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Updates via emailArchive of Animals in Entertainment
Horse Racing: Stop It (or At Least Reform It)
Because of its timeliness and interest, Advocacy for Animals is reprinting this article by RaeLeann Smith, which first appeared on the Britannica Blog. Although racing has a wide audience in the United States, few know how racehorses are bred, trained, and handled and what happens to those who are slow, are aging, or suffer injuries.
Immediately after Eight Belles crossed the finish line in the Kentucky Derby on May 3, her two front ankles snapped and she collapsed. The young filly was euthanized in the dirt where she lay, the latest victim of the Thoroughbred racing industry.
The tragedy prompted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to call on the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority to institute sweeping reforms to help prevent similar injuries and reduce animal suffering. Hollow expressions of sadness and regret are not enough. […]
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Big Cat Rescue
This week Advocacy for Animals presents a first-person account by Carole Baskin, the founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue, a Florida sanctuary for more than 100 unwanted and rescued lions, tigers, cougars, and other big cats. We think you will find her story compelling.
I never set out to start a sanctuary. It happened partly by accident, then largely through a process of evolution.
In 1992 my late husband and I were at an exotic animal auction buying llamas when a man walked in with a terrified six-month-old bobcat on a leash. He said she had been his wife’s pet and that she didn’t want her any more. We brought her home and called her Windsong. I adored her and she generally responded in the ways we expect a pet to do. But one of the traits that makes exotic cats bad pets is the tendency to bond to one person and be jealous of or aggressive toward others. She wouldn’t tolerate my husband, so he decided to buy and hand-raise one or more bobcat kittens of his own. […]
The Case for Freeing Captive Elephants
Consider the life of an elephant on the plains of Africa. She lives in a family group that may include her mother, sisters, and aunts and their children as well as other, unrelated females and pre-adolescent males. With this group she wanders for miles every day, browsing on a variety of plant material. She drinks at waterholes and rivers and bathes when she can. Through she is in proximity to many species of animals, some of them predators, she finds security in the company of many of her kind and is rarely threatened. […]