Baby animals

Of course they're cute. Often, their context isn't

Everyone seems to be obsessed with Moo Deng, the baby hippo, and the baby penguin, Pesto. They’re adorable, obviously, and we cannot help finding them immensely lovable. I’ll be the killjoy on this and ask to please stop and think of their circumstances

Moo Deng and Pesto are both prisoners born of imprisoned parents with imprisoned families. We wouldn’t do this in a human context. So why do it in a non-human context? And why do it without talking about the prison in which they’ve been born and they’ll never escape

Moo Deng

Photo by Michael Rodock on Unsplash

Moo Deng is a baby pygmy hippo living in the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. In Thai her name refers to a specific type of meat - bouncy pork.¹ So we’re losing our collective cultural minds over a prisoner called by a name for a dead pig product. It’s ghastly. And her antics? She’s annoyed at being poked, prodded and paraded by her handlers. Hers isn’t natural behaviour. Pygmy hippos only live in West Africa, by the way

Pesto

Photo by Ian Parker on Unsplash

Pesto is an unusually large baby king penguin imprisoned with his parents at SEA LIFE, Melbourne’s aquarium. And his name too is a food, which, is sometimes vegan-friendly. King penguins live in southern South America

Zoos are hellscapes

Zoos routinely either sell off, rent, lend out, trade or simply kill and feed animals to whatever other imprisoned animal will eat their carcasses. It’s usually their keepers who do the latter. These are common practices at all zoos, perhaps with light variations

Zoos are colonial hellscapes selling us on the idea they save animals. Sure, they may have rare individuals, but it doesn’t mean they’ve saved the species. They’re holding on to whatever remains of what we’ve managed to destroy. Zoos aren’t going out and saving their habitats or advocating for a vegan world. There’s no other way to save them

Of course there are those zoos which rescue and rehabilitate free-living animals, releasing them or looking after them forever if that’s required and researching free-living animals. These are smaller side endeavours which do not make their profits, but embellish and complete their product offering, making it more palatable to consumers. The main goal of zoos is to make money and their prisoners are the means through which they profit

Killjoy

So yeah, I’m a killjoy. Why can’t I just let everyone enjoy the cute animals? Please do enjoy how lovely and lovable they are. Just don’t forget where they are. They’ll never be free or have bodily autonomy. In their current conditions, they’re merely objects for our consumption, for our distraction from the horrors of late-stage capitalistic hegemony. And I reject doing that to them

If their existence and their imprisonment inspire us to see beyond our enjoyment of others as objects, then let’s apply that to other parts of our lives and strive for collective and total liberation

1. Thank you to Kip Dorrell for the translation. See her expertise in Thai food and culture on her website and Substack