Author: Brian Fogler

Just thought I’d share a picture of Martha’s memorial still in Cincinnati’s Zoo. I highly doubt Martha looked nearly this happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB_2nwNDSrQ

I discovered this video whilst searching “wild lions” on youtube. It immediately caught my eye because it combined two of my favorite things: soccer and lions. The video raises awareness about wild lions and their diminishing habitat, shows the amazing interaction humans and lions can share, and serves as an advertisement for a suit. The video opens with self-proclaimed lion expert Kevin Richardson explaining his personal history with lions which contained vast experience of protecting and bonding with lions. The video opens with Kevin receiving a huge bear hug by a male lion. The video continues with Kevin walking next to the lion in a long view shot that encompasses the landscape. Kevin narrates the problems lions have in today’s world, all the while showing his amazing control with lions. Eventually, a birds eye view of three lions and Kevin with an orange soccer ball appears and the foursome begin footballing. Kevin actually tries a few skills to get past the lion and the two lionesses, while the lions simply chew the ball. The music throughout the clip is very lion king-esque until the football scene where it becomes more uptempo and has an almost electronic connotation to it.

Not only did I find this video amazing, I found it to be completely relevant to Randy Malamud’s essay Zoo Spectatorship. Throughout his essay, Malamud has not a single positive thing to say about zoos. What Kevin does here (while it is not applicable to the other 99.99% of the world) is interact with wild lions. He does not simply look at them from a distance in an unnatural habitat, something that Malamud argues is distasteful and disrespectful to the animals. Kevin gets to experience the lions in their most natural state, and his interactions are able to get captured on video. While some may say it is a negative thing that Kevin is teaching these lions to be friendly towards humans while a large portion of humans approaching lions are poachers, I argue against it. I think his interactions with these lions can prove to humans that lions are kind, magical animals. Kevin also uses his videos to raise awareness about the diminishing habitat of the lions due to pollution and the dwindling population size because of increased poachers.

I appreciate this video because, as Malamud states, people should be “more concerned with what the imprisonment of animals says about the people who create, maintain and patronize zoos,” then the effect of zoos on the animals. (222). Kevin, like Malamud, would not appreciate zoos because they do not teach people the real lesson animals have to offer us. Kevin embodies Malamud’s ideas going against spectatorship. Animals are beautiful creatures and should be treated as such. The way Kevin involves himself with the lions goes against everything Malamud argues about zoos. The lions literally look into Kevin’s eyes, unlike in zoos where the “animals deflate the human gaze we conceive as so puissant, by cutting us in return – refusing to dignify or acknowledge our self-important ritual of looking.” (222). Everything Kevin did in this video proves how important it is to be involved with animals, not just spectate them.

Malamud, Randy. Zoo Spectatorship. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Print.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2818704/How-humans-leaving-rhinos-horny-Noisy-environments-putting-captive-mammals-mating-zoos.html

Another recurring problems I have encountered with my zoo research. Rhinos, who have some of the most sensitive sound throughout all of the Animal Kingdom, are finding it difficult to mate with all of the noise created by people in zoos. This is a pressing issue because the rate at which rhinos are getting poached is at an all-time high and it already is extremely hard to breed them.

I chose a peculiar image to look at for this blog post. The image is a frame of a cow with different sections outlined saying things like “no crowding” or “no antibiotics.” This is the wrapping the company whole foods uses for their ground beef. The cow shown has the outline of an actual cow one would use for beef, but it is nothing more than an outline and very distant from the Americanized cow one may think of. I will use Berger’s notion of animals of the mind and Foer’s ideas from Eating Animals to analyze this picture.

Whole foods isn’t trying to anthropomorphize this cow; it is not one of those cows one might see on television that talks about how happy they are and happy cows make better cheese. Then again, they are not trying to go around the fact that they indeed use this cow to sell its beef.  Berger states “The animals of the mind, instead of being dispersed, have been co-opted into other categories so that the category animal has lost its central importance.” (Berger 15). What was once a Cow, is no longer viewed as a cow.  According to Foer, 98% of cows are raised in crowded places without the ability to move. Cows in America were once treated as respected farm animals, living in a nice barn. In India, cows are sacred. They are now commodities, not Cow.

Although Whole Foods is famous for their organic food and well raised animals, Foer would have some things to say about that. Foer points out, all these terms have very loose definitions and very often mean little. None of these terms are actually defined and companies abuse them. More importantly, Foer talks about the antibiotics companies use to keep the meat safe and grow larger. This caused Humans to become so resistant to medicinal antibiotics because of the antibiotics in the food we eat. The growth hormones, according to Foer, make the meat bigger but is unsafe and not natural. Now Foer is very against over crowding and sensitive issues like that. I personally am not as concerned with that and while I appreciate what Whole Foods does this for the beef, I am much more concerned there antibiotic use.

Whole Foods does not try and appease its customers by anthropomorphizing the cow from the ground beef wrapping. It is a clear cut diagram of where the beef comes from and why Whole Foods is the best. The problem is, not many people can afford the costs and continue to buy antibiotic-rich beef at a cheaper cost. Not only does that affect them, it effects the entire population.

Sources:

Berger, John. “Why Look at Animals?” About Looking. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 3-28. Print.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.