Animal Cruelty- Plight of the Dancing Bears

Every Year Indian sloth bears,aka.Indian dancing bears, are poached from their wild habitat and subjected to a life of pain and slavery. Snatched from their den or mother after she has been killed right before their eyes, their misery begins. Sloth bear cubs as young as 3-5 weeks old are fair game for the poachers, who throw them into sacks and take them to a Kalandar (Qalandar) village. The Kalandars are the traditional trainers and owners of the "dancing bears". Dragging the bears from village to village to entertain people is their chosen, although illegal, occupation. The training of the bears as a means of supporting large family groups, is passed from father to son, while other means of employment usually aren't even considered.

Up to 70% of the baby sloth bears may not survive long enough to be "trained" to perform for people's amusement. Many cubs die of neglect, hunger, and dehydration before they ever reach their intended masters. Others die from the cruel treatment they receive from their captors. Starved and beaten if they refuse to be trained, the sloth bear cubs get no medical attention for the wounds inflicted by sticks, rocks, or metal rods. As the wounds become infected, the bears weaken from malnutrition, stress, and the lack of basic care. If the bear cubs don't get help, they may get sicker and sicker, until they die. They are after all, still babies and need their mother to be healthy and flourish in the wild.

Although once common, it is estimated that the sloth bears numbers are decreasing
by as much as 1000 bears a year. Some of the sloth bears are just killed for their gallbladders, which produce bile that is used in Chinese home remedies. This cruel harvest, accompanied by the poaching of baby sloth bears and the killing of mothers trying to protect their babies, has decimated the wild population. Since the sloth bears stay with their mother for about 2.5 years, her average 2 cub births only occur about every 3 years. This animal cruelty cannot continue, or the sloth bears could become extinct in as little as 10 years. How many more extinctions of wild animals have to happen before we understand that it has to stop?

Animal welfare education continues to be a critical part of the process for ending all types of animal cruelty, in any country. The WSPA is working tirelessly to promote animal awareness programs in order to educate the public. Some of these include helping the Kalandar tribesmen access funds and equipment to pursue more lucrative jobs than dancing bears. In order to get funds and training, they must agree to surrender their dancing bears. The WSPA funds an animal crimes hotline that one of their member societies-Education For Nature runs. They continue to give financial assistance to the Agra Bear Rescue Centre to help them continue to take care of the rescued bears for their remaining years in safety and loving care. Many other animal welfare organizations are working toward these goals as well. They include but are not limited to, Wildlife SOS, International Animal Rescue, and The Humane Society. Until we as human beings, understand that all animals deserve to be treated humanely and not tortured or starved, we will continue to treat each other with the same sad disregard for life.

The WSPA is fortunate to have some well-known help in educating the public about the horrible suffering of captive bears on "bear farms" in Asia. Jackie Chan, a famous actor, has once again given his support by making a short, filmed public service announcement in Cantonese, Vietnamese, Mandarin, as well as English. Together, Jackie Chan and the WSPA want to expose the horrible suffering and appalling cruelty to some 12,000 bears living in misery on Asian bear farms. The 30 second PSA done by Mr. Chan is intense and heart-wrenching, but how can the bear's pain ever end if we don't know what is happening to animals in other parts of our world. Bear bile farming has got to be one of the most horrifying and inhumane acts that humans inflict upon animals that I have ever seen. This kind of education is a disturbing, slap in the face sort of wake up call for people, but apparently necessary because this atrocity has been going on for decades.

The respective governments of these countries know about the farms. Some even sanction the activity to some extent by allowing them to exist and be regulated by said government. In China, bear farms are legal. Government officials are supposed to make sure that the farmers adhere to the standards for maintaining the health and well-being of the bears. The negative publicity from the world community due to the distribution of pictures showing bears that were catheterized was further ignited by having the atrocious activity of extracting bile from the bear's gallbladder exposed. The Chinese government was spurred into regulating the way bile was extracted and started promoting the free-draining method as being more humane for the bears. In reality this is just not true. Using a catheter became illegal in the 1990s, but the alternative was just as bad, if not worse. Opening a permanent hole in the bear's abdomen from the gallbladder to the outside of its body creates a perfect breeding ground for bacteria and is easily infected. The free-draining method is accomplished by puncturing the gallbladder and creating a permanent channel so that a tube can be inserted to suck out the bile. Medical examinations of newly-rescued bears show infection of the area in and around the puncture, with ulcerated skin all around the wound, due to irritation from caustic bile leakage. Bears are routinely operated on to remove the gallbladder after they arrive at the rescue centre. The gallbladder is in such bad shape that even if there were some part of it that was functional, soon complications would necessitate the removal of it anyway. Often there are gall stones, infection, or clusters of polyps that fill the gallbladder so that no bile can get through it.

The wound (fistula) tries to heal itself and the farmer has to shove a catheter through the healing skin to get out the bile. Sometimes a piece of hot metal is used to cauterize the wound to keep it open, done without use of pain killers, causing extreme pain for the bear. Some bears die from getting peritonitis because the bile leaked back into the abdominal cavity causing extensive infection to other organs like the liver as well as the gallbladder. Some post mortem examinations have found that the whole abdominal cavity is filled with liters of pus. This tragedy can be caused by botched surgeries done by untrained workers or the farmers themselves. No ethical veterinarian would consent to perform such an obviously cruel procedure on an animal.

How can the farmers and government officials rationalize this torture of an animal? How can any evolved, sane human being rationalize this cruelty? To dare say that it doesn't hurt the bear to extract bile from its gallbladder every single day, sometimes more than once a day, makes me incredulous! Bears have been observed moaning, bashing their heads on their cage bars, chewing on the bars, and sometimes chewing their own paws while being "milked" for their bile. Do you really believe that it doesn't cause the bears agony? I don't believe it doesn't hurt.