Posted on 05/22/2013 1:44:36 PM PDT by presidio9
In a wonderful move for wildlife, India has become the fourth country (along with Costa Rica, Hungary and Chile) to ban captive dolphin and orca shows, a la those featured at “parks” such as Sea World.
India has declared that cetaceans’ high level of intelligence grants them the status of “non-human persons,” which elevates the animals’ rights. The new law partly stems from the fact that cetaceans do not historically fare well in captivity.
India’s Ministry of the Environment and Forests stated in the ban, “Confinement in captivity can seriously compromise the welfare and survival of all types of cetaceans by altering their behaviour and causing extreme distress.”
According to Treehugger, the statement also bans ”any person / persons, organizations, government agencies, private or public enterprises that involves import, capture of cetacean species to establish for commercial entertainment, private or public exhibition and interaction purposes whatsoever.”
The statement continues, “Whereas cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and sensitive, and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior have suggested that the unusually high intelligence; as compared to other animals means that dolphin should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights and is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose.”
Sadly, such measures have failed in the United States and European countries where cetacean performances are still considered big business. Until dolphins and whales receive some measure of constitutional rights (an effort that has thus far failed), it seems that they will continue to be held in captivity and forced into performances.
However, Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer who is now director of the Earth Island Institute’s Dolphin Project, hopes that India’s bold move will pave the way for dolphins and whales across the world.
“This is a huge win for dolphins. Not only has the Indian government spoken out against cruelty, they have contributed to an emerging and vital dialogue about the ways we think about dolphins – as thinking, feeling beings rather than pieces of property to make money off of,” he said.
And dolphins are more intelligent than 100% of the idiots we call “democrats” today.
So much for the new Dolphin taxi drivers!
Brilliant response.
Hey, this has me thinking that liberals are merely non-human
political entities.
Equating animal ‘intelligence’ with human consciousness is ridiculous. Even a dolphin knows that.
Thank you.
“Equating animal ‘intelligence’ with human consciousness is ridiculous. Even a dolphin knows that.”
Anthropomorphism
In America, the hypocrisy is that dogs and cats have been anthropomorphised to such an extent, many consider these pets, “family”.
Dog meat, a staple in many parts of the world, would be banned here for nothing other than senti-menty reasons.
God being a perfect being is difficult, if not impossible to reconcile with biblical expressions of God's anger, revenge, the exacting of punishment that "displeases" God, all of which demonstrate a loss of control, lack of discipline.
Eventually it has come to mean the imbuing of, interpretation of emotion in behavior of non-human, inanimate objects, which can not be validated without having the subject ascertaining the mental state that emotions cause.
I have faith that God did not provide animals with human-like emotions.
Anthropomorphism is a phenomenon that is an act in which people describe animals, inanimate objects as having emotions.
To say that the dog as happy, is to say without knowing whether it is true or not.
This has absolutely nothing to do with God or the existence of God.
Nor am I. I am just exhibiting how clever I seem to be. :•)
Yes, indeed. I should know better than to express myself emotionally in any of my comments.:-)
Absolutely. And to bath in your own poop is okay too.
That’s my favorite. :)
Not really. There are at least 41 species of dolphin, ranging from the Hector’s Dolphin, which weighs about 150lbs to the Orca, which can weigh five tons. I’m assuming the specimin on the chart comes from the Bottlenose (or Common) Dolphin, the one people are used to seeing at Seaworld. Those guys average about 500 pounds. The average weight of a human is about 150 pounds. The average weight of a Chimpanzee is about 115 pounds. If the brains on the chart are drawn to scale, the Dolphin brain would have to be substantially larger to compare to the Chimpanzee or Human brain.
That is my favorite response that I have read on FR so far this year.
Bravo sir.
Officially no, it is not ok — it is illegal and the Indian government has an affirmative action policy against it — this worked so well that in the two most populous states in the north that combined have 350 million people, the political leaders have been from the lowest castes for the past two decades.
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