Someone recently shared a video of a little girl riding an alligator on my Facebook timeline. I must admit the video changed my perspective on how animals are used for entertainment.
Like many people, I enjoy watching exotic and dangerous animals — they are fascinating. But what I’m starting to understand is how our fascination with these creatures may have lead us to allow people to take their exploitation too far.
If you search YouTube you can find dozens of videos featuring children riding alligators. There are even a few videos that appear to take place in the United States. It’s interesting to note that in the late 19th and early 20th century, alligator trappers used young black children as live bait to catch alligators. Many in that area dismiss it today as an “urban myth,” but there is evidence indicating that this was, in fact, real.
In my opinion, what these parents have done amounts to child endangerment; these animals are not toys. They can never be truly tamed. A wild animal’s nature will always be wild and they can turn on a human in a heart beat. People find that out every year when they run with the bulls in Spain, or when a bullfighter is killed by the bull they are tormenting.? The famous act Siegfried and Roy that used tigers to entertain drunk gamblers and their children in Las Vegas learned this truth the hard way when a white tiger turned on Roy.
You may remember the story of how Steve Irwin, who was also known as “The Crocodile Hunter,” was killed by a stingray while swimming too close to this untamed creature. I’m sure Irwin had done this countless times, as he had with other wild and dangerous creatures, and yet he still paid the ultimate price for trying to essentially dominate nature. Don’t get me wrong, I think Irwin was a good man who truly wanted to educate people about animals; however, I’m not sure if he hadn’t inadvertently? inspired dangerous demonstrations, such as the one in this video. Irwin even used his daughter in similar demonstrations.
The thing that struck me about this video is how sad it was to see an animal’s spirit broken and used as macabre entertainment. This is the epitome of mankind’s arrogance and disrespect of nature, and I think this practice and others like it should stop. We should ask ourselves what demonstrations such as this teach our children about respecting wildlife. We as human beings should be better than this.
Here is the video:
