Does captivity drive you mad?

I have been meaning to contribute to our blog for a while now, however, the recent news story of Santino, a chimpanzee confined in a Swedish Zoo, has galvanised me into giving my two-pence worth.

Santino collects stones throughout the day to throw at visitors.

This apparently proves that chimps can plan ahead and how intelligent they are. Not once, and correct me if I’m wrong, have I seen an article asking why the poor creature might be doing this. Could it be that he is suffering from psychological problems due to being imprisoned in a cage for however many years? Wouldn’t you want to throw stones at your jailors if you were born to roam the forest with your friends? Friends that you’d chosen yourself; but instead you find yourself confined, day after day, inside the same four walls. With increasingly sophisticated methods of studying animal behaviour in the wild, is it still necessary to capture and confine animals in this way to prove they are intelligent? They’re not contributing to climate change or destroying their own habitat, so I‘d already assumed they were at least more intelligent than us as a species.
You may have guessed by now that I’m an anti-captivity campaigner. I challenge anyone to justify why we should keep wide-ranging mammals in captivity. I can’t comment specifically on all species, but for cetaceans I can. From an ethical point of view I believe it’s wrong and outdated to confine such intelligent and wide-ranging beings, without their consent. On top of the issues of confinement itself, many dolphins are still captured from the wild to sustain the captivity industry, a lucrative and secretive industry. However, more on this later…

I do sometimes wish dolphins would at least look miserable when they’re suffering or in pain, like Santino probably is (they have since castrated him in thanks of showing his intellegence). It would certainly make my job much easier. It’s hard for people to associate the colourful, splashy and exciting promotional images of dolphinaria with the suffering that goes on behind the PR machines. I wonder how many people stick around to watch the dolphins endlessly and listlessly circling their tiny pools once the show is over and the call for ice-cream sets in. Dolphins ‘smile’ even when they’re dead!

The ethics of keeping such large mammals captive was really bought home to me this week. While attempting to swim some serious lengths in my local swimming pool, I soon realised what it must be like to be a captive dolphin. Swimming in a crazy style to avoid being kicked in the head or leg, in a very cramped and over-crowded lane, I was thankful that at least I had the freedom to be able to walk out, in a huff, after 30 minutes. Not so easy for the dolphins!

It’s true that some individuals are made of sterner stuff. Lolita and Corky, for instance, have battled through and so far survived captivity for over 30 years; whereas some freak out and die within days or months. Others, like the orca known as Kasatka, have dragged their trainers to the bottom of their tank; while Santino chucks stones at the grinning tourists. I just hope that if I’m ever trapped like they are I’d have the strength to attempt to fight back or at least not give up – in the hope that someone would fight for my freedom.