bear and a pig that supposedly knew arithmetic (2 – 1 = 3 = Oops. It's transitive.). These animals were borderline-amusing, if not equally disturbing. However, the next portion of the show featured various animals being forced to jump through hoops of fire. Seeing a ringmaster crack a whip at an obviously scared animal was not impressive to me. One portion of the show starred a pack of wolves so terrified of their trainers that they cowered as they scurried from hoop to hoop. One wolf, crippled either due to its “training” or perhaps fights within its pack, limped under all of the rings.

As the show went on, I could not help but feel that I was the only sourpuss in the entire auditorium who was not enjoying the performance. Both my cousin and second cousin seemed to be having a grand time, and even my parents seemed to be amused by the discipline of the animal performers. I found myself instead wondering what misery the animals must go through in order for people to see bears twirl double-edged tridents and monkeys play basketball. The show seemed to be a perversion of nature, a charlatan’s window to the natural world. What are children in the audience left to wonder after seeing such an act? I worried that they were learning all the wrong things.