Help Abused Dancing Bears
If there’s one thing that gets my blood boiling, it’s animal abuse. Abusing defenseless animals for money or in most cases, just for the hell of it, makes me sick to my stomach. I feel it is part of my duty as a blogger to bring awareness to people about animal abuses that otherwise most people wouldn’t know about. In this case, in India and Pakistan, sloth bears are kidnapped as cubs. In order to do this, many times the mothers are killed and the cubs die of shock. The cubs that do survive are taken and have a hot poker pushed through their snout to create a hole to put a rope through.
The purpose of the rope is to make the bear dance. By jerking the rope upward, the bear stands up to avoid the pain of the rope being pushed against the open wound. Can you imagine how painful that is? The cubs are also defanged and declawed without any sort of anesthetic. The poker wounds in their snout never fully heal because it is constantly being rubbed against the rope which also causes infections. The bears learn to dance by avoiding the pain of the rope being jerked up. In the wild sloth bears can live up to 20 years old, but ones in captivity barely make it past 7 or 8. Since the bear handlers are often very, very poor, the bears are not fed properly and many times lose their fur and go blind from lack of nutrition.
The practice has been a tradition in India for centuries and it happens also in Pakistan and Indonesia. It has actually been outlawed in India since 1972, but has not been enforced and still goes on today. This actually went on in Europe also until very recently. The last dancing bears in Europe were in Bulgaria and were surrendered to a sanctuary in 2007.
There are many attempts by Wildlife organizations to stop this tradition, but there a some roadblocks. First, this is a long standing tradition in India and is hard to break. It is not seen there as animal abuse, but as a way to make a living and for entertainment. Also, the bear handlers are so poor that this is the only way for them to support their families. So, in an effort to move past these road blocks, sanctuaries give the handlers training and equipment for another occupation in exchange for the bears.
Since 2003, 350 bears have been turned in to three sanctuaries in India run by the organization Wildlife SOS. At these sanctuaries, the bears are cleaned up, the rope is removed and are given dental surgery to repair their removed or broken teeth. The sanctuaries are made to be more like their life would have been in the wild, although most of their bears will never be able to return to the wild. Still, they are socialized with other bears and taught to hunt and basically just be bears.
You can help these bears by signing this petition (I just did), and by donating to Wildlife SOS. Also, watch the video below for more information.
5 Responses to “Help Abused Dancing Bears”
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Kate
I introduced the scheme to rescue the dancing bear & rehabilitation of the Kalenders as well – the so called master to the dancing bear, the same pattern was adopted by the Wildlife SOS & then WTI here in India. What I feel now that the implementation of the scheme became effective that now we do not see the dancing bear on roads / streets but I am worried about the rehabilitation of the Kalenders because the Kalenders became jobless after handing over the animals & amount received by him through this deal misused by them with out any proper watch of the implementing agencies……….????????
I’m glad to hear that there are less dancing bears on the streets because I think there is no excuse to treat an animal like that. At the same time, I do not know what it’s like to be extremely poor, to have no other way to make money and to be in that situation. But I don’t believe it’s the sanctuaries responsibility to make sure the Kalenders continue to make a living after they are given the initial training and equipment as they are there to heal and provide for the abused bears. It is hard for me to know the right answer because I’ve never been there and I’m not too familiar with the Indian government, but if the Kalenders were given proper tools to make a living at something else, it is up to them to do so. After all this was a practice that was outlawed over 30 years ago.
Thank you for blogging about the plight of the dancing bears of India. Please note that Wildlife SOS has now saved 500 bears (as of Dec. 2008) and has 4 sanctuaries in India. For more information on them, their site is http://www.wildlifesos.org. There are a few other sites that share info, facts, and photos: http://www.squidoo.com/dancing-bears http://www.squidoo.com/kartick-satyanarayan http://www.squidoo.com/geeta-seshamani and http://www.squidoo.com/slothbears Thank you again. The more people know about this horrible tradition and the work that Wildlife SOS is doing to save the sloth bears and retrain the Kalandars (the trainers), the better. Bear hugs, Frankie aka Bearmeister
Thank you so much for your comment and I apologize it didn’t go up earlier, but for some reason it got recognized as spam. Anyhow, thank you for all the information and long live the sloth bears!
I am horrified, this i unbeliveable! these poor poor bears. i am writeing a speecha t the moment on the cruetly behind bear dancing i have found this very useful so thank you
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