Take this for example:
While we can all agree that this is cute on some level, I find it semi disturbing. This baby, dressed in a black and white hoodie and very much resembling a zebra (the prey for this lion,) is sitting in front of glass just an inch or two thick while the lion literally attempts to eat him. These are wild animals, and in my opinion exploitation has made people forget how dangerous they can be and lose that sense of awe that comes from seeing something so beautiful and dangerous.
Sorry, I got off on a tangent there. The point is I think Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man) fell into this fallacy. Although I certainly respect what he did, it was not a smart thing to do. He went down the way of Steve Irwin... Humans have no business putting themselves directly in the habitat of wild animals in that way. All animals have the predator/prey instinct, even a domestic house cat will torture and kill a mouse or other small woodland creatures before coming home and crawling in bed with you at night to warm your feet.
As mentioned before, Treadwell did appear to have some kind of neurosis as well, as by the end of his film he seemed to think he WAS a bear, and not just living WITH the bears. My hope for society is that these incidents (and the images even) can instill that "fear" back into people (although it's really more a sense of respect/reverence than fear.) By putting himself with the bears he not only endangered himself and his girlfriend, but the bears themselves. This story was a tragedy from all angles.
Maybe it is a little rash to assume the lion is trying to eat the child; Lions pick up their young like that, by the neck. The lack of hostile body language by the lion suggests this was not necessarily a hostile act.
ReplyDeleteI think Zoos actually take better steps than someone like the "grizzly man", appreciating the science and safe boundaries between the wilderness and not getting swept away by emotional connections.