What a sad but fascinating story David Attenborough told us tonight. Jumbo was a young African elephant brought to England in the mid 1880's. He was taken to London zoo. He had a devoted keeper but had a very bad diet and was used to give rides to several people at once. He also did not have the company of any other elephants which must have been very lonely for him. Attenborough tracked down his skeleton in New York and listened to the findings of scientists who pointed out the tale tell signs in his bones. Also there were stories of the time of Jumbos rage at night and this seems to have been due to toothache, too many sticky buns and not enough fibre. The people then , including Barnum the circus owner, were not as aware as we are of the needs of elephants, but we have no excuse, elephants need to be kept in their country of origin where they can live out their lives in the company of their own families.When we have a world where people exploit people it is not surprizing that they exploit animals.
I have written in previous posts about disasters. In the case of Concorde, decisions by people, plus other factors were directly to blame for the event. In the case of the Penlee disaster it may have been avoided if someone had made a better choice in the time beforehand and as a consequence brave men and the ship's crew and the captain and his family died. 9/11 was certainly the result of wicked men committing a terrorist act, but even in this there was heroism notably by another Cornish man, Rick Rescorla who helped many to safety and left it too late to help himself. In situations like this we see what the human spirit is capable of both good and evil. What of disasters that come on people because of the earth restless movement of tectonic plates. Often people live near volcanoes because the land is rich and fertile and they have the chance of a better life there when the volcano is resting. We cannot blame them for that but sometimes people become complacent...
Comments
Post a Comment