It is amusing to see animals doing things that humans do – this is why circuses exist (or rather existed before Meneka Gandhi decided that animals don’t belong in circuses). Those animals look cute and we think they are ‘intelligent’ for being able to perform tricks. However, there is another point of view. Check out this video of an elephant playing cricket and make up your mind which point of view you support.
There we see a bunch of guys ‘playing cricket’ with an elephant. The humans are bowling and fielding while the pachyderm bats quite efficiently with his trunk.
The elephant is quite good at connecting bat with ball and perhaps made a lot of runs, thought people.
Cute
Many of the tweeple had some ideas about replacing actual cricket players with non-humans.
People posted other videos of elephants – like this one of a baby elephant taking a ‘drinks break’.
There the baby elephant tries to get a watermelon out of the water, finds it too difficult and decides to go for the pieces kept conveniently close by.
It was pointed out that elephants don’t naturally ‘play cricket’.
Animals are trained to do things that amuse and entrain humans. The training typically involves some amount of cruelty or punishment, pointed out many of the comments.
Several of the commentators pointed out that domesticating elephants and then making them perform for humans, is not a cruelty-free process.
This Twitter user feels that this animal does not appear to be abused; in act seems confident and appears to be enjoying the proceedings.
Most people seemed to be making comments without much understanding of animal behaviour or psychology – mostly based on their own belief systems. Many of the tweets also pointed out that the 'cruelty' charge could be made for any domesticated animal – even pets like dogs and cats when they are ‘trained’ or made to perform ‘tricks’. It is also true that elephants are highly intelligent and often have a close and loving relationship with their ‘mahout’ or trainer that involves little or no cruelty. However, this video of the elephant playing cricket does raise the larger question: should we keep animals in captivity and make them do things just for the entertainment of humans?
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