Tuesday, February 7, 2012


Feeding tigers with a "tongs" is the newest sham in a
trend of "education" by some individualsand institutions,
charging a fee for visitors to enjoy
the "experience with nature."


http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=8518932&syndicate=syndicate&section=

Our View: Hold that tiger

Duluth News Tribune
Published Sunday, June 29, 2008

If a wild animal exhibitor brings a couple of tigers to town, one of which is very pregnant, and sets up shop at a carnival where the female gives birth to four cubs that he displays publicly only to see them die the next day, should he be welcomed back?

How about if he made the trip last year after being socked with a lengthy complaint from the United States Department of Agriculture alleging Animal Welfare Act violations, as well as a $100,000 fine for fraud from the attorney general of Texas?

Well, sanctions or not, Marcus Cook and his Zoo Dynamics tiger show have been barnstorming the South and Midwest this year with the Mighty Thomas Carnival, which is preparing to set up shop in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center parking lot this week. But hold your horses — or tigers — because this time, the carnies may be stripped of their stripes.

“I’m not sure if the tigers are coming with us or not,” Mighty Thomas co-owner Tom Atkins told the News Tribune’s editorial page staff early last week, acknowledging that the big cat sideshow had been traveling with the carnival “for a couple of weeks.”

Atkins advised calling back later in the week. In the meantime, the office of Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas, the state where Cook is based, had plenty to report.

“What name is he operating under today?” asked spokesman Charlie Castillo when the newspaper called to inquire about the status of the “Final Judgment and Agreed Permanent Injunction” signed by Cook and the attorney general’s office in February 2007. Asserting that Cook had fraudulently operated various nonprofit entities — ZooCats Inc., Zoo America, and the Kaufman County Humane Society, among others — the ruling enjoined him from ever again establishing a nonprofit in the state, as well as claiming any affiliation with Save the Tiger funds sponsored by Exxon and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

With regard to dangerous animals, the judgment enjoined Cook from “misrepresenting or causing confusion ... as to Defendants’ safety record ... including representing that Defendants have a ‘perfect safety record.’”

It would appear that he does not. In 2005, a woman was bitten in the hand by a tiger cub Cook exhibited at a Florida auto dealership, the St. Petersburg Times reported. A year later, according to numerous news reports, one of Cook’s workers required 2,000 stitches after being mauled by a tiger that had escaped his Texas facility.

In Duluth last year, Cook dismissed the incident, telling the News Tribune the worker was trying to commit “suicide by tiger.” (The worker disputes his claim.) And Cook said the attorney general judgment — which would seemingly enjoin him from making suicide-by-tiger excuses regarding his safety record — wasn’t as severe as it sounded and the fine had been reduced.

Not quite. On Thursday, Texas attorney general spokesman Thomas Kelley gave an update. “Mr. Cook is mistaken,” he e-mailed. “Short answer: yes, the judgment still applies; no, he hasn’t complied with the judgment; and yes, the $100,000 is reinstated.”

It looks like Cook won’t soon be getting any ticket revenue in Duluth to pay down that debt. On Friday, the News Tribune editorial staff called Atkins of Mighty Thomas again to ask if the tigers were coming to town.

“They’re not,” he said, and hung up.

Cook did not respond to requests for comment. His lawyer, Bryan Sample, who also signed the Texas judgment, said of it: “There are ongoing matters that would be improper for me to make any comment.” As for the cause of the tiger cubs’ deaths last year — Cook reportedly sent their remains for a necropsy shortly after the incident — Sample said, “I really don’t know. I don’t believe any criminal charges or charges from the [United States Department of Agriculture] were brought against him or anyone else from the exhibit.”

He’s correct, but the USDA has other matters to discuss with Cook in a September hearing on its voluminous complaint against him.

For Duluth and Minnesota, the larger question is what state and local governments can do to control wild animal exhibits gone wrong. A state law passed in 2004 requires residents who own dangerous animals to register them with their counties, but is mum about visiting exhibitors. As for Duluth, city spokesman Jeff Papas was in the process of researching relevant ordinances on Friday when told Cook probably wasn’t coming to town.

“That might solve the whole issue completely,” he said.

Maybe this time, but not completely.

Letters Like This Are What Make a Pleasure Like This Blog, Even More Worthwhile

Excerpt from a recent private email:

You and I have met several times over the past 30-odd years.

The first time was when you played Beloit, WI on the Vargas show. That was my first introduction to a full scale white tiger act. What a sight! Ada was appearing that summer at CWM in Baraboo with her cat act- another fine presentation in the European fashion. Your act impressed me so much that I dragged the old man up to Madison, WI a couple weeks later to see it. I believe the last time you and I met in passing was several years back at the Delavan Circus Mixer. Rex Williams was still alive and a contingent of folks always came up from Cuneos place.

I did have the pleasure of meeting your son and his wife a couple years back at the CWM opening week end. The local fans had arranged a discussion group (in lieu of a banquet speaker) with Elaine, Brian Franzen, and Greg DeSanto giving thier views on the industry.

I do want to Thank You for your blog. It's one of the best I've seen dealing with a variety of subjects and sorting out fact from bullshit. Thanks-

Why We Love Zoos

Bronx Zoo

The New York Times
The Opinion Page
By Diane Ackerman
Feb. 4, 2012

WHEN the Warsaw Zoo was bombed during World War II, killing most of the animals, the zookeepers devised a dangerous plan: they decided to use the cages and enclosures to hide more than 300 Jews who were fleeing the Nazis. Their refuge became one of the most successful hide-outs of the war.

After I wrote about this true story in “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” readers shared their outrage with me about the bombing of a zoo, which they regarded almost as a sacrilege. I heard similar outcries in 2003 after the Baghdad Zoo was bombed. We’re used to the killing of enemies, but we reserve a special circle of hell for people who set fire to zoos. It’s the ultimate massacre of the innocents. The animals are silent victims, supposedly beyond our ideas of good and evil.

More than 150 million people a year visit zoos and aquariums in the United States. Why do we flock to them? It’s not just a pleasant outing with family or friends, or to introduce children (whose lives are a cavalcade of animal images) to real animals, though those are still big reasons. I think people are also drawn to a special stripe of innocence they hope to find there.

Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in its own time zone, somewhere between the seasonal sense of animals and our madly ticking watch time. The relatively quiet, parklike setting offers an oasis in the crowded, noisy, stressful, morally ambiguous world where humans tend to congregate. The random gibbering and roaring, cackling and hooting, yowling and grunting strike ancient chords in us, a feral harmony that intrigues and lulls.

Smells create a subtle olfactory landscape that stirs us: from the sweet drops that male elephants dribble from glands near their eyes in mating season to the scent signposts of lions, hyenas and other animals. Just as dancers have body memory, we have wilderness memory.

One recent online survey suggests that more than half of zoo visitors are family groups — but a big proportion, too, are adults with no children. Zoo researchers have found through eavesdropping studies (in which people at several zoos were observed as zoo animals while they were observing the zoo animals) that most visitors talked surprisingly little. Yet they appeared to the observers to feel closer knit as a result of the visit, judging by their body language, as if there were a special bond that crystallized only in the presence of animals.

Zoogoers mainly strolled and enjoyed “exterior gazing.” That sounds like stop-and-go mindfulness — focusing on the lives of other creatures to dispel the usual mind theaters that plague us. A 2009 study by animal scientists in Japan showed that zoo visitors leave with significantly lower blood pressure, and they report feeling less stressed.

That so many of us, hundreds of millions worldwide, visit zoos each year is also a comment on our times and the marginalization of wild animals from our lives. It’s mainly in films and TV documentaries that we see animals in their natural settings, but on the screen they’re dwarfed, flattened, interrupted by commercials, narrated over and not accompanied by the mixed scents of grass, dung and blood; the drone of flies and cicadas; the welling of sweat.

Let’s set aside for the moment the debate about whether zoos are essential arks and educators or cruel wardens of unhappy animals, because arguments on both sides are compelling. For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, balled up like giant pine cones. Meeting them at the zoo widens a visitor’s view of nature and personalizes it.

Many of the visitors studied by zoo researchers express a deep rapport with at least one animal and concern for the rest of its species, as well as a better idea of how humans fit into the natural world. It’s telling, I think, that they use personal pronouns when they refer to the animals. In one study, inner-city parents said they visited with their children partly to help promote family values and inspire a concern for animals.

Millions of adults talk un-self-consciously with the animals, maybe to be alone with their thoughts or because they can’t find a companion for the trip. For some it may be a way to socialize, identify, empathize with other beings, without the strain of always interacting with people.

What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity. We flock to zoos for many reasons, not least to shed some of the burden of being human.

Courtesy of Henry Penndorf

'Side note on "human perceptions." There is a recent uproar by animal activists over zoo's in particular elephants. They need space, they need freedom, etc. etc. They object to elephants being chained but not to other animals being tied or restrained. I think the misconception is "domestication." Has there ever been a protest against aquariums or the keeping of tropical fish, unless it had trained dolphin, sea lion, or killer whale shows? Has there every been a protest against a fish tank in a pet store that has algae covered glass? House sea lions in a green water pool and the "know it all" activists will gag. It is a relatively easy process to make a "naturalist" fish habitat, or a "naturalistic" snake terrarium which the "run Bambi run's" don't find objectionable. Do they consider how much their world has been reduced by a 55 gallon fish tank? It's "pretty" so that means the inhabitant's are happy!!!! Yet elephants who would wreck havoc on a habitat like a planted 55 gallon fish tank, without the aid of hot wire or trenches, are unhappy in a fairly bare enclosure? Would the "natural" fish tank/snake terrarium be as "natural" if the plants were planted on the outside of the tank instead of on the inside? How come many will proudly proclaim to be vegans, who "only eat fish and sea food?" Is it because fish are called "sea food" and cows, deer, elk, horses, sheep, etc. etc. aren't called "land food?" A chicken and it's eggs, kind of falls in the middle for many of these nitwits attempting to create their Private Idaho.'

Aquarium History--The Zoo/Aquarium Archive Project needs your support

A 1873 halftone print featuring a plan of the Macpherson's Insectarium, an insect aquarium, made by an English naturalist, Macpherson. The Macpherson's Insectarium is an apparatus which he calls an "insectarium". It is a large case with sides of plate glass, so as to admit the solar rays to penetrate it freely from all sides. One of the door giving access to the interior, so as to allow it to be arranged, cleaned, etc. As certain insects, specially when in the state of larva, require water, there is at the bottom a small aquarium with irregular sides, forming a miniature lake; around it grow the different kings of herbs and plants which serve as food for the insects. Some grass sods on the bottom are indispensable, and easily replaced by fresh ones from time to time. On those plants which grow up high and flower in the upper part of the insectarium, lively colored butterflies are kept; and it would even be possible to have in this small artificial paradise exotic species, which may be produced from the eggs. The lower part of the sides consists of a piece of zinc full of small holes, and a wire gauze for the perfect ventilation of the apparatus.

'Of all the great advancements that have been made in captive animal husbandry, I feel the some of the greatest have been in the field of Aquariums and Aqua Culture with a long and varied history.'

From Mark Rosenthal:

Wade

I am involved…as you will see…in a very unique project called the Zoo/Aquarium Video Archive Project.

Attached is our first newsletter talking about the project. As with all projects we are continually seeking funding to continue it and of course give it some PR.

Would it be possible for you to post this PDF of what is happening with the project on your blog… if possible it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Mark

Zoo_History_Project1.3.pdf

Zoo/Aquarium Video
Archive Project is
supported by donations from
zoo colleagues, interested
individuals, organizations and
businesses that understand
the importance of this unique
and one of a kind project. These
archives will be accessible to
people from all over the world.
If there ever was a way to
honor and preserve a legacy, a
video archive is the most
complete and multi-faceted way
to do so. Time is running out
for their stories. Donations for
the Archive Project can be
made directly to the Pittsburgh
Zoo c/o Dr. Barbara Baker,
President & CEO. The zoo is a
501C3 organization

'What a great project this is. You talk about "heavy hitters", there are some real "big guns" involved with the project assuring it will be something special and of interest to anybody involved with or interested in zoo/aquarium history. Let's all help out this most worthy undertaking.'

On a side note FYI:

Amazon.com: The Ark in Park: The Story of Lincoln Park Zoo ...

Pittsburg Zoo--PPG Aquarium

Built in 1967 (then called AquaZoo) Pittsburg's PPG Aquarium presents several aquatic habitats. The aquarium's theme is the "Diversity of Water", and contains several exhibits that portray different marine ecosystems, a coral reef, a stingray tunnel, and an open ocean exhibit.